Replacing the XP Boot Drive

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Situation:
I have a Dell 2300 with XP SP2 operating system. There is a 40G boot drive
in the chassis (which only has space for one drive). I also have a 80G WD
drive in a USB enclosure. I recently purchased a Seagate 200G drive.
Goal:
I’d like to end up with the 80G as the boot drive in the chassis and the
200G in the USB enclosure.
Problem:
I want to copy/clone the 40G to the 80G so I can place the 80G in the
chassis and have it boot right up. Articles that I have read makes it seem
to be a difficult task to assure that the 80G will boot right up when I
install it. I am primarily concerned that all of the software will be on the
80G to make it a bootable drive.

I’d appreciate suggestions or preferably specific steps since I haven’t done
this before.

Thank you,
 
RonJ said:
Situation:
I have a Dell 2300 with XP SP2 operating system. There is a 40G boot drive
in the chassis (which only has space for one drive). I also have a 80G WD
drive in a USB enclosure. I recently purchased a Seagate 200G drive.
Goal:
I'd like to end up with the 80G as the boot drive in the chassis and the
200G in the USB enclosure.
Problem:
I want to copy/clone the 40G to the 80G so I can place the 80G in the
chassis and have it boot right up. Articles that I have read makes it seem
to be a difficult task to assure that the 80G will boot right up when I
install it. I am primarily concerned that all of the software will be on the
80G to make it a bootable drive.

I'd appreciate suggestions or preferably specific steps since I haven't done
this before.

Thank you,
Click to expand...

There are several ways of doing this:

1. The easy way. Buy a cloning product, e.g. Acronis TrueImage
or Ghost. Contrary to what you think, it will take care of everything.

2. The cheap way. Install the 40 and the 80 GByte disks as slave
disks in some other WinXP/2000 PC, then use xcopy.exe with
the appropriate switches to perform the cloning operation.

3. The stingy technician's way. Boot the machine with a Bart PE
CD, then use xcopy.exe to copy the 40 GB disk to the 80 GB disk.
Check out www.bootdisk.com for the tools to make a Bart PE
CD, and allow for a few hours until you're there.

Methods 2 and 3 require you to restore the WinXP boot
environment. This takes about five minutes.
 
RonJ said:
Situation:
I have a Dell 2300 with XP SP2 operating system. There is a 40G boot
drive in the chassis (which only has space for one drive). I also have a
80G WD drive in a USB enclosure. I recently purchased a Seagate 200G
drive.
Goal:
I'd like to end up with the 80G as the boot drive in the chassis and the
200G in the USB enclosure.
Problem:
I want to copy/clone the 40G to the 80G so I can place the 80G in the
chassis and have it boot right up. Articles that I have read makes it
seem to be a difficult task to assure that the 80G will boot right up when
I install it. I am primarily concerned that all of the software will be
on the 80G to make it a bootable drive.

I'd appreciate suggestions or preferably specific steps since I haven't
done this before.

Thank you,
Click to expand...


RonJ:
I know you want to install the Seagate 200 GB as a USBEHD and use your 80 GB
HD as the boot drive. But I'm wondering why you wouldn't want to reverse
that situation so that your 200 GB drive would be the boot drive and the 80
GB one the USBEHD which you'll be using for backup purposes. I realize you
must have good & sufficient reasons for doing so, but let me first discuss
the disk copying process had you preferred to use the Seagate as your boot
drive. Then I'll discuss the process from the standpoint of cloning your
present 40 GB boot drive to the 80 GB Western Digital drive...

The cloning process is relatively easy. If you purchased a retail, boxed
version of your Seagate HD it came with a Disk Utility CD which includes
Seagate's Disk Wizard - you can also download this from Seagate's site -
(http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html). The Disk Wizard
software includes a disk-copying function that allows you to clone the
contents of your old drive to the new one. It's a very simple process. Here
are the steps (taken from the Seagate user manual slightly edited):

a) Start up Disk Wizard
b) Select "Maintenance" from the main DiscWizard menu.
c) Select "Copy files" in the maintenance options menu.
d) Choose the source and destination hard drives and begin the copy
procedure.
e) After you have copied the files to your new Seagate hard drive, you need
to configure your new drive as the master and your old drive as a slave (if
applicable)...

So as you can see, it's not a terribly difficult process to undertake. But
like everything else involving a PC, things can go wrong. So before you
undertake this disk copying process, back up any files on your old drive
that are important to you.

Now with respect to cloning the contents of your 40 GB HD to the 80 GB WD
drive...

Western Digital also has a disk copying utility incorporated in their Data
Lifeguard Tools 11 for Windows which you can download from their site. It
performs the same basic function as the Seagate utility mentioned above but
is a trifle more complex to use (as I recall) than the Seagate one. But not
unduly so.

Again, backup any files that are important to you *before* you undertake the
disk copying process.
Anna
 
Anna,
Thank you for your response.
My reasons for doing it this way are:
1. Physical access to my chassis is a difficult time-consuming task and I am
trying to minimize the number of times that I extract and replace it.
2. The physical connection between the USB 80G and internal 40G already
exists so I wanted to take advantage of that.
3. I don’t know how to make a physical connection between the 200G and the
40G to perform the cloning without doing some drive swapping.

My main concern, I think, is to assure that I can clone all of the software
from the internal 40G to the USB 80G so that when I go through the physical
effort of switching the drives, I have a chassis with a 80G drive that boots.
Somewhere I thought that I read that because it is a USB connection, I won’t
get all the software that I need.
 
When doing such work, I usually have the computer on my desk with case open.
I then connect whatever disks I'm working with, leaving them "hanging", as
in beside the case, just connected to power and data cables...

So when I had 120G+80G in main chassis and 20G in USB enclosure, wanted
more, so bought 200G and started copying around..
(And DVD and CDRW on sec. IDE all the time)
200G and 80 are Seagates, 120G is Samsung..

Used version 5.0 of DriveImage (old...)

1st clone: 120G as master and 200 as slave. Clone 120G -> 200G . OK. Checked
200G works, ie. installed it as master, no slave, and booted..

2nd just a copyprocess : 200G as master and 80G as slave. Copy from 80G to
empty space on 200G. No errors while copying.
3rd copy: 200 as master and 120G as slave. Moved that 80G contents to the
120G

Mounted 80G in USB enclosure, checked again that everything works,


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RonJ said:
Anna,
Thank you for your response.
My reasons for doing it this way are:
1. Physical access to my chassis is a difficult time-consuming task and I
am trying to minimize the number of times that I extract and replace it.
2. The physical connection between the USB 80G and internal 40G already
exists so I wanted to take advantage of that.
3. I don't know how to make a physical connection between the 200G and the
40G to perform the cloning without doing some drive swapping.

My main concern, I think, is to assure that I can clone all of the
software from the internal 40G to the USB 80G so that when I go through
the physical effort of switching the drives, I have a chassis with a 80G
drive that boots.
Somewhere I thought that I read that because it is a USB connection, I won't
get all the software that I need.
Click to expand...


Re your item 1...
I'm not familiar with the Dell 2300. I've been assuming all along that it's
a desktop machine. Is it? When you say there's a problem with "physical
access to my chassis" and wish to "minimize the number of times that I
extract and replace it", what exactly is "it"? The chassis?Why are you
talking about "extract(ing) and replac(ing) it"? Are you actually referring
to the installed internal HD in the computer case?

Re your items 2 & 3...
When you say you want to take advantage of the connection between your
internal HD and the 80 GB USBEHD, in what way do you mean? If you clone the
contents of your internal drive to the external one, what then? You'll still
have to install that 80 GB drive in your machine right? You could just as
easily install your 200 GB HD in the USB enclosure and use that drive as the
recipient of the clone, right? And you can then install the 200 GB drive as
your computer's internal drive just as easily as the 80 GB one, couldn't
you?

As to your final comment...
A clone is a clone is a clone. For all practical purposes the destination
drive, be it the 80 GB one or the 200 GB one, will be an exact duplicate of
your source disk, your present 40 GB internal drive. As such, it should be
bootable and entirely functional when it is installed as an internal drive
in your computer.

I don't know what you mean when you say that based upon something you read,
there might be something in the USB connection that would prevent you from
"get(ting) all the software that I need". Perhaps you're confusing this with
the fact that a USBEHD containing the XP OS is not bootable. But that has no
relevance in your situation.
Anna
 
Anna,
Thank you for your thoughts. They caused me to rethink the 'process' that I
planned on using.
Unfortunately, when I got ready to place the replacement drive in the
chassis - the cables didn't match. Very aggrevating, but it was the final
'straw' on this Dell.
I have been looking for a reason to replace this box and head for a multi
media box.

Once again, thanks for your advice
 
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