Computer pros - migrating old system drive to new drive without re-installing?

[442w30]

boot to knoppix and did a "dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb" worked great and free
However, you have to be sure which drive is sda and which is sdb or hda and hdb

you can't go wrong with ghost, other than cost.

[Newc]

Ok, Data Lifeguard stalls when it launches, and HDCLone isn't showing the new HD as a Target.

Just to make sure I've got all this right (since the manuals always assume they're being read by MS Certified techs and not n00bs), I currently only have 3 drives attached/powered in my system - C:\, the CD/DVD drive, and the new empty HD. In XP's Disk Management, I Initialized the HD, but have not assigned a Partition or Drive Letter.
I rebooted with the HDClone CD in the drive, and set that as the first boot device. The program loads, BIOS recognizes my 80GB HD, but HDCLone doesn't list it as a Target. It shows my 12GB Source drive only.

The 3 drives are connected directly to the mobo, with C:\ and the CD on IDE Channel 1 and the new HD as the only thing on Channel 2, with the drive's jumpers set to Master. It's plugged into the "Master" end of the IDE cable.

My other drives inside the case have been unplugged (power), but their cables are still attached to the PCI IDE card, and the Secondary Master (mobo cable) is completely unplugged. The BIOS does not list anything other than the 3 drives that have power, so I'm doubting that having the other cables connected is the problem.

The drive did come in a retail shrinkwrapped box, so I know it's not a defective return (got stuck like that before).

Looks like I'll hafta try Ghost, unless someone can point out a step-by-step monkey-proof walkthrough for HDClone?

[heartfielder]

Maxblast & Data Lifeguard work fine. I stopped using Ghost years ago, but that also works fine.

[Carbuff]

The problem might have to do with the fact that you have a pci ide card and its freaking out the WD software. I think you are supposed to put the new drive in as the primary master and have the old one slaved to it. Then you run the software from the floppy and it will see that the new drive has no partition and it will walk you through all the steps to format the new drive and set it up as your primary master and copy the partition from the old drive. Is either of the drives a maxtor? If so, you can use the maxblast software. Ive found it worked better(easier)than the wd and ibm versions. You can download it from maxtor.

[Newc]

All my drives are WD, except for one which I think is a Maxtor, but IIRC that's in a USB box.

I've formatted the drive in XP and assigned it to D:\ but even then HDClone still doesn't list it, though, again, the BIOS shows it just fine.
HDClone is running from a CD, but it looks like I'll have to scrounge up a Floppy (I think I threw them all out a while back - never used them) and put the drives on the same cable.

Hey Tim, I got an idea for a new feature of Windows

[Newc]

Another thing - HDClone's manual recommends using Sysprep first, but either it's on a disconnected drive (along with my SP2 setup files) or it only comes with XP Pro, because searching for it yields no results.

[AK47]

PM sent.

[Carbuff]

You might have a problem if its been set up as D: Because the old system will copy exactly as it is as C: and it will screw up all your drive letters and your programs on the other drive. This is assuming that the old drive was C: Just to be safe I would set it up as the primary master, C:, before I tried the transfer thing. Heres what I would do.

first make sure that you have your copy software working, floppy disk set up and all. Set up your primary ide chanell with the new drive as the master and the old one as the slave. Make sure that the bios sees it this way. Either using the WD floppy or whatever utility you use, set up the new drive as C:, bootable. after that is done either continue with the wd floppy to copy the entire partition or use whatever utility that you are using to copy the partition. This will take a long time. For large ntfs partitions it can take over an hour. Once you have done this, remove the old drive, set up your other drives like they were, and hopefully the computer will boot to the new drive and your system will seem as before but with the increased capacity of the new C drive.

[AK47]

Two words Migrate Easy
by Acronis
Saved my job more times then I can count even did a Raid mirrored array today with it its that simple.
Ghost sucks.

No worries of Bootable partions D: to C: nothing easy EASY EASY!

[Newc]

Hmm. Well I figured out why it wasn't recognizing my drive in the software - had it on an 80 pin IDE cable insted of a 40 pin.

I had switched the current C: to the secondary master (80 pin cable) and put the new drive as primary master (40 pin) and both HDClone and Data Lifeguard saw the drive, but not the original C:, so that's when I swapped out the 80 pin for a 40 pin, and rebooted in Data Lifeguard.

It recognized both drives, and is now copying the original C to the new drive (which hopefully I can reassign as C: if it doesn't do it automatically upon reboot. If not, I'll trash it in XP and start over, now that I've got the identificatioon problem solved

AK - PM received and replied

[rjohnstone]

Newc... once the copy is done, power down the system and remove the old drive and then power up.
No need to worry about conflicting boot partitions.

[Newc]

Ok, here's what I got so far:

Tried Data Lifeguard. It copied everything, but when I tried to boot into the OS using just the new drive (old one not connected at all), I got some errors (can't recall what they were - Chkdsk said it fixed them), but the system would only reboot continuously.

Put the old drive back in, went into XP and deleted the Primary Partition I made for the new drive, then Initialized, formatted, and activated the new drive, but did not assign a drive letter.

Tried HDClone again but it just never worked.

Bought Ghost from Norton online and downloaded it (finally), but I'm being told I don't have enough free space for the installation to extract the InstallShield Scripts engine so it can continue with the installation.
I'm trying to install it onto a USB drive, but of course it's still trying to use C for the Temp stuff, so I specify NO storage on C and 1GB of storage on the USB drive for Temp, but it still gives me crap about not enough space on C!

I've tried copying off everything but system folders, and am just shy of deleting all those Uninstall folders that are flooding my System folder.

I have NO programs installed on C other than system apps, but every other program wants to clog the system drive with the "Shared" this and "Shared" that :bs: and quite frankly I've just about f'n had it dealing with this :bs:

I guess I can uninstall the OS, maybe I'd have room for Ghost to extract its little temp files instead of having to run from the CD like I need it to, but then I'm trying to avoid uninstalling the OS.

I have to say, it is absolutely frikkin retarded that something so simple has to be so frikkin complicated.

[AK47]

Newc its not complicated I made all the mistakes for you, so you dont have to, its Migrate EAsy I can even walk you through on the phone just download the full version.

[charvelguy]

Well.. this is after the fact..and probably stated in vain as it seems your problem differs from some of mine.
I had to do some juggling of the drives if I recall. I had a previously installed lite-on DVD burner but also left the Dell CDR burner/player, so they were like D: and F:. I do recall having some issues with the drive letters when I went to copy and I had to reassign and rename the partitions once copied because.. if I recall, it was trying to read the dvd player as a partition.
You may have to reassign those to some other letter that won't be used depending on the number of partitions before.
I did this a few months back, but if I recall, I initially setup the new hard drive as a slave and once data was transfered, I set it up as master per instructions.
I worked thru those bugs.. system works fine.

[Spivonious]

Just to save some face here, this was my second suggestion:

Get another computer that has hard drive A with Windows installed.

Install hard drives B (source) and C (target).

Boot to A and copy everything on B to C.

Place C in old computer and boot.

Call me crazy, but I can't see why this wouldn't work. Nothing on A is using B, so every file will be copied. The only thing that might be a problem is the boot sector, but that's nothing an "fdisk /mbr" won't fix.