[FOAK] Hard disk swap-over

Fount Of All Knowledge.

I've just had delivered a 120gb hard disk and plan to put in into my
(old Dell) Win2k server at home.

My plan of action is:

1) Slave new disk
2) Format, partition & copy all files over from existing disk
3) Remove existing disk & master new disk

Is it really as simple as that?
Are there any ovbious pitfalls with this approach?
Will I get away with pre-partioning or do I have to just leave it as
one huge bucket and Partition Magic it later?

Worst case scenario, I'll hoik out the old bugger, and build from
scratch but I was looking to save a couple of hours.

All knowledge gratefully rec'd etc.

 

""" @@@@" ""' ""@@@@@ "@@@@""@ "@@@@@@@@@""

 

Pretty much sums up your IT knowledge.

 

Err, you seem to be missing 'install operating system' from that list.

 

Are you trying to copy the volume that you boot from (i.e. drive C to the
new disk? Cos if you are, you might struggle. Norton Ghost is your friend.

 

AOL with bells on.

 

No. You can't copy files that are in use by the OS. As Ace said,
Ghost is your pal. And I am *heartily* fucking *SICK* of it right now

Sorry, I'll calm down now



--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
Alfa 116 Giulietta 3.0l (Really) Sprint 1.7
Triumph Speed Triple: Black with extra black bits
www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

Yes if you are proposing to to do a fresh install of the OS on the new disk
first and you simply intend to transfer data files (but see my comment
further down about potential drive letter problems). However, if you want
to transfer the entire setup from the old disk to the new disk (and you are
using win 2000 or winXP) you will need to use partition magic or similar
software booted from a floppy and copy the old disk (or partition) to the
new disk. If your new disk is larger than the old you will need to
subsequently resize the partition or set up a new partition on the remaining
space on the new disk.

If your OS is win98 or win95 it is possible to use the dos xcopy command
(with a whole bunch of switches) to transfer the old disk to the new after
the new drive has been partitoned. For win 98 I think it is XCOPY C:\*.*
D:\ /c/h/e/k/r but you would need to check (use google)

One obvious one, which is easy to overlook, is the need to set the partition
on the new disk to 'active' (use fdisk) before attempting to boot from it.
Only one partition can be active at a time so the primary partition on the
new disk can not be set to 'active' while it is slave to the old disk.

Also - dont boot into windows 2000 or XP with the new drive as slave as the
OS will then give it a drive letter other than C: (your old drive will have
the C: designation) and this will be retained when you boot from the new
drive - having your boot hard drive as anything other than C: can cause all
kinds of hassle.

Unless you have a particular need for more than one partition there is no
obvious reason to create additional partitions - there is a slight storage
'overhead' that is incurred with large partitions but storage space is not
much of a factor these days when the cost per megabyte of storage is so
cheap

Assuming that you don't need to rebuild from scratch the only part of the
process that takes a while is the disk or partition copy process - how long
depends on the size of the disk/partition being copied.

NB - if you are using a non windows OS such as linux or OS/2 then you will
need to ask in a specialist newsgroup such as alt.linux or comp.os.os2.misc


Tony

 

Why ? I love Ghost.

If Ghost does not float your boat have you tried Power Quest Drive Image
Pro ?

 

hth

 

I'm guessing that he's been using it a lot recently.

 

Ah ! Too much of a good thing.

 

I loved it to

Nah. I know Ghost. It's only that I've Ghosted 136 machines over the
last 14 days, and the end users keeps finding things wrong [1] with
the (12) images

[1] Defined as 'Thgings we forgot to ask for'
--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
Alfa 116 Giulietta 3.0l (Really) Sprint 1.7
Triumph Speed Triple: Black with extra black bits
www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

Heh ! Been there done that...

But the beauty of it is - throw Bootable CD in Drive - reboot- whistle -
machine imaged, init ?

I use PQDI over the Lan to image our servers once a month - a citrix
server farm component takes 20 mins, so that's a 20 total restore.

All laptops have a std image all on CD. Saves, ooh, hours a week.

 

Ha! Fuckers.

 

Actually, it's dual boot Win2k/Win98.

 

"TMack" <> somehow managed to post:

<Loads of good advice snipped>

Cheers all who replied. I think following the list of pitfalls I'll be
taking the path of least resistance. ...

Back up the filestore, slap the new disk in, rebuild from scratch. It
is currently dual boot (win2k/Win98) and this is a piece of piss to
sort out later.

It'll only take a few hours anyway. I was just trying to be lazy.
Also, I'm a cheapskate bastard and can't be arsed to fork out 60quid
for a Norton tool I'll only use once.

Cheers all.

 

"I can't find Freecell."

"Why can't I run Solitaire?"

"Did you install the Internet on here?"

Etc., etc?

 

I use both, and they do the job fine. Use the Disk-Disk copy or 'Clone'
facility, allowing the partition(s) on the smaller source drive to expand to
fill the available space on the the new one, if desired. Takes all the pain
out of replacing (working) hard drives.

Drive Image now appears to be part of the PQ "Deploy Center" (my copy is
v5.5).

Rick

 

dingly fucking ding

oh and 'Ahh we need these two apps as well, and that part of Office
removed'.......
--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21 COSOC#3
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
Alfa 116 Giulietta 3.0l (Really) Sprint 1.7
Triumph Speed Triple: Black with extra black bits
www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk