Re: Moving hard drive to another machine

From: Art (notaname_at_notanisp)
Date: 07/16/04 

Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 14:05:32 -0400

----- Original Message -----
From: Art
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware
Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2004 10:39 AM
Subject: Moving hard drive to another machine

The user has an HP notebook that she's disposing of. We want to move the
entire contents of her hard drive to a desktop computer after which her
present notebook's hard drive will be formatted so that the XP (Home
edition) will be removed from the notebook.

We cloned her notebook's HD to an external hard drive and then cloned the
latter to the internal HD on the new desktop computer. Naturally it will not
boot to a Desktop nor boot in Safe Mode, as we anticipated. The problem is
that when we boot with the new XP install disk (new retail version of XP
Home), there's no Repair install facility available. XP doesn't "see" the
previous Windows installation; it just sees the formatted partition and will
only allow us to make a new install of the OS on that partition, or delete
the partition. We assume that this is because the XP OS on the desktop
computer's drive is an OEM version.

Is there any way around this dilemma? I note we can access the Recovery
console from the XP install disk. I wonder if there's some way to achieve
the objective through that avenue? Any help would be appreciated.

Art

"Ron Martell" <ron@onlinehelp.bc.ca> wrote in message
news:tiief055pfh9euhc1927pl6mfgqioieu5v@4ax.com...
> "Art" <notaname@notanisp> wrote:

> >Ron:
> >As I indicated in my posting there's no problem involving a "lost"
> >partition. The XP install disk "sees" the formatted partition during
Setup.
> >It just doesn't "see" that there's a Windows OS on that partition. Thus,
no
> >Repair option is available during Setup.
> >
> >Art
> >

> That indicates some kind of a failure during the disk copying process.
>
> How about the external hard drive? Can you connect it up to a
> functioning computer and see what the contents are?
>
> You could try copying direct by removing the hard drive from the
> laptop and using a 2.5 to 3.5 inch drive adapter to install it
> temporarily into the new desktop machine. Then use your drive cloning
> software to do the copy.
>
> Having to use an intermediate disk (the external hard drive) is just
> one more place for things to go wrong, and Murphy's Law does rule the
> Universe.
>
> Good luck
>
> Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
> --
> Microsoft MVP
> On-Line Help Computer Service
> http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

Ron:
Thanks for your comments. There was no problem either with the USB external
drive nor the disk cloning (both with respect to the clone from the notebook
computer to the external drive and the clone from the external drive to the
fixed internal drive on the new computer).

Actually, I hadn't work on the machine myself. I was trying to help some
friends long-distance and walking them through the process. I later learned
that the XP disk that came with their new desktop computer was the
Professional Edition. They were able to exchange it for the Home Edition by
the local computer shop that had sold them the computer. Unlike the missing
Repair install option on the PE disk, that facility was an option on the HE
disk, so they were able to perform a Repair install on their new computer's
hard disk without any further problem. Interestingly, the HE disk is a "OEM
Product" as Microsoft labels it. Strange that the Professional Edition they
originally used did not offer a Repair install option in this situation,
notwithstanding the fact that the disk they were trying to Repair was a HE
version.

Art

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