XP Home HD Bkup/Rest?
lbrty4us_at_aol.com
Date: 01/03/05
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Date: 3 Jan 2005 14:55:53 -0800
XP Home Bkup/Restore Confusion
Help! :-)
This is a laptop (Presario 2100 series). There are a few bad sectors
on the HD, which I temporarily fixed with chkdsk in order to operate.
Box went to HP/warranty, where they did other things to it but didn't
run diags on the HD so didn't replace it as requested. They've since
sent me a new HD for exchange.
I only wish to make a bootable bkup (CD's) of the whole HD (since it's
still 1 NTFS partition), excluding the swapfile if possible, including
its EMBR & sysfiles etc. Purpose is for replacing the HD & having all
exactly as on old drive. Reason is to avoid having to use the
inadequate "quick restore" set or the minimal single XP install disk, &
spending ages redoing all updates, SW installs, settings etc.
You'd think this'd be simple, yes?
I have:
- Windows Backup (NT, said to also work with XP Home).
- Terrabyte's Image for Windows trial version, plus Phylock.
With IFW, I've wasted 2 days & many CD's due to unpredicatable &
annoying fail-errors which arise, often after many discs have already
been written, causing them to be wasted. These include write errrors
after 5 or 6 CD's even at low speeds, or a Phylock cache size error,
even with the latter increased to 32mb, which trash the process. I've
lost more than the registered version costs in wasted media & time, &
can't afford to fool with this trial app anymore. It's also slower'n
cold molasses, maybe good for someone who's unemployed & likes to stay
home for a week with a big stack of CD's trying to make it work. ;-)
IFW also reports a drive read error at its beginning, but I assumed
this is the bad sectors & over-rode it.
Reading (NT) Wbkup's instructions, it's aimed at corporate users with
tape drives & is nebulous or confusing as to whether it will write to
CD's, how to boot & restore the result to a new blank HD or partition
in straightforward terms. (If either or both are even
possible/practical with it.) I do note that when it's is lit off in
advanced mode, the destination drop-down dialogue (where I'd expect to
select the CD drive) is greyed-out. Bad omen.
FWIW 'tis a laptop w/no floppy, though it may boot from an external
(USB) one on hand (haven't tried yet but it should).
We're only talking abt 7gb here plus its sysfiles/bootfiles, and a
simple way to copy it all, then boot & load it to unused space. I
assume I can partition (only 4) the new HD & format one to NTFS first
with the BIOS & firmware(?).
Intent is to install multiple OS & multi boot (XP, DOS/3.11, Linux).
But I haven't figured out how to get the correct FDSK for XP onto a
bootable disk (CD or floppy) either. Or is there some other way I'm
supposed to partition & format the sucker these days? ;-) I also
assume I can put DOS on its own separate partition later rather than
first, without it's install taking over the whole HD. Pls kick me if
this is wrong.
How would YOU do this simple task without dubbing around forever or
fooling with more shareware? I have read so much stuff I'm going
blind<bg>. Don't people replace & restore whole HD's every day of the
week, without involving internet & shareware pursuits?
Much TIA,
Frank
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