RE: New Hard Drive Cloning

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

From: BAR (BAR_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 02/28/05 

Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 20:03:04 -0800

Does the WD have disk cloning software such as Maxtools?

If so use their product to clone off the Maxtor to the WD.

>From my experience the Maxtools will only write to a Maxtor drive: part of
the built-in restrictions.

Once you have cloned a drive and attempt to boot of the new WD, you will
find that XP wll not load and that you'll have to perform a REPAIR
installation of XP.

If you can't do any cloning, start fresh: format the WD and 'recover' XP to
the new WD.

By the way, if the recovery CD is from Toshiba, Dell etc, then I'm amazed
that it will allow you to write onto the new drive, being different from the
OEM spec. This is part of the 'protection' policies in XP.

You may need to go one step further and buy a Retail Version of XP: or call
the HDD supplier and see if they can supply you with a 'White Box' OEM
edition of XP. This is acceptable under the OEM agreement Ts & Cs being a
significant system component.

"TooTall" wrote:

> My hd recently crashed. While waiting for the new one to arrive, I used the
> recovery
> cd and set up an old drive. I have downloaded all the updates and installed
> SP2 and now want to clone it to the new drive. Old drive is maxtor, new is
> WD. I muddled through partitioning and formatting the new drive, but how do
> you xfr the system files to make it bootable ? There is no SYS command as
> there was in DOS or previous Windows OS's. Also, I installed MaxBlast & WD's
> tool and both run fine
> with the Maxtor connected, but with both drives connected, both programs crash
> when started. I tried a REPAIR install using fixmbr and fixboot and got the
> drive to boot, but when I used BACKUP to restore a backup of the maxtor, the
> new drive refuses to boot saying there are missing files. What a PAIN !!!

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