Re: Question for Shenan Stanley MVP or MVP(s)

Thank you very much Shenan and Kerry for confirming the xcopy method won't
work. I'll try the WD utilities
followed by using PM per Shenan. Stuff on D: drive is minimal and can be
copied and reloaded.

Sorry about the thread change, I thought it made sense in this case.

Thanks and Regards to all, Dallas...

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"Shenan Stanley" <newshelper@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23ux5rWEOHHA.3944@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dallas Overturf wrote:
Here's the scenario: A Friend of mine a couple years back bought a
Sony Vaio PCVRZ22G Desktop PC ;
it has plenty of memory (512Mb) and and an 80GB disk (which for him
is plenty).
They never mentioned to him (a technologically challenged person)
that they split the disk into
a 20GB boot and OS partition drive C: AND a 60GB partition drive
D: where he should install all else onto D:.
Needless to say he is running out of disk space due to this
nonsensical setup. and installing and saving things in the default
manner. Note: Sony suggeste changing My Documents to point into the D:
drive which I did but it was too little to late.
he keeps running very low on disk space (Megabytes vs. Gigabytes)
and he is sick of it.
Sony's reply on it was that it was done due to XP becoming
unuseable if it runs out of disk space; duh!

Question(s): He wants me to make a bootable backup of the hard
drive onto (a largerWestern Digital 120GB WD1200JB ) drive and
then turn it into a single partition; once working. Will Partition
Magic be able to do this automagically? AND what software should I
use for Safely copying the original XP Home OS onto the new drive?
(freeware would be preferred for this if available).
Does Partion Magic fix the registry entries for stuff on the
current D: drive to point to C: if you convert to one partition?

Any Caveats or advice appreciated! I've heard
of but never used Partition Magic before.

Dallas Overturf wrote:
Shenan: You appear to disagree with something Andrew said. I
was a bit surprised by the reference to using
XCOPY. Is there a good way to do what I want to do that you know
of or can point me to a reference on it???
I'll be driving 45min to my friend's house to try to help him. I'm
going to try and do it on my own system first
to verify it works. If it was DOS I know it would not work; but
for XP I don't know what's changed in the boot process.
Would my reply asking about formatting allow the Xcopy to work? Thread is
below...

In the future - please do not change the subject line. It breaks up the
thread.

Andrew E. is known for giving bad information.
He is someone who still states - despite being pointed to references to
the contrary - that there is no update path from Windows XP Home to
Windows XP Professional.

Back to your question - unsnipped for this off-shoot of the thread.

Has your friend installed anything on D? Surely - in all this time -
something is installed on D.

In any case - you can just use Partition Magic to resize C and D as they
are now.
Partition Magic, BootITNG, etc..
You should backup things first.

You could also uninstall the applications now installed on C and use the
media to install them on D this time - as well as some cleanup on C...
Archiving old files/installation executables, etc... Get them off the
machine completely. CD/DVD/external hard disk drive.

The other (best) alternative is to use an imaging utility (Symantec Ghost,
Acronis TrueImage, BootIT NG or a host of other possibilities) to backup
the individual partitions to an image on an external hard disk/network
share and then utilize the same application to restore the image to
partitions on the new drive (you can pre-create the partitons with a boot
disk/Windows XP CD) - maintaining the C and D setup. From this point on -
make sure everything your friend installs is done onto D and they start
saving their stuff elsewhere (files/folders they make.)

XCOPY just is not going to do the job, especially with NTFS in the works -
which I would assume it is. Even with FAT32 - Windows XP just wasn't made
to be copied in that way. While I have gotten that method to work with
Windows 95 - I have not seen it work since nor has there been any great
push to make it work. The products like those already mentioned were
MEANT to do this for you and reliably... although - good backups are
always encouraged.

In other words - Andrew E.'s method will *not* work... Xcopy (for one
thing) is just not going to copy all the files you have 'in use'. I
suggest you use one of the tools listed above - as those are made to do
this and their instructions are listed on their web pages and documented
throughout the web.... Also - new (retail) hard disk drives come with
imaging utilities....

Western Digital was mentioned, so...

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1095&p_sid=JhHvqIri&p_lva=1151&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9Mjg3JnBfcHJvZHM9MCZwX2NhdHM9MCZwX3B2PSZwX2N2PSZwX3NlYXJjaF90eXBlPWFuc3dlcnMuc2VhcmNoX2ZubCZwX3BhZ2U9MSZwX3NlYXJjaF90ZXh0PXRyYW5zZmVy&p_li

--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html



.

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