Installing New Hard Drive

When I was using Win 98, and changed Western Digital Hard Drives, it was all so easy. I just set the new Drive to Slave, installed Western Digital's Software Floppy. This then asked me if I wanted to format the New drive and Import the Operating System from the Old Drive. It then did the whole operation in minutes. The New Drive then had all the info from the Old Drive, and it was a simple task to remove the Old Drive and set the New Drive to master and that was it. It was all so simple, I felt sure that there must be something like that under XP. However, Western Digital tell me that their software doesn't work under XP.

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Norton ghost will cone your drive pretty quickly. just make sure you don't boot to windows with the old drive hooked up to the system afterwards or XP may have some "issues" with it.

Thanks, I've looked at Norton a few times but don't find it very user friendly. Does it install the operating system as well, or would an XP disc be need to format and install XP to the new drive first.

It does a straight drive to drive,partiton to partition copy.This said the way XP reads its licence may cause problems with this technique and may need more insight from a tech in the know.

on the "corporate" version (which is the one i use) there are no probs with ghost 2002 , the prog (in xp/2k ) simply makes a boot floppy using PC dos - in 95/98 it will use msdos , then its a case (the way i do it)of sticking your new drive on your secondry cable as master and running from the floppy ,

when done simply remove the orig drive , put new drive in its place and re-connect your cd-rom on sec channel.

now wheather this works for xp "retail" i don,t know ,,,,

just to confuse ? ,,,,xp running on a 60g drive under fat 32. ,,,,,thats what u get cloning from a 20g to 60 g ......

freddy

Just an addendum Drive Image 2002 runs from within windows instead of dos,may be worth a look.

Thanks Guys, I'll take another look at Ghost and I'll check out Image. I am pleased to say that Western Digital tell me that they are working on an update of their EX-Install software that will work with Win2000 and XP. I'll be glad when it is released.

Just as an update to my previous post above. I have installed Ghost, and have Norton Ghost Boot Wizard, and Norton Ghost Explorer. Are these the only two options that I should have? I have created a CD-Rom Boot Disk using the Wizard. It didn't ask me to select files to be copied or anything like that, so am I missing something. Or does the disk just open with an option to format and copy an image of an old drive to a new one.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Capricorn:
<strong>Just as an update to my previous post above. I have installed Ghost, and have Norton Ghost Boot Wizard, and Norton Ghost Explorer. Are these the only two options that I should have? I have created a CD-Rom Boot Disk using the Wizard. It didn't ask me to select files to be copied or anything like that, so am I missing something. Or does the disk just open with an option to format and copy an image of an old drive to a new one.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">ok , if u are using ghost 2002 ,,,one u have made a boot disk (and checked it) u can delete norton from your machine (if u want)

now stick your bootable floppy it the drive (i always plug my new drive into cd cable (unplug both cd,s) and autodetect new drive.

start ghost and it should load mouse driver and ghostpe.exe ,,,: menu , disk -disk ,,,,sorce - destination GO!! ,,,if u set it up proper (boot disk) u can copy (in my case) 1.7g of data onto a bootable cd-r ,,,(enough for any o/s and drivers)

i have a bootable xp and 2k and can change o/s in 8 mins.(but u do lose any old docis,progs etc) ,,,but when u make a *ollocks of your o/s its handy

copy of my (old version) NO mouse config.sys:

device=oakcdrom.sys /D:mscd001
device=btdosm.sys
device=flashpt.sys
device=btcdrom.sys /D:mscd001

and auto

MSCDEX.EXE /D:mscd001
d:\
ghostpe

freddy

Thanks, however I must have gone wrong somewhere. I booted to the floppy, and the menu came up fine. I saw the disk to disk option, and the partition to partition option, so I felt I was on the right track. I decided to try the making of a CD first, so I chose the disk to image option. I was then asked if I wanted to use my CD-R. It then asked if I wanted the CD to be bootable.I chose yes. From there it was out of my hands. It copied my entire hard drive to CD using 3 CD-R disks. However they will not boot up, and if I try running them from XP I find that they will not open. So back to square one. How do I make a CD with just my XP Operating System on it and make it bootable?

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Capricorn:
<strong>Thanks, however I must have gone wrong somewhere. I booted to the floppy, and the menu came up fine. I saw the disk to disk option, and the partition to partition option, so I felt I was on the right track. I decided to try the making of a CD first, so I chose the disk to image option. I was then asked if I wanted to use my CD-R. It then asked if I wanted the CD to be bootable.I chose yes. From there it was out of my hands. It copied my entire hard drive to CD using 3 CD-R disks. However they will not boot up, and if I try running them from XP I find that they will not open. So back to square one. How do I make a CD with just my XP Operating System on it and make it bootable?</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">ok , i,ve got to be careful about accuracy here coz i don,t use xp retail on fat.

was the disk made using pc-dos?

coz xp hasnt got dos.

when u mde the bootable where did it get its bootable from? ...it usually asks me if the bootable is in the floppy then reads it.

with the compression mode u should get 1.5-1.7g per cd. del all your temps and desable restore (thats at least 1g)
alternative is to ghost and split @ 700m and then make a bootable using nero USING PC dos or modded 98 disk

if ness d/load a boot disk from <a href="http://www.bootdisk.com" target="_blank">www.bootdisk.com</a> (98) and edit the auto/config (sim to mine)

when u said they don,t boot and cant see them did u set your machine to boot from cd-rom (sorry!!!)

good luck freddy

Thanks Freddy. I still think that the disc to disc should be OK for installing a new Hard Drive!
In answer to your questions. I use NTFS on Win XP Pro. It copied bootable files from the floppy. I did boot to CD. I can look at the Discs I created under XP but they won't open.

Bit of an update. I booted to the floppy I made, and chose the option Disk from Image. I pointed to the CD-Rom drive where I had placed the 1st disc I made. It them prompted me for the Licence Number. After that it started Loading. It prompted me for each of the 3 Discs I had made, and when finished told me that the Cloaning was successful. After booting again I had the system same as before, so I am not sure that anything had really happened. Still it looked like it has worked. I think the reason it wouldn't boot from the CD has something to do with my using NTFS filing. Now I intend making a new floppy choosing different options. Can you tell me what options I should choose?

you have more or less got it !!!!!!

as u have 2 drives you can do some checking out here , create a directory and dump something in it (say some cab files)

then re ghost , and it will over write your drive , so when you reboot , those cabs wont be there ??????

try this on your spare drive (disconnect orig is not happy)

when you perfect this u can have sets for xp 2k and 95/98 + linux ,,,

plus when you £uck up your drive experimenting you can reload.

how much data were u backing up (for 3 disks) ,,,if u disable hibernate and restore + u will save a lot ,,,also empty temps and run defrag.

did u try commpression?

cheers freddy

Hi again Freddy. I was backing up 2.45gb of data. I have deleted some of my progams then used my 3 discs to restore, and the programs were back in again, so that looks OK. I then tried creating some more discs by using the compressing method. This took 2 Discs, and I opted to make the discs bootable, but when I tried restoring them I got error messages and a sign saying it could not read the file. Again they wouldn't boot. So that was no good. I still think it has something to do with NTFS. I think that Drive Image has got around the NTFS problems OK but it is quite expensive, compared to Ghost, and the trial download is about 20mb, much too big for my dial up connection. Thanks again for your help.