How to copy disk image to new drive

Here is what I have in my system:
Hard disk 1 has primary partition C:\ with OS and system files, plus logical partition D:\ with games and misc programmes.
Hard disk 2 has primary partition K:\ with nothing on it, plus logical partition L:\ with games and misc programmes and DV files.

I want to use the second hard disk as my new system disk.

I use a drive imager to copy all the files sector-by-sector from C:\ to K:\ which it does. I unplug HDD1 and restart the machine, telling BIOS to start with HDD2. Windows refuses to boot past to the desktop, just hanging at the pale blue screen with the Windows XP logo. Tried in safe mode and it still hangs.

Two questions:
How does anyone here copy their Windows system disk to another HDD when it's upgrade time?
How do you change the drive letter outside of Windows, so that when Windows starts, it starts from C:\ even though it's a new drive.

I can't believe it is that difficult, since most corporations make one good image which they clone to multiple hard disks on multiple machines, to make sure they all have the same software and settings. It's just that I need an idiot-proof step-by-step guide on how to do it, before I **** it up and scramble my carefully-customised C:\ drive!

I am using R-Drive Image, which claims to make an exact byte-for-byte copy from one disk to the next. So far, it seems okay, apart from me not knowing how to re-assign drive letters (which is maybe why WinXP isn't finishing it's boot sequence - it suddenly finds itself on a new drive with lots of broken links).

As usual, any help or links greatly appreciated.

 

Clogman.

I have done it with partition magic 8.01. It comes with a "copy partition" command.
Works great. It tells you that the new partition might not be bootable, but it worked just fine with me.

A year or two ago, I also did the same job with a simple boot disk. I booted with a win 98 boot disk to an A: prompt and used XCOPY
( or was that XXCOPY? ) and the appropriate switches to copy all directories and subdirectories. Booted just fine.
Hope this helps

Sven

 

Thanks Sven, but....

The only time I tried Partition Magic, it bombed part way through the process and left me with a ******* MBR, and the only way back was to reformat and re-install, so I am pretty reluctant to use it again. Symantec's tech support was worse than useless - I am still waiting for the answer they promised to send "within 48 hours" and this was 10 days ago.

When you started the machine with the OS on a new drive, how did you reassign the drive letter to make the new drive C? Or didn't you bother?

My two drives are SATA, for what it's worth. Don't know if that makes a difference. Both are FAT32.

 

If you want to copy a partition or drive that has windows on it, it has to be copied to the same drive that it was on before. In other words, if the cloned drive has windows on it and it's on a c drive, the drive you copy it to has to be c also. Any other drive you can probably get by putting it on a drive with a different letter but not windows. It won't work.

 

Assume I am a dunce at this (not too hard to make that assumption).
How do I name a second drive as having a C:\ partition, when my first drive already has a C:\ partition? I can't do this in Windows, so.....

It comes down to the same thing - how do I reassign drive letters outside Windows? Do I have to unplug drive 1 and reformat drive 2 to be C:\ ? Surely there must be a better way than that? Partition Magic doesn't seem to offer a way to change drive letters, other than via formatting.

Ideally, I want driive 2 to be partitioned C:\ and D:\ so that when I copy contents across to both partitions, all the links will continue to work. But let's start just with naming drive 2 as C:\

Thanks again.

 

clogman,

You don't want to 'image' your old drive, you need to 'copy' (clone) it to the new drive. Utilities like PartitionMagic can do this (I prefer Acronis' Disk Director). Your hard drive manufacturer may offer a program that will accomplish this (usually included with a 'new' drive), check their website. If you use a 'copy' program, follow the prompts, it will walk you through the process and then ask if you want to make the drive bootable. Your drive letters will remain the same. This works with the same size or larger hard drive. You can't do a copy to a smaller hard drive. HTH

B

 

Christer,

Thanks... good to know.

B

 

I'm confused.
You seem to be saying that, even though Windows identifies the target partition as K:\ to begin with, when I clone the image from C:\ to K:\ , unplug the first hard drive then restart the system, Windows will somehow re-assign the drive letter so the cloned partition is now C:\?
I doubt this, unless Windows is also re-writing the MBR at startup.
Is that really the case?

For info, the K:\ partition on the second HDD is bigger than the current C:\ partition. When I used R-Drive Image to copy C to K, it did re-size the target to be the same as the source. But it would not boot, despite the fact that I had disconnected the source drive before rebooting.

Mr B - as stated, my one experience trying to do this with Partition Magic was a disaster and their tech support is now a joke since Symantec bought it, so I am reluctant to try again.

And the same question still keeps coming up - how to reassign drive letters or rewrite the MBR when the new drive and cloned OS is in place?

Keep the comments coming, the answer is out there. I read somewhere that Norton Ghost didn't much like cloning SATA drives - any thoughts?

 

Christer,
You're right, they are both SATA drives.

I appreciate what you're saying, but after I cloned the C:\ (system) partition to K:\ on my second HDD, I unplugged the first HDD and forced BIOS to boot just from the new one. It got as far as the Welcome screen, and just sat there. I tried booting in safe mode, and it still hangs at the same point.
So I am making an assumption that Windows XP "knows" it is booting from the K:\ drive, but has lots of links suggesting it should be on a C:\ partition, so...

How do I change the drive letter outside Windows?

I read somewhere that I might be able to boot from a Win98 floppy and run fdisk/mbr, but don't really know if that's something that (a) I want to try or (b) will work.

 

Well, I guess I misunderstood. For some reason I was thinking you wanted to duel boot. If things are as you said in your last post, things should work. If the drive is the only one connected at the time you boot, it should get assigned the c: drive letter. It must be because I don't think you'd even get as far as the welcome screen if it wasn't assigned the correct drive letter. I could be wrong but that's my thinking on it. Maybe somebody else wants to comment on this?

Also, I doubt running fdisk /mbr will do anything to help this. If you cloned the old drive the mbr should be on the new one. If it wasn't, again, you'd not make it to the welcome screen. Not sure what to say but I thought I'd throw this out there for others to think about.

 

I've done numerous drive copies mostly using the drive manufacurer's copy utility, then set the new drive up as the boot drive and the old one as storage and it works just fine. You said:

You said you copied drive 'C' to 'K' then tried to boot from the copied 'K' drive. Unless I'm missing something, I'm not sure what you're doing is going to work, at least not the way you did it. If you have programs installed to your 'D' drive and your 'L' drive, and you only copy 'C' to 'K', the registry entries for the installed programs to the other drives will no longer be valid. Perhaps there is something installed on the 'D' or 'L' drive that windows is looking for at startup and can no longer find.

If it were me, this is what I would do;

Uninstall any programs/games installed to the 'L' drive and reinstall to the 'C' or 'D' drive if possible. Copy any other data on the 'L' drive off also to the other drives. Then copy partition 'C' and 'D' to 'K' and 'L' respectively and remove the old 'C' drive. The 'K' drive should then become the 'C' drive and 'L' should become 'D'.

 

That starts to make some sense, Bill, that Windows is looking for links to a drive that's not there.
However...
Just for fun, I reconnected drive 1 and restarted the PC from drive 1. Sure enough, Windows started, and Explorer showed that there was a C:\ system drive and D:\ partition on disk 1, plus a K:\ system and L:\ partition on disk 2.
As far as Windows is concerned, it has a clone of C: on K:, but sees it as a clone that is residing on K:, it doesn't see it as another C: drive and get all confused. In other words, it is following the MBR that was laid down when the disc was first formatted and partitioned in Windows.

There is nothing on L: that Windows would be looking for - it's just a store right now for DV films.

My ideal scenario - copy C: to K:, copy any programmes from D: to L:, power off, remove disk 1, force boot from disk 2.

This is basically what I did at first, but Windows hangs up.

I think we're getting closer to an answer though.

After much digging, I found this:
http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm
Does anyone wiser than me want to see if what he's saying makes sense?

 

Another thing that would help... delete the partitions (K and L) off the destination drive, then you need to copy (clone) the C and D partitions to the new drive. If you don't want to use PartitionMagic, go download a 'copy' program from your hard drive manufacturer.

B

 

The info in the link you posted does make sense and is good to know. I use mostly Western Digital drives and use their Data Lifeguard Tool to clone the drives. It works very well and I've never experienced any problems with the drives after copying (maybe I've just been lucky). However, when I do the clone, the receiving drive is unpartitioned and unformatted prior to starting, that probably makes a difference. I think I would follow Mr B's suggestion and delete the 'K' and 'L' partitions prior to doing the clone, after moving any data that you need to keep first.