How to use image file to replace C drive

I have an image of my old C drive. I want to replace that drive with a new one. I don't want to copy the old drive to the new one, I want to use the TI 10 file to create the new drive. How do I proceed, making sure that the new drive shows up a the C drive in Windows XP?

 

Look at this thread https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=769388&postcount=5 and this one How to restore to a replacement hard drive.

 

Thanks for pointing me toward the previous thread.

Toward the end there was discussion of the notation C>E. I'm getting C>F in the summary before I proceed. That notation appears to mean that the new drive will have the Windows drive letter F.

In fact I did try this process previously and the notation was C>G. I then booted up with the old C drive and hooked the new drive (which I'd like to be C) ass aslave and used Windows Explorer. The new drive indeed had the drive designation of G. It would not boot when I removed the old drive and made the new one the master.

So, I can't figure out how to make the new drive a C drive during the restore process.

Vaughn

 

Vaughn:

This is probably happening if you have both the old and the new drive connected when you first boot into Windows.

To prevent this, remove the old drive from your PC leaving only the new drive. Then boot from the rescue CD and restore your image of the old C drive to the new drive. When you reboot into Windows the new drive will be drive C:

 

Something here is very strange. I understand that when C: is set as the Primary Master drive and the new drive is installed as a Slave, either Primary or Secondary, Windows will assign the next available drive letter. This is correct and should not be a problem.

With the new drive configured as G:, a Slave, go to Start > Run and type in “diskmgmt.msc” (without the quotes). This will open a screen named Disk Management. It will show all drives recognized by Windows. If it has been initialized, partitioned and formatted correctly you should see your G: drive displayed with the drive size indicated and it should report Healthy. If this is true you should be good to go. If it indicates unallocated or something like that it will need to be formatted. I don’t believe that you can install an image (.tib) on a drive that has not been formatted, but I’m not sure about that.

When you remove the existing C: drive and change the new drive to Master and install on the connector that went to the old C: drive, this will be the Primary and Windows will change the drive letter to C:.

Another thought would be to assign meaningful names to the new drive. This can be done later using My Computer. This makes easier to recognize the drive(s) particularily when booting from the Rescue Media CD. Don't Use the name Windows however. I use the name System for the C: drive.

Best regards,
Bruce, K0EHN

 

Bruce,

This will not work because Windows will not let two identical drives Windows installations be in the system.

You can boot from the CD and restore an image to a new, unformatted drive with no problems.

The main thing is to not let Windows see the "copy" until you've booted it, otherwise Windows will make changes to it that will cause problems.

In my opinion, cloning or restoring a duplicate Windows drive/partition from Windows is just asking for problems. Do it from the CD and make sure the new copy is the only one visible when you boot it the first time.

 

Using 'identical' drives is not a problem. They are never identical in that the drive ID is different on each of them. I'm doing it without any problems using three Seagate 160 GB of the same model.

I don't like the cloning option either but I did it once for the experience. Perhaps I like pain at times.

Thanks for the input on installing a .tib file to an unformatted drive. I wasn't aware of that. I've always partitioned and formatted the drive ahead of time. I do understand that with cloning it's not necessary. I guess I like to see that the drive is recognized properly before proceeding.

 

When I said "identical" I meant identical Windows installations (as in a cloned XP drive or an XP image of C: restored to D. The physical drives being identical has no meaning and does not cause any problems.

When you restore an image file, the first thing TI does is delete the existing partition (or partitions) and create new ones. So having the partitions setup in advance is only helpful if you want to "design" your drive with partitions of certain sizes before you do the restore. When you select the partition to restore to, TI will still delete it and recreate it. It will, however, be the same size as the previously existing partition (assuming you don't select to resize during the restore process).