New hard disk

I want to replace a dying IDE hard drive with a much larger SATA drive.

My plan is as follows: Load drivers and enable SATA drive in BIOS, backup to an external hard drive, remove the faulty drive, install the new one, reboot with the TI rescue disk and restore from the external drive.

Is this the correct procedure? And should I use backup or should I clone the drive?

Thanks.

Bob

 

Backup would be the preferred one here. Do a Backup to the external first - to have as a fallback. Then install the Sata as an internal, along with the original. Boot with the bootable Rescue CD and try the Clone feature. After the cloning process is done, shutdown the system BEFORE trying to boot with the Sata. Remove or disconnect the failing drive THEN try booting from the Sata.

 

This would probably be my choice too, but I would phrase it differently

My preference would be to do a clone, but as a belt and braces take a backup to your external drive first. Note Ralphie's suggestion about disconnecting the old drive for the first boot after the clone, so that the new drive gets booted.

F.

 

Thanks to you both. Will give it a try.

 

I have read many threads that say imaging the HD and then restoring to a new HD is the preferred approach. Why are you all talking about cloning in this particular situation?

 

You can do it either way, but the task at hand is the replacement of a hard disk - and this is what the clone function is for.

F.

 

Could you elaborate? Does ATI do additional operations while cloning, or, perhaps, take the new disk structure or other features into account best while cloning?

Regards

 

Cloning is just less steps.
With imaging, you need to create the image from the old drive, storing it somewhere, and then restore it back to the new drive.
Cloning goes from old to new - done.

 

Now I remember why some advise against cloning. Since your good hard drive and the new one are involved in the process at the same time. Thus, if anything goes wrong...

Of course, if you do as others have suggested in this thread (always a good step for insurance before any TI operation) and make an Image of your System Drive before cloning, you will then have that available should cloning fail.

Store that image in a location at least 5 miles away from your site (lightning travels 5 miles thru phone lines, I read today).

 

mmmmmmm I just ordered a new hard drive and was going to remove my working harddrive and install from the boot disc onto new hard drive, perhaps I should clone instead, but I thought it might be better to do it via the boot disc and full back up, doh! I have to decide now

 

Hi snowwolf,

I would definitely do a backup anyway if you can. You just never know what might happen, it might come in handy anyway

Cloning is great and I would use it again the next time I upgrade my disk, but I must admit I do wonder if anyone has ever done the transfer in the wrong direction (ouch).

F.

 

@Foghorne

Now you're starting to scare me.

 

so if you wanted to say update store/backup of a drive, would it be best to keep a incremental full back up, with boot cd

or

A spare hard drive back up and swap hardrives when backing up, using the clone drive procedure?

 

Hi snowwolf,

You could do either, but the clone procedure implies you have a verbatum copy of your disk data, whereas the backup/restore scenario would be image files (which can be compressed). It is usually easier to manage ongoing backups by scheduling the backups. Note that (as far as I know) cloning is an interactive only process and cannot be scheduled so would be a pain for saving your data on a regular basis.

At the end of the day there are no absolute right or wrongs, you need to use your judgement and decide what is right for you. Note that despite my own objections to using cloning for regular backups, I am pretty sure there are some folks on this forum who have the need to be up and running very quickly if they get hit by a disk crash or virus attack. I would not be surprised if these guys had a spare copy of their main disk ready to go.

F.

 

OK so I think I will go down the route of a clone now, but like you say, have a back up saved to another disc and a boot recovery cd.

I have not done a clone before on this software, but have tried before with norton ghost, when doing the copy, will it ask for you to select certain criteria, like MBR yes or no? or anything else that requires input from me, if so, what are the best options to tick?

 

There's an option to wipe the source drive after cloning - I advise that you DO NOT click that.

 

cool ... thanks for that, I take it you can just store that drive incase the clone drive mucks up?

 

store I mean, put away safely in a drawer

 

Always a good idea to have another tested, working system drive on hand, should anything happen to your current drive. So, yes, you could save it for a rainy day.

By the way, while making an image of your current system drive is one part of the TI rescue scenario, it is always a good idea to verify that Image, both in Windows, and from the TI rescue CD. That way, you will know that the Image is, at this time, fully intact, and that TI can see and access your drives while running under Windows, and in the Linux mode, which is needed to complete a restore of your system drive, even if that restore operation is begun in Windows.

An even safer way to be certain you can restore an Image on your computer is to do just that. While it rarely occurs, some have found that only during restoration do they find something in the process isn't working as planned. I am not trying to scare anyone off, simply to say that the only way to know for sure if the lifeboat works is to inflate it, get in, and paddle around. That way, you'll also know how things look and perform under a rescue scenario, and can write down any notes, or ask questions about any steps that are unclear to you, before you need them in crunch time.

I restore Images often, and find this a very useful tool to have. But, I also had to solve some configuration issues on my PC to get everything working smoothly. And, I do not recommend using File restorations from Boot mode at this time, as some NTFS operations can result in corrupt files and directories.

So, test, evaluate the results on your system, then proceed, carefully, and all should work out as you expect. If you want to proceed with minimal risk, practice restoring partitions other than your system partition, and, ideally, use extra hard drives. Once you have confidence in your's and ATI's ability, you can move up to restoring your system partition/drive.

Regards

 

well new hard drive arrived, installed it in pc, uninstalled the c: drive, left my other drive in where I had stored the full back up.

tried to do a full restore on new drive, but you could not see it in the menu! I then had to go through the add new hard drive proceedure, which I did, and then gave the restore another go, this time the drive was visible done the restore on new 250gig drive, took 30 mins (58gig) and now works fine, I have left the old drive in the bottom of the pc, just incase I need to put it back in if new drive has a fault.