Replacing HDD

My mistake. It came to me while windsurfing in the ocean this afternoon. I should have been thinking about sharks instead. I don't reinstall the old HD as I have all my data backed up on the second HD. I just copy it across to the new HD. Everything is done without using the old HD. But if you don't have a second HD, you will need to use the old HD as a slave as it contains the image and the data.

It's more flexible than cloning as you can substantially change the partition structure of the new HD if that's desired.

 

This is something like I thought I was going to do when I first started, but using the XP CD to boot. I presume Partition Magic is bootable and OS independent? I don't really want to spend more dollars on a product I'll probably use once in the next 12 months though.

 

So would TI be able to dynamically "expand" a 25gb image to a pre-partitioned 50gb 'C' partition on a new drive?

I've never tried booting a Windows installation CD and only formatting/partitioning without installing the OS. Is that possible? Seems like a lot more work vs. the cloning procedure we've been talking about.

I also have a network of other machines. I presume I could store a D-drive image on one of those and restore it after the C partition is completely enabled?

Lot of different paths here... which, I guess, is good.

 

Hi Laurelton,

Unless I have lost the plot in this thread, I think things are becoming overly complicated. So let me try to summarize.

Option 1. Clone

You can use ATI to clone your old HD to your new HD. ATI does it all for you. You don't need to know anything other than how to work with ATI, which after a few hours with the User Guide will be simple enough.

2 things to remember -

a) you MUST select the option to Keep Data on the old HD until you are certain that the new HD is bootable.

b) disconnect the old HD before booting with the new HD to prevent any potential problems with Windows "seeing" duplicate instances of the same Product Key at boot.

Option 2. Image & Restore

Why would you want to do choose this option if you can Clone? Well, at some time you are going to want to learn all about Image & Restore. This may be a good time to learn. (Cloning should not be used as part of a regular, ongoing disaster recovery strategy - it is not designed for that).

If you choose this option what else do you need? Partition Magic would be nice, but not essential. The Disk Management tools in XP provide you with sufficient functionality to setup a disk - not as flexible or user-friendly as Partition Magic but adequate for the job.

Bottom Line

If you have no desire or need to become more technically competent then go with Option 1. If you want to take this opportunity to expand your technical knowledge, capabilities and experience then go with Option 2.

Booting with Windows CD?

I've missed something. Why do you want to do that? ATI provide a Linux boot disk which enables you to run ATI outside of Windows. Booting with the Windows CD is another whole story.

 

Thanks again, Tabvla, for the continuing thorough replies!

My problem, if you want to call it that, is that I'm sitting here still waiting for my new hard drive to be delivered and have nothing else to do but over-think this thing. But, it is an education for me. Hope others here don't consider it too much wasted bandwidth.

This was in response to the commentary on creating all the partitions on the new drive before even using TI. I presumed that someone would use Windows to do that. Maybe not.

Thanks again to you and everyone else here for the interesting and very, very useful thread. I'll post my results once I get the drive and complete the (successful!) migration.

 

Laurelton,

Yes, bootable CD or floppy and it is OS independent. No cost to you today. You can make Frisbees of the other Norton software.

Yes.

A few minutes.

Yes. Restore the image or just drag the data via Windows Explorer.


As Tabvla has stated..

I agree. Well stated.

 

The deed is done and everything worked great. No issues other than correctly identifying the 2nd drive as SATA-2 instead of SATA-1.

Thanks again for all the great help here!

And thanks to Acronis for a truly great product!