atih 11: best way to clone a vista drive?

I'm looking for the best steps to take to perform a successful clone of my Vista laptop's harddrive. I have a few questions that I can't find a definitive answer on and wondered if anyone here had insight? I'd rather not have to do this though trial and error. So ... I've got 3 questions:

I've got a 120gb harddrive now. I ordered a 320gb Samsung harddrive. I'm going to put the 320 in a USB enclosure to begin the clone.

1. Should I partition it first? should I format it first?

I'll start up True Image home and select the clone harddrive tool

2. Or should I burn the bootable CD, boot from it and do this? Since I would be cloning the system C: drive.

I'll do the automatic setting. But I'm worried that it'll just make a 120gb partition on the larger drive leaving a ton of unused space. I want to have a new 320gb partition with all of my data.

3. Will the automatic setting do this? or do I need to use "manual" and pick the "proportional" instead of "as-is" method?

Thanks in advance!

 

nudoru:

1. You can use a blank drive. Partitioning and formatting beforehand are unnecessary.
2. Yes, always do any operation that affects the Vista system partition from the bootable CD.
3. Avoid the automatic setting. Use manual so that you can choose the desired sizes for each partition.

Depending on your brand of laptop, the way that you clone may or may not matter. But the most-foolproof way to do this is:

A. Create the bootable recovery CD. Boot your laptop with it and verify that you can see your laptop's internal hard disk.
B. Shut down. Remove your current internal disk and install it in the external USB enclosure.
C. Install the blank, new hard disk in the laptop.
D. Boot from the recovery CD and clone the external disk to the internal disk.

You may want to review this guide by forum contributer GroverH.

 

I have tried to use TI to clone a disk with Vista on it before and did not have any luck.

I have also tried to move partitions with Vista on them and had no luck. by no luck I mean that Vista will not boot.

I think that the problem is the vista boot loader losing track of where the Vista files that it needs are located physically on the disk, but i don't know for sure.

what i do know is that the two scenarios that I speak were the following:
1. Clone a system with only vista installed from any size hard drive to any other not completely identical hard drive. (it won't boot vista) The only way that i found to fix this problem was to install xp on another partition, boot that, install vista boot pro, and fix the boot loader entries, major pain.

2. Have Vista installed on any partition and resize or move that partition and voila, not booting vista anymore.

I don't suppose that these issues are fixed? Any information on how this problem occurs or ways of fixing it are greatly appreciated, as working with vista has required me to dual boot xp anytime i want to work w/ partitions or cloning a disk, which makes deploying an image at work w/ server software seem impossible?

TIA

 

Aeridyne,
Did you use the procedures reference in k0lo's post #2?

Did you perform the clone from the TI Rescue CD?

Did you install the new drive in place of the old before cloning?

What brand & model of computer?

 

Aeridyne:

This is a very simple problem to fix and even simpler to prevent. It isn't necessary to install XP just to use VistaBoot Pro, although that is a very good tool. If you ever have the problem again you can boot from the Vista DVD and choose to repair your computer. The automatic repair routine will fix the BCD on all but the most complex multiboot setups. For what you describe - a disk with only Vista installed - it should automatically fix the BCD for you.

Even better, for single-boot Vista systems where Vista is installed to the active partition (the vast majority of normal installations), you can "generalize" the BCD so that all partition references are replaced by the word "boot". Doing this will allow you to clone, restore, copy, and move the Vista partition around freely and as long as it is located in the active partition it will boot. The previous response from GroverH has a link to this procedure in his signature. Click on the link Restore/Clone Vista without Vista repair and do the steps in post #1 in this article. If you do this in advance (before cloning or restoring or moving) then you will never have to resort to BCD repairs again.

Also, I am told that TI 11 can clone/restore Vista without a BCD repair being needed for the case of a simple Vista installation (not dual or multi-boot). You must be using TI 10; correct?