Disk Copy Question

I think I'm going to go ahead and purchase this since it's on sale this weekend, but want to ask a question about how something works.

I mainly need it at this time to copy the HDD in one of my PCs to a different, larger HDD. I guess I would copy to the destination drive, install the destination drive as the main drive and boot from it, then run PM again to resize/move the partitions (I don't want them "proportionally" resized; I'd rather specify the sizes more closely).

My main question is about how the disk copy is done. It seems to me that you can't make an accurate copy of the boot disk of a running system (XP in this case) because numerous files could be open even after shutting down all foreground applications. Partition managers I've used in the past did their grunt work by rebooting into a standalone system or ran from a bootable CD.

How does Partition Manager work? Is there any tutorial available for the exact sequence of operations to go through to accomplish what I'm trying to do?

 

Many of the products use VSS - I expect that will be the same.

I haven't performed that operation with PM .

This is from the Help manual of Virtual Server:

 

You may find manuals for both "Partition Manager 11 Personal" & "Drive Copy 10 Personal" here .

 

Thanks. I found that section in the user guide. What is VSS?

The reason for my questions is that I am a bit nervous over doing all this, even though I'm a very experienced computer person. A few weeks ago, I tried to do some in-place partition rearrangement on my PC using an old copy of "Partition Magic" running from a bootable CD. It seemed to work, but left my PC unbootable: Windows XP would boot partway and hang, and even Safe Mode would not work.

Fortunately I was able to pull the HDD, plug it into a USB adapter, and determine that all my user files were still intact. So I used this as an excuse to buy a new, high-performance, 64-bit Windows 7 PC that I was planning on upgrading to anyway.

But now I need to do something similar on my wife's PC to upgrade it to a larger HDD, and if I damage her PC it will not be a happy household.

(By the way, I did purchase and download the Home version of Partition Manager yesterday.)

 

I would do it from the WinPE boot disc. I think this is more reliable than "Rebooting into a standalone system" or using VSS.

 

I'm still a bit behind here, as I don't what either VSS or a WinPE disc are. Is the WinPE disc created out of Windows or out of Partition Manager? I don't think it's part of the Home version.

 

You are right -- WiinPE is not part of PM Personal. PM Personal includes the Linux boot disc, which can be burned from the Recovery Media Builder.

(WinPe is a Windows-like environment that can be used from a boot disc or USB stick. VSS is the Microsoft service that it is used to backup the Windows installation when it is in use.)

If you want to boot from the copied disc and you are working with XP, I would suggest the following procedure: install the new disc as the internal boot disc, install the old disc as an external USB disc (or second internal disc), copy the disc using the Linux boot disc, after the copy and before booting for the first time disconnect the old disc, then boot from the new.

 

Thanks again for the response. I understand the process better now and can proceed from here.