Hard Drive Changeover

[NoPro]

What software is available to enable a non-techie to install a bigger hard drive and not lose the data and operating system on the old one?

[locustfurnace]

I am not sure of any Freeware apps that would be good for this, for a "non-techy."
Freeware Disk Cloning/Imaging apps do exist, but they are rather complex. For now you're probably best to purchase a retail app that does this, comes with technical support & documentation.
Check over these websites to see what you might prefer.
The PowerQuest app is discontinued, the Nortons may be alittle tougher to use than the others, and the Copy Commander more than likely can be purchased in a retail outlet. Paragon may suit your needs, it is alittle more costly than the CopyCommander.

Some Commerical/Retail apps.
Copy Commander (http://www.v-com.com/product/cc_ind.html)
Safely copies everything to your new drive .
Paragon Drive Backup 6.0 (http://www.drive-backup.com/index.htm)
Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/products/trueimage/#disk_cloning)
Norton Ghost (http://www.symantec.com/sabu/ghost/ghost_personal/)
PowerQuest Drive Copy (http://www.dealtime.com/xPO-Powerquest_Drive_Copy_4_0_Full_Version_PC_Unix_DC4 0ENK1EU)


The Free & shareware apps can be find in this thread if you just want to look them over
http://www.oldversion.com/talk/index.php?a...&st=0#entry7258 (http://www.oldversion.com/talk/index.php?act=ST&f=3&t=1258&st=0#entry7258)
http://www.oldversion.com/talk/index.php?a...t=1385&hl=ghost (http://www.oldversion.com/talk/index.php?act=ST&f=3&t=1385&hl=ghost)

[Jaime Andrés]

I would certainly strongly advise against using Acronis True Image. This software appeared as a free trial on popular PC magazine cover disc.
I tried it out and did not think too much of it, then uninstalled the application. I did not know it was connected to the Acronis but I noticed my wireless LAN wasn't working. It took days of detective work and only sheer luck to discover that it was due to Acronis true image altering a value in the registry that the LAN stopped working.
This particular PC magazine has a forum which includes feedback on the monthly cover disc. The amount of problems that were noted by installing Acronis True Image was staggering. My problem was just one of many others including PC's constantly crashing, to losing important data etc.
I bought a copy of Norton Ghost and I have used it very successfully to clone whole PC's onto a larger hard disc drives.
BTW Symantic (Norton) have recently acquired PowerQuest.

[locustfurnace]

Thats good to know. Another reason why everyone should backup the registry before making changes, such as installing software.
I have not tried Acronis.. But I guess they changed a setting to permit ftping the images to a Acronis server??
I have not used most of the commerical packages, I have tried Nortons Ghost Enterprise in the past, but was not too happy with it. As it would not backup to a local partition at that time, that or it did not work with one of the nics I had.
I just use partimage.org's partimage on a Systemrescue bootable CD, works well, comes with a partition editor very similar to partition magic, plus has multiple tools included, from a/v to file shredding to an integrated ssh server. Has a server/client for backing up across a network, which is extremely convenient for systems with old CD-Roms which do not read CD-Rw's, or for systems which only have a single CD drive

[Jaime Andrés]

I have got Partition Magic 8 installed and find that I use the two bootable rescue discs more than the main application. They are especially good at formatting a drive prior to installing an operating system for sheer speed, whereas using the windows FDISK utility and FORMAT takes forever especially with the latest high capacity HDD's..
I just hope that Norton do not spoil PM by their tendency to bloat applications. Perhaps a good example of 'if it ain't bust don't fix it'

[locustfurnace]

Interesting, I find PM to not handle all the tasks I set out for it. Such as deleting a journaled filesystem. I've also encountered several problems by using PM which caused irregularities in the offsets which caused Windows to complain spit out a bunch of errors. So I stopped using it and went back to FDISK and FORMAT, since I find them faster for me to use. As PM seems to refused the creation of 2 primary partitions, and insists on creating an extened & logical partitions.
About the only thing I used PM for in the past years was resizing a partition, but now since qt_partd handles this fine, I just use it.

When using FORMAT it defaults to doing a full format, while PM's bootdisk will do a quick format, hence the difference in speed. You can make FORMAT do a quick format also, by just using the commandline switches.

FORMAT C: \Q
also, to view more options, when you are on the dos commandline just type format /?, this will display all available options.

[Jaime Andrés]

I hope we are not going to far off topic here, but yesterday I cloned My XP system from an 80Gb HDD to a brand new Segate 120Gb. At first Partiton Magic had FORMAT greyed out so I put in an old Win 98 start-up disc and typed FDISK at the A:\ command prompt. I did the first part i.e. create DOS partition, verifying disk etc. After prompting and re-booting, I typed in FORMAT C:\ which returned a 'bad file name or command'. I then booted with the PM 8 rescue discs and this time the Format option was available so I used that.
I don't have the knowledge of MS DOS to know the \Q suffix. I don't know why I got the bad command dialogue, perhaps I ought to take the time to trawl through the Internet for a list and explanations of MS DOS commands.

[locustfurnace]

It is possible that the reason you got the bad command, is that its possible when you made the boot-disk, that the utility FORMAT was not placed on the floppy.

[BugMeNot]

Time to kick this ancient thread awake.

Acronis True Image v8.0.764

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

Acronis TrueImage 8 is an excellent drive imaging program. Older versions had teething problems, newer versions are bloated everything-and-the-kitchen-sink apps.

Time to put the older, lighter version that had it just right on oldversion.com: Acronis True Image v8.0.764. It's archived on http://mihd.net/o05djv (hurry! this link won't last forever)