Harddrives (Again)

Thanks, I'll give it a try.

I tried searching for freeware or trial versions, but a lot of the comments relating to them said that they'll only work when copying to and from equal sized drives.

 

Shouldn't be a problem as one of the features they list for the free edition is moving from a smaller disk to a larger disk. One possible work around for the drive size issue would be to create a partition on the new drive of identical size to partition/drive being copied. Anyway good luck with it and I hope you finally get it all sorted.

 

Thanks again all.

I've used the proogram you gave me the link to BL21DE3 (what's the name about btw?).

Didn't take long to copy it over, and then I booted off the new drive. Took a tad longer than normal to start up, but seemed fine

However, doesnt seem to want to play nice today.

Tried to start the machine up off the new drive and just after the Windows XP PRO screen with the sorta scrolling bar, it then went black and stayed like that. So turned power off after a few min's and tried again.... did this about 3 times then left it to carry on while I went to sort something else out.

It took about 10min's but started up eventualy.

Why can't it just be straightforward

 

mo it may be worthwhile installing a new version of xp over the top of the existing one. mad maybe, but the install should be able to pickup missing drivers from the old install whilst setting the os up for the new drive properly.
it's the only other thing i can think of that may work. just make sure you have a way of restoring the new dive to it's current (semi) working state before you try this though.
cheers


julian

 

I've been unable to install XP onto the new drive though

 

have you tried it since you got the new drive booting? the previous install problems were probably down to unknown drivers for certain devices. these should now be finable in the old installation if you see what i mean. make sure you can get back to where you are and give it a go.
cheers


julian

 

Tools like that are invaluable. The £30 I paid for Drive Image 7 in PC World has saved me a good few times for drive upgrades and system backups.

 

Glad that the software worked for you. As for the name it comes from the strain of E.coli that I spent 3 years of my PhD. working with and have continued to come across/use in my career. Plus it's a good unique user name.

To get back to your problem, once you had the data across did you disable/remove the old IDE drive? Might be a conflict between two boot sectors/copies of XP. The other suggestion would be to try Julians advice of re-installing XP on top of the copy on the new drive. Since there's already a copy there it might work this time. And if that fails again, at least you still have the old IDE drive which you can clone across again.

 

Next time buy a Seagate external drive and shove all data to it (you can daisy chain them if you need more Gb's) prior to changing boot drive.

 

but his original drive is / was on it's way out so an external drive yould have been useless when the original one finally bit the dust.
also an external drive would have cost twice as much for the same storage amount.
cheers


julian

 

But very useful for future backup strategies. Disc drives are fairly robust these days, its just people changing mobos, windows etc that makes people feel the need to do a major re-install. External drives are an excellent way to perform regular backups, do a full system backup and/or centralize all MP3/Video/Important info.

Plus, dont forget the most important thing, always make sure its a Seagate

 

Western Digital are the best IMHO

 

WD are OK.

But not the best.