Is cloning a good idea? Yes--but HOW does one go about it?

kmv · Post by **kmv** » Fri Jan 16, 2004 11:43 am

And lots won't.

In general anything you install by downloading it will probably be alright, because most of them are happy to setup their registry settings when they first start. But anything that is large, or does not have an online version (like Office for example) will often barf.

This is the voice of experience speaking.

Akashio · Post by **Akashio** » Mon Jan 19, 2004 6:41 pm

Corran Productions wrote:Partition Magic 8 is the best tool I've every used for such a problem. It retails for about 60-70 bucks.

I recently, durring all of my upgrading, took the c: drive from my loud, obnoxious, 5400rpm 20 gig hard drive and using partition magic copied the partition to a new 7200 rpm 60 gig drive.

What I did.

Start up partition magic

- Copy partition c: to new drive. (There has to be enough unallocated space to do this on the new drive. If you allready have it installed and formated, which you should, you can resize the partition on it to make room for the new partition, preferabally at the begining of the drive.)

- Change drive letter of old partition to something other than what it is now.

- Change drive letter of the new copy of the partition to the old one.

- Apply the changes. It will ask you if you want to use drive mapper to compensate for the drive letter changes. Select no.

- The computer will then restart and durring the startup process it will begin start applying the changes.

- Once it is totally finished turn of the computer.

- Remove the old hard drive and replace it with the new one. Make sure the jumper settings are correct and startup the computer.

Well I did what Corran said and I copied my C drive to my SATA drive, made sure it was all copied, changed the drive names, and deleted the contents of my old C: drive. I then put my D drive in as the slave, and booted up the computer. It detects both drives, but can't find an operating system! What in the world happened? Shouldn't it boot from the new C: partition if it has the exact same contents as the old one? What should I do

?

Corran · Post by **Corran** » Mon Jan 19, 2004 7:06 pm

There are two possible problems I can think of. First make sure the drive you are trying to boot from is set to master.

I'm assuming that you used partition magic so if setting it to master didn't help you will need to start the dos version of partition magic. You should have created rescue diskettes upon installation. If you don't have those you will need to make some. They can be made by going to partition magic's start menu options.

When you start up your computer make sure disk one of the rescue diskettes is in the floppy drive and follow the instructions that follow. Once in the program make sure that:
1) the drive you are trying to boot from is set to the correct drive letter.
2) that the partition that the os is on is set up as the Primary partition, not logical.

Once those are correct it should work. BTW why did you delete your old drive's contents? Always have a backup plan when doing these kinds of things. O.o

the Black Monarch · Post by **the Black Monarch** » Tue Jan 20, 2004 5:37 pm

See now, you wouldn't have this problem if you'd followed MY advice, because my advice involved reinstalling the OS

Corran · Post by **Corran** » Tue Jan 20, 2004 5:51 pm

the Black Monarch wrote:See now, you wouldn't have this problem if you'd followed MY advice, because my advice involved reinstalling the OS

This way you can too.

It isn't like Akashio is doomed. If all else fails s/he? can reinstall the os on the other drive and copy the files from the copied partition on the current drive. Then they would end up in the same crappy situation you originally advised.