Copying system from one Hard Drive to another

I got a new hard drive and copied all of the files from the old C: to
the new drive. I've left the old C: drive connected in the case.

I reset the drive priority in the motherboard cmos to the new drive, but
when I boot, it continues to use the old drive as the C: drive for
booting. The new drive is shown, and contains all of the files, but is
not assigned as the boot drive. (several trials)

I'm SURE I've done this sucessfully before, but either I missed
something this time or something new is happening.

WinXP - all up to date.

Rich

In message , Rich Hare
writes
I got a new hard drive and copied all of the files from the old C: to
the new drive. I've left the old C: drive connected in the case.

I reset the drive priority in the motherboard cmos to the new drive,
but when I boot, it continues to use the old drive as the C: drive for
booting. The new drive is shown, and contains all of the files, but is
not assigned as the boot drive. (several trials)

I'm SURE I've done this sucessfully before, but either I missed
something this time or something new is happening.

WinXP - all up to date.

Rich

Is the new hard drive the same type as the old one (IDE or SATA)? And
presumably you did the transfer with the new drive connected via a USB
adapter?

If so, if you first put only the new drive in the PC. and connect it to
the same connector as where the old one was connected, the PC should
automatically think it's the C-drive, and call it that.

When you put the old drive in (presumably using a different connector),
it will be assigned a different drive letter.

If the PC still won't boot from the new drive, put it back on the USB
adapter, and try using one of the many freeware utilities* to run a
'Repair MBR' on it
*AOMEI works well, and so do others.
--
Ian

Rich Hare wrote:
I got a new hard drive and copied all of the files from the old C: to
the new drive. I've left the old C: drive connected in the case.

I reset the drive priority in the motherboard cmos to the new drive, but
when I boot, it continues to use the old drive as the C: drive for
booting. The new drive is shown, and contains all of the files, but is
not assigned as the boot drive. (several trials)

I'm SURE I've done this sucessfully before, but either I missed
something this time or something new is happening.

WinXP - all up to date.

Rich

To copy an OS.

1) New drive is empty.
Disk Management puts up a dialog, and after making a
selection there, you expect the disk to say "Basic" disk, not
"Dynamic" disk. Make *sure* it says Basic disk in Disk Management.

Use Start : Run : diskmgmt.msc if you don't know how to find
Disk Management.

If the disk already has a valid MBR with signature, you can
remove any extraneous partitions from the new disk using Disk
Management.

2) OK, now you have an MBR sector, but it has no boot code in it.
This needs to be fixed.

3) In Disk Management, create a new partition and label it WINXP2,
so you can tell the difference from the source partition.

When you create a new partition, the "partition boot sector"
is empty. This needs to be fixed.

4) The boot flag must be set on the new C: partition you
just created in step 3. Using just Windows software,
you could use a Command Prompt window and Diskpart, to
select the new drive and select the new partition, then set the
partition active. A (windows) disk cannot boot without
a boot flag being set on the partition doing the booting.

5) Copy the files over. Robocopy might do for this.
Note that "cloning" software would do an even better job,
bringing the MBR, PBS, boot flag, all files, in one shot.
If you want to Robocopy or XCOPY or whatever, there is more
work to do.

6) Now, it is "repair time". Boot the WinXP installer CD.
It's the only source of the utilities "fixmbr" and "fixboot".
Only have the new disk drive present, plus your WinXP CD. Only
those two pieces of media should be connected. This avoids
confusion when you're "asked to log into the WinXP that
needs repair". The WinXP installer CD has a recovery console,
a command prompt for repairing a non-booting OS.

7) Using fixmbr, puts in the MBR boot code (446 bytes).
Using fixboot, puts the partition boot sector code inside
the new C: WINXP2 partition you made.
I assume you've already got that boot flag set from a
previous step.

Now, the disk is ready to boot. Barring some NTFS permission
problem, some files that did not get copied and so on.

You cannot copy "busy" files from a running OS, which kinda
means trouble for a naive copying attempt. If you copied
WinXP to WinXP2, while WinXP was booted, I would expect
complaints from some file or two of the attempted
copy. If it was this easy, everyone would be
doing this...

I've done virtually all of the above. How do I do it ?
I boot my Win2K hard drive, and *then* it is safe
to Robocopy WinXP to WinXP2. That way, *all* the files
get copied, and there is no missing pagefile.sys.
That's because the WinXP OS is not running, when
I copy it.

Using Macrium Reflect Free, and simply cloning the
source drive to the new drive, is a whole lot simpler.
And none of the "this needs to be fixed stuff" gets
lost when you do that. It is all preserved. While
there might be some advantage to copying the files
(geek mystique), there are less labor intensive
ways to get an OS on a new disk.

The reason I robocopy WinXP to WinXP2 here, is I
use it as a cheesy way to defragment. Just so you
know... :-) It used to take eight hours to defragment
C: on that drive, and the Robocopy recipe only
takes 30-40 minutes. And I'm less cranky after
doing that. If I got up in the morning and
a defrag run wasn't finished, I would be
pretty upset. If you use cloning, it doesn't
do defragmentation "For free". There is a
resize and clone option that might cause defragmentation,
but I haven't done any more work on it, to verify
that. I realigned a Win7 disk using Macrium, and
discovered a new option in there that might have
some interesting properties.

HTH,
Paul

Rich Hare wrote:

I got a new hard drive and copied all of the files from the old C: to
the new drive.

Copied HOW? Did you clone the old hard disk to the new hard disk? Or
did you just perform a file copy?

I've left the old C: drive connected in the case.

A mistake.

I reset the drive priority in the motherboard cmos to the new drive, but
when I boot, it continues to use the old drive as the C: drive for
booting. The new drive is shown, and contains all of the files, but is
not assigned as the boot drive. (several trials)

I'm SURE I've done this sucessfully before, but either I missed
something this time or something new is happening.

WinXP - all up to date.

Clone the old drive to the new drive. Power down. Disconnect the data
cable from the old drive. Connect that data cable to the new drive (so
the new drive is connected to the same header on the mobo as was the old
drive). Boot from the new drive. Should be drive C: just like the old
drive was. When satisfied that the new drive is working, power down,
connect the old drive to a different drive header on the mobo, and boot.

You never gave any details on the drive hardware, like whether they are
SATA or IDE/PATA. I assumed you are using SATA drives and you don't
have to monkey with master/slave/cableselect for the old IDE drives.

In message , Paul writes
Rich Hare wrote:
I got a new hard drive and copied all of the files from the old C: to
the new drive. I've left the old C: drive connected in the case.
I reset the drive priority in the motherboard cmos to the new drive,
but when I boot, it continues to use the old drive as the C: drive
for booting. The new drive is shown, and contains all of the files,
but is not assigned as the boot drive. (several trials)
I'm SURE I've done this sucessfully before, but either I missed
something this time or something new is happening.
WinXP - all up to date.
Rich

To copy an OS.

1) New drive is empty.
Disk Management puts up a dialog, and after making a
selection there, you expect the disk to say "Basic" disk, not
"Dynamic" disk. Make *sure* it says Basic disk in Disk Management.

Use Start : Run : diskmgmt.msc if you don't know how to find
Disk Management.

If the disk already has a valid MBR with signature, you can
remove any extraneous partitions from the new disk using Disk
Management.

2) OK, now you have an MBR sector, but it has no boot code in it.
This needs to be fixed.

3) In Disk Management, create a new partition and label it WINXP2,
so you can tell the difference from the source partition.

When you create a new partition, the "partition boot sector"
is empty. This needs to be fixed.

4) The boot flag must be set on the new C: partition you
just created in step 3. Using just Windows software,
you could use a Command Prompt window and Diskpart, to
select the new drive and select the new partition, then set the
partition active. A (windows) disk cannot boot without
a boot flag being set on the partition doing the booting.

5) Copy the files over. Robocopy might do for this.
Note that "cloning" software would do an even better job,
bringing the MBR, PBS, boot flag, all files, in one shot.
If you want to Robocopy or XCOPY or whatever, there is more
work to do.

6) Now, it is "repair time". Boot the WinXP installer CD.
It's the only source of the utilities "fixmbr" and "fixboot".
Only have the new disk drive present, plus your WinXP CD. Only
those two pieces of media should be connected. This avoids
confusion when you're "asked to log into the WinXP that
needs repair". The WinXP installer CD has a recovery console,
a command prompt for repairing a non-booting OS.

7) Using fixmbr, puts in the MBR boot code (446 bytes).
Using fixboot, puts the partition boot sector code inside
the new C: WINXP2 partition you made.
I assume you've already got that boot flag set from a
previous step.

Now, the disk is ready to boot. Barring some NTFS permission
problem, some files that did not get copied and so on.

You cannot copy "busy" files from a running OS, which kinda
means trouble for a naive copying attempt. If you copied
WinXP to WinXP2, while WinXP was booted, I would expect
complaints from some file or two of the attempted
copy. If it was this easy, everyone would be
doing this...

I've done virtually all of the above. How do I do it ?
I boot my Win2K hard drive, and *then* it is safe
to Robocopy WinXP to WinXP2. That way, *all* the files
get copied, and there is no missing pagefile.sys.
That's because the WinXP OS is not running, when
I copy it.

Using Macrium Reflect Free, and simply cloning the
source drive to the new drive, is a whole lot simpler.
And none of the "this needs to be fixed stuff" gets
lost when you do that. It is all preserved. While
there might be some advantage to copying the files
(geek mystique), there are less labor intensive
ways to get an OS on a new disk.

The reason I robocopy WinXP to WinXP2 here, is I
use it as a cheesy way to defragment. Just so you
know... :-) It used to take eight hours to defragment
C: on that drive, and the Robocopy recipe only
takes 30-40 minutes. And I'm less cranky after
doing that. If I got up in the morning and
a defrag run wasn't finished, I would be
pretty upset. If you use cloning, it doesn't
do defragmentation "For free". There is a
resize and clone option that might cause defragmentation,
but I haven't done any more work on it, to verify
that. I realigned a Win7 disk using Macrium, and
discovered a new option in there that might have
some interesting properties.

HTH,
Paul

This all seems very complicated.

Not having done it until fairly recently, I've been practising copying
hard drives using a variety of cloning programs. Some you run from a
bootable CD, but some work with them installed on your existing C-drive.

Most of the 'new' drives (mainly old clunkers collected at junk sales)
have simply booted immediately as normal, and then the PC said 'New
hardware detected', and 'Recommend re-boot' - which I did..

With a couple of the drives, the PC wouldn't boot, and that's when I
gave the disk an 'MBR repair' (using AOMEI or similar). [I have no idea
why this was necessary.]
--
Ian

VanguardLH wrote:
Rich Hare wrote:

I got a new hard drive and copied all of the files from the old C: to
the new drive.

Copied HOW? Did you clone the old hard disk to the new hard disk? Or
did you just perform a file copy?

I've left the old C: drive connected in the case.

A mistake.

I reset the drive priority in the motherboard cmos to the new drive, but
when I boot, it continues to use the old drive as the C: drive for
booting. The new drive is shown, and contains all of the files, but is
not assigned as the boot drive. (several trials)

I'm SURE I've done this sucessfully before, but either I missed
something this time or something new is happening.

WinXP - all up to date.

Clone the old drive to the new drive. Power down. Disconnect the data
cable from the old drive. Connect that data cable to the new drive (so
the new drive is connected to the same header on the mobo as was the old
drive). Boot from the new drive. Should be drive C: just like the old
drive was. When satisfied that the new drive is working, power down,
connect the old drive to a different drive header on the mobo, and boot.

You never gave any details on the drive hardware, like whether they are
SATA or IDE/PATA. I assumed you are using SATA drives and you don't
have to monkey with master/slave/cableselect for the old IDE drives.


OK, problem solved.

Following the comibined wisdom offered me, I dug out a copy of Acronis
True Image and cloned the system from the old drive to the new drive. I
had a small glitch on startup, but that got fixed.

The biggest issue I had was that the cloning also brought the old drive
name over to the new drive, so I had two drives with the same name on
line. I wasn't sure which drive was booting until I opened up the case
and disconnected the SATA cable. It was the new drive after all. I
immediately gave it a new name to prevent further confusion.

Thank you all!

Rich