Switching to a New Hard Drive

[Abuilder]

Drf
When are you going to face the fact that your 30GB boot drive is hosed and it’s not because the drive is going bad but because you have installed SO much garbage software that Windows settings and registry is un-recoverability scrambled!
Of all that “Free software of the day” How much of it have you used in the last 6 months, maybe 1%. And of that 1% why don’t you BUY IT!!!!, If you like it so much. After all that IS the purposed of that site to begin with.
This is the second thread that you have been whining about that drive. WIPE IT!!!!!
Even if you get that c: cloned onto a bigger partition on a new drive it’s still going to run slower that dirt because that windows install is HOSED! It’s NOT the drive, I’ll bet my last dollar on that!
Why does the word Packrat keep coming to mind?

[drfsupercenter]

I DID copy the drive as is, and like I said... it won't boot.

[MilesAhead]

I would ask on the Paragon Forums because the main reason to restore to a partition that is a different size from what was saved is so you can copy to a new larger drive. I would ask about how the partition table is handled when laid on another drive. IOW, if you have a Windows/Linux setup and save the entire drive can you just lay it back on and have it bootable "out of the box." I'd find out before assuming you can't.

[drfsupercenter]

When are you going to face the fact that your 30GB boot drive is hosed and it’s not because the drive is going bad but because you have installed SO much garbage software that Windows settings and registry is un-recoverability scrambled!
Of all that “Free software of the day” How much of it have you used in the last 6 months, maybe 1%. And of that 1% why don’t you BUY IT!!!!, If you like it so much. After all that IS the purposed of that site to begin with.
This is the second thread that you have been whining about that drive. WIPE IT!!!!!
Even if you get that c: cloned onto a bigger partition on a new drive it’s still going to run slower that dirt because that windows install is HOSED! It’s NOT the drive, I’ll bet my last dollar on that!

But does having a lot of programs installed really slow down your computer? None of them boot with Windows, I made sure of it. So what if I have some excess stuff on my C: drive?

And what do you mean the point of that site is to get you to buy software... they figure people might buy the OTHER stuff made by those companies but the actual programs they give away are free, so why would I pay for them?

[drfsupercenter]

Yay!

Acronis did what I needed. I first tried that "clone disk" thing, but for some reason it didn't touch either drive. So I made a backup of my entire C: drive, then restored it to the other physical drive. And kept the partition 60GB.

I think the problem was before that it wasn't set to "active", so it wouldn't boot. Whatever the case, Acronis set it to Active and everything.

However, (And I feared this when it was copying), it overwrote the MBR, which contained the GRUB loader for Ubuntu. Now I have no way of loading Ubuntu, it just auto-starts Windows. I don't think this is THAT big of a deal, as I'm sure there's a way to manually restore it. I got the Windows booting drive fixed, and that's all that counts (since the other Storage partition is just a simple copy-paste job, no actual sector copying needed)

[doctorhardware]

Glad you got it working.

[MilesAhead]

That's what I miss about not having a floppy drive. In Linux you just made a boot floppy that pointed into the HD Linux install. You booted the floppy and it loaded Linux off the HD.
Then once you had Linux up and running you just configured your boot loader again. Way easy. That is, if you had the boot floppy/CD whatever already made.

[doctorhardware]

That is the main reason I build the computers. But it is getting harder to find motherboards that have the floppy drive interface on them. I bought a lot of 10 3 1/2 floppy drives. I am getting near the end of the lot that I purchased. I am not sure if I will buy any more.

[copyless]

Glad you got it going, I told you Acronis would do exactly what you needed, I don't know the price of it these days, but in the past it was always the best program for the money. And as I stated before, it will work with any windows systems.

[drfsupercenter]

I still have a floppy drive
My computer is a Dell Dimension 2350 (though the only Dell parts left are the box and motherboard - I've upgraded everything else!)... though last time I checked that floppy drive was broken due to age. It would read half a disk and report read errors, even if I just put the file on the disk.

As for Acronis... I just used the free trial. It lasts for 15 days and all I needed was like one day so I could get the drive moved over.

[Chewy]

You've come a long way in a relatively short time in your geekdom Danny

Setting the boot/system partition active everytime is an advanced skill, most forget to.

[atifsh]

Yay!
I think the problem was before that it wasn't set to "active", so it wouldn't boot. Whatever the case, Acronis set it to Active and everything.

didnt i told u to make it active
yes acronis is pretty good in what it suppose to do.

[MilesAhead]

I haven't messed around with the newer Linux distros but I'd be surprised if they gave up on using that boot trick. Comes in too handy. There's probably a tool to make a boot CD that loads the kernel right off the HD partition. Paragon Drive Backup has a setting to save the boot sectors and the entire partition table along with the partitions. That's why I wondered about the partition sizes, if it would mess up the boot. Probably could have laid the image on then just expand the 2nd partition. As long as the start doesnt' move the Linux should boot.

But anyway, it's academic now. You got it up and running. Good deal.

[drfsupercenter]

Ah, well, I didn't know what active partitions were... I just assumed copying the data over would work. And the odd thing is Windows would LOAD, it would freeze on the "Welcome" screen forever.

It took me a while to get GRUB running again (since Acronis overwrote the MBR, it wiped out the thing that lets me dualboot)... then I found a very easy 3-step way involving live-booting and just redoing GRUB.

So I'm 100% moved over to the bigger drive, just earlier today I wiped the old one and now I have 200GB for storage. (186 or so with formatting). Though I think with all the problems I might just get rid of it - I have a 1TB external and a couple smaller internals I use for data.

[MilesAhead]

I think it was lilo boot loader that lets you load the kernel off the hd. Might be worth checking out for grins at leisure. The good thing about the Paragon backup is you can save the MBR and partition table at the same time. So when you lay the image back on you don't have to remember to set partitions or any of that. The whole table is written just like you saved it.

But it's a minor thing. Each software has little advantages and drawbacks.