OT: clone a hard drive

ghost seems to be a good way. Keep a disk image somewhere on the network, and when your drive pukes, install via the ethernet port from that image. Works well in a corporate environment with hundreds of desktops, should work fine for a one-off controller as well. Get it going the way you want it, make an image, and then spin that image back out when you need it. Kind of a bootable backup type thing.

Dave Hinz

Ah, the good old days. Sometimes I really, really miss DOS!

There are two problems that you are facing in making a backup hard drive. As you already know, one problem is that it takes a whole lot more to install the operating system than it did back when /s would include it while formatting. The other, related problem is that copying all the *files* from one disk to another doesn't necessarily copy the essential operating system "image" that is on the disk.

There are programs that make a copy of the entire disk *image* specifically for the sake of backing up and restoring a computer to a known state. I believe that Norton and Symantec sell such programs, probably as part of a package of utilities. Do an internet search on "ghost image" and you should come up with a good bit of information.

HTH, Andy

Karl Townsend wrote:

dies/gets

everything.

Norton Ghost will let you build a bootable CD(s) backup of your system. If it dies, pop in the first CD reboot and follow the prompts. It's a life saver! All of our critical machines at work are ghosted.

JW

Since you're using XP, I'd recommend installing a RAID 1 configuration of hard drives. The redundant hard drive will cover the failure of one drive and will speed up disk accesses somewhat and XP will allow a rollback in case of a virus. This is what I'm using on my servers.

I also recommend separation of your production machine from your development/play machine. Keep unknown/questionable software away from your production machine(s) and you won't have problems with viruses, etc.

I have a spare HD on my system. Once a week I "Ghost" a copy of my working HD ("C") to it. Ghost does a sector-by-sector copy of the entire drive without regard to what's on it, IIRC. My spare/backup HD also has its own power switch - it's only up when I'm Ghost-ing. The idea is to protect against power problems as well as virii running amok through the system.

If I should loose my main HD, I power down, turn on the spare HD, go into BIOS during power-up and make the spare the boot drive, and proceed.

I haven't had to actually go to the spare yet, but it makes me feel secure.

Bob

I tried to find Norton Ghost awhile ago. Couldn't. Maybe it's in one of the giant bundles they sell these days. Anyway, let me put in a plug for Partition Magic. You can copy an entire disk partition to another and then make the copy invisible to the OS. Should your active partition become infected, you just boot to PM and swap to your other partition.

That all can happen on the same drive. Problem is that today's huge drives often suffer from "stiction" and fail to spin up at all.

I personally have 2 drives in my main machine. I don't bother trying to make a bootable clone drive. Just so long as my data is backed up I don't mind too much if I have to reinstall Windows. Can't do that with XP, though (I use 2kpro) because they only let you register an installation ONCE.

GWE

Take a look at Acronis True Image.

--RC

XP uses the serial number of the CPU as the licensing number. As long as the CPU is still the same, you can use different disks with the same data on them in the computer.

-- Why isn't there an Ozone Hole at the NORTH Pole?

Unless you also change several cards at the same time. Enough changes and it goes back into "mother may I" mode, but you get 30 days or something for it to phone home to microsoft.

If you have an OEM verison of XP it's locked to the identity of the mobo it's first installed on. If you change the mobo it will attempt to authenticate and fail. This is in the EULA, somewhere.

The points about using Ghost are great & I use it as well.

One other thing I'd like to mention is a hard drive plug in drawer I mount two in each computer so I can dynamically swap out a drive & or plug in another to ghost Power off of course.

This saves me the trouble of swapping out drives and because it is so easy I'm more likely to backup on a regular basis with Ghost

Peter

Boy, you guys are sure making me glad I don't use M$ crap!

Ted

This is only in early releases of XP. It went away sometime in later builds. I don't remember where off-hand. Later versions are just like Win2kPro, where you just enter the CD key. No authorization necessary.

JW

Me too. It's even worse than you think. Us "unix aisle" guys have fun watching the room full of windows admins thrash arond. It's especially fun when a day-zero virus gets in.

I just replaced our boot disk (preventative maintenence) by cloning it with Acronis. It worked very nicely.

Steve

My little home network server uses Raid 1+0 with duplexing/mirroring. All my "important" files go on the drive(s) and are served from there.

There are 8 20gig drives in the C:\ and D:\ arrays. All are hot swappable.

I got tired of loosing stuff. Plus my personal computer has 4 20 gig drives and is mirrored in the 4 20 gig drives on the attached HP array in a Ghost backup, which is then daily backed up to the server

Having a buddy who is a surplus computer dealer has advantages.....

Gunner

Rule #35 "That which does not kill you, has made a huge tactical error"

Or you have a Corporate Edition.......... or better yet, are running 2000 Server.... Or both.....

Gunner

Rule #35 "That which does not kill you, has made a huge tactical error"

If you have an OEM verison of XP it's locked to the identity of the mobo it's first installed on. If you change the mobo it will attempt to authenticate and fail. This is in the EULA, somewhere.