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changing hard drives on win 2K Pro

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13 replies

by curtis

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Hi all
Is there a way that I can replace my present hard drive on win 2000 Pro with the minimum down time, and so that I do not have to re-install configure the OS again?
My HD is failing and I have the replacement from Maxtor. The MaxBlast software that came with it doesn?t understand NTFS and therefore will not copy the 2 partitions to the new drive. I tried creating identical partitions and using xcopy32 and starting in safe mode and it did copy the ?storage? partition but it won't copy files that are open in the partition containing the OS. I converted both drives to "Dynamic" and tried to mirror the old drive, but apparently this feature only works on w2k server. I have the new identical drive on the secondary ide channel as a master.

Any suggestions??

13 replies

by hayden.searle

Hi there

Best answer. Nortons Ghost. You will be able to take an exact copy of the hard drive and write it to a cd that can be made bootable and will load all the info back on for you. This is probably the best solution that I can think of. Go tohttp://www.symantec.com and have a look at Ghost to ensure it is what your looking for.

Good Luck

by curtis

Thanks for the response.
I ended up copying everything I could to the new drive and installing w2k again.
I couldn't wait for Ghost to arrive but my copy is in the mail should I need to do this again.

Thanks

by andyd

Norton Ghost, or Power Quest's Drive Image Pro are the easiest ways.

You may also be able to do something with NT Backup though. Run Nt Backup and backup your partitions, then restore them to the new disk. I haven't tried this yet, so I'm not certain it will get all your system files, but it's worth a shot. The new Nt Backup seems pretty powerful, so there's a good chance it will work.

by iqoreq

Best solution for you, just use GHOST from Norton as mentioned above. Be careful with Target and Source disk !!! Otherwise, you may end up Blank your original drive.

Good luck.

by iqoreq

Best solution for you, just use GHOST from Norton as mentioned above. Be careful with Target and Source disk !!! Otherwise, you may end up Blank your original drive.

Good luck.

by iniaes

Add another vote for Ghost.

I had the exact same problem with the last Maxtor drive I purchased. When the replacement arrived, I added it as a slave (leaving the failing drive as master) and "ghosted" everything to the new drive. Then just swap the new drive with the old, return the failing drive (follow Maxtor's packaging guidelines or you may void your warantee), and it'll be like it never happened.

Purchasing an individual user copy of Ghost is a very small, very worthwhile investment.

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