How to clone Windows XP not installed on C: ?

[nataraj]

I have 3 HDDs in my PC.

1. C Primary , bootable
G Extended, XP is installed here

2. D Extended, just data

3. H Extended, just data

I have a new Hard disk that I want to use as my XP disk, since it is faster. How do I clone the XP that is now installed on G: ?

I've treid partition and disk copying using software that came with the new HDD. I've also tried to copy disk / partition using Partition Magic and Ghost. On all occassions, the newly cloned XP boots till the welcome screen ... but does not display the USER IDs for login and just hangs.

Is the XP disk being named G: the problem ? Is there a way to change the drive letter before booting from the newly cloned disk ?

 

[gdtaylor]

The procedure I would use is:

1. Connect new disk to spare IDE.

2. Use Ghost to copy from old disk to new disk.

3. Disconnect old disk and replace with new disk.

Your new disk needs to be on the exact same connector as your old disk and also needs to be configured the same as your old disk. If you are not using Cable Select make sure that you have that the Master/Slave setting on the new drive is the same as on the old.

If that does not work then you may need to run Ghost with some command line switches.

By default Ghost does not do an exact copy of the contents of your hard disk rather it recognises the partitions and file systems and copy's the files and directory structures to the new disk. This is usually fine but in some cases this can cause problems for example when you have a non-standard partition scheme.

Ghost has a number of command line switches which can be used to modify the default behaviour of Ghost. The ones which may be of interest to you are:

-ib copy the entire boot track to the new disk
-ia force a sector-by-sector copy of all partitions

You can also download the complete documentation for Ghost:

Norton Ghost 2003 Documentation

I suggest you try the -ib switch first and if that doesn't work then try the -ia switch.

 

[mboy]

if it just hangs, then run repair console and chkdsk /r on that drive only
If it didnt boot at all, I would say try fixmbr, but I dont think that is the prob. I woudl be surprised if the chkdsk doesnt work.