Replace the hard drive of his computer keeping all data and applications on the disk ... That has nothing to do with WiFi, but I thought this operation much easier, well deserves this little post ...
If records are not the same capacity (and especially if the new disk is smaller than the old one) and if you use an operating system Windows XP or 2000, the operation may be some little tricky. To achieve this transfer of files and system, no tools Unfortunately, proposed by Microsoft. The classic
Xcopy , even with the switches that go as / e / c / h / r / k and even in its 32-bit, unable to be transferred correctly the whole system. After several attempts, we must get to the evidence that will need to invest in a disk cloning. The software Norton Ghost
seems ideal and Partition Magic
might be do the trick. The latter will be used for resizing the partition.
After I purchased the program Ghost, I thought that the matter would be resolved in less than an hour, but 24 hours and 3 hours of sleep again later, as I write this little report that will certainly help some users.
That is how this case 
:
: The original disk is an IDE drive from Western Digital WD800 80gb cut into 2 partitions. The first (C) contains 42gb OS Windows 2000 Pro. These data and the system of this score that I want to tranfer the new disk.
The target disk is a blank disc only 40gb Samsung.
As can be seen disks and partition sizes are not the same ... The first is wider the new disc.
Here are the tools that helped me
:
1. a bootable floppy MSDos
Win98 with the program
fdisk.com
in its recognizing NTFS partitions. It is easy to find it for download on the Internet.
2. a mouse driver MSDOS. The classic MOUSE.EXE to download from Logitech works with almost all the mice and will be very useful to use Norton DOS.
3. Software Ghost.exe in its DOS version on a floppy disk.
4. Partition Magic software
(essential if it is necessary to reduce the size of partition - The free version is a demo version unusable)
The steps .... and the preliminaries. Before working on a disc that contains data, it is necessary that does not error. Start with a defragmentation - Windows utility - and then control the registry with RegCleaner. This free utility will clean the table of the system registry for invalid entries. A CHDSK to verify data integrity and surface condition Disc will not be too many.
Start in MS-Dos
: 1. Install the 2 disc into the PC on the same sheet. While configuring the jumpers on hard drives. The information necessary for the positioning of the jumpers are present on the label on the hard drives in a diagram called "jumper setting." In an IDE connection, there is always a master disk, and possibly a slave. The master is usually the disk on which the system will boot. In our case, the new disc will be the slave.
2. Place the bootable floppy disk with the MsDos in the drive and put the Odin energized. 3. Eventually check in the BIOS of your computer - or other F8 key at startup to enter the setup - two disks that are physically well recognized.
4. When the prompt A: \\ appears, you can run DOS commands.
How to use Ghost?
Ghost offers 2 operating modes: Cloning disk to disk or partition to partition. If two disks are sized indentation, the first option is correct.
1. Ghost.exe start after running the mouse driver MOUSE.EXE that we will be very useful.
2. If Ghost does not see the new disk but is well recognized in hardware in the BIOS setup, you will need to use Fdisk to create a partition.
3. First problem: Ghost
error "internal error 20001"
. Ghost is unable to copy and closes. After searching in the editor, it appears that this error "unknown origin" sometimes occurs when the destination partition is too small. This, Partition Magic comes, which will show an extremely effective but slow exacerbated in resizing the partition on my data disk. Dimun for the partition size, it will be if required free space by deleting some files and then run a defrag that will reduce the data at the beginning of the disc. Of course it must restart Windows to complete these steps.
4. When everything is going well, Ghost displays the progession of cloning, and finally a message stating that the operation ended normally.
last step.
We're going to start on the new disc now contains data from the old. This time, we do connect the new drive, having previously removed his jumper " master position, and we remove the disk from the floppy! Again, things may not happen as planned ...
1. No priming takes place on the disc: It is possible that the
partition is not "active"
. It must then restart the MsDos with the floppy and run Fdisk Activia to make the partiton boutable.
2. Windows starts normally but stops just before the session display and hangs on a beautiful display of empty office ... After a few minutes, the messages appear:
"
loading your settings" and "saving your settings
"appear repeatedly. Another message box may appear: "
your system has no paging file or the paging file is insufficient
" and "Limited Virtual Memory
. The 2 error messages are generated by the same default configuration. Windows can not access the paging file - pagefile.sys
- which is used as virtual memory and essential to its operation. Tools Repair Windows 2000 installation CD go completely beside the problem. Inutile donc de lancer une réparation surtout si la version de Windows n'est pas exactement la même sur le Cdrom et sur le disque dur.
Reassure the pagefile has been created during copying, and we are almost out of the woods ... The path to the swap file is entered in the register table, and then Windows looks for it or not. In this case, the letter assigned to this partition is D and Ghost looking for a Windows swap file in C. Windows can not reassign the drive letter home at boot time. So we have to do it manually. Several levels of intervention are possible. In our case, a renaming of the letter of the partition will do. This information is recorded in the partition table of hard disk. This table contains the raw data transferred to the CPU when the system asks a hard disk at boot time. This location is also called "boot sector" or MBR master boot record. "
Fdisk.exe
has a command that can be documented, but data reset mbr in a standard configuration. The classic functions of repartitioning proposed Fdisk does not alter the master boot record.
must run Fdisk this way by having the computer booted to the floppy Msdos: fdisk / mbr
type programs and dual boot GUID type information (name of volume) of Windows 2000 will be erased by this command. (Microsoft's online help states that do not use this option on a disk partitioned with SpeedStor)
We're finally at the end of our efforts! If you have any corrections to add to this record please leave a comment.
