Copy WinXPpro install to second HD??

[grimdeath]

ive had my two hard drives setup like this:
120g WD drive w/ WinXPx64
80g WD drive / WinXPpro

now ive enjoyed my free trial of Win x64 but its not completely up to standards for me to buy it YET, so in the mean time im wanting to move my regular WinXPpro install from my 80g drive to my 120gb drive....whats the easiest way to go about this, if its possible? if im just copying a partition will i still be able to use the rest of the drive? (full 120g's instead of just 80g's??)

probably an easy thing to do but im just needing to know so i can get this done tonight, im gonna start trying several linux distros on the other drive..

BTW will it be ok to still install the various forms of linux with winXPpro already installed? it will setup the boot manager the correct way? i wanna be able to boot up and choose which OS to go into!!

Thanks!

 

[grimdeath]

bump

hmm figured someone would surely know...ill google this tonight but thought id see if any pros could tell me the best way and save me a little trouble...

 

[grimdeath]

i hate to bump soo soon but im doing this stuff in less then an hour, where are you pro OS people???

 

[jonny13]

I have done it before when both drives have single partitions. I tried it a few weeks ago from a drive with two partitions to a smaller drive with only one partition and it failed. I think there was some partition tables and stuff on the second partition. I should have used partition magic first because the other times it worked perfectly. Hope it goes well for you.

 

[grimdeath]

ok, well im going from smaller to BIGGER so that gives me some hope...only thing im still not sure of is how the partition works will a larger drive, will it automatically detect and used the new space on the larger drive or will it still be setup for a 80gb drive...i know only the basics when it comes to partitioning!

would partition magic be the app of choice to do this with?

 

[ND40oz]

Use norton ghost...thats what we did when we had to replace 300 maxtor hds that were prone to failure. Dell sent us out 300 seagates and some ghost floppies.

 

[secretanchitman]

300 seagates? dang.

 

[Fraggable]

Originally posted by: ND40oz
Use norton ghost...thats what we did when we had to replace 300 maxtor hds that were prone to failure. Dell sent us out 300 seagates and some ghost floppies.

FINALLY! someone who acknowledges that Maxtors suck.

On topic, You might try using Knoppix (linux distro) to boot from CD and cpy the data on the 80Gb drive bit-by-bit to the 120Gb drive. That would eliminate issues with not having the whole drive once the transfer is complete because you coulld leave the partitions intact.

But don't ask me for the commands to do it because I don't know. I've just seen it done and know it works.

 

[Leros]

Ghost, Acronis True Image

Or you could download the utiltiies from the HD makers website. Typically the include a tool to copy an entire harddrive.

 

[Leros]

I checked the Western Digital website. Download Data Lifeguard tools. It has the option to copy harddrives.

http://support.wdc.com/download/downloadxml.asp

 

[The Linuxator]

Originally posted by: Fraggable

Originally posted by: ND40oz
Use norton ghost...thats what we did when we had to replace 300 maxtor hds that were prone to failure. Dell sent us out 300 seagates and some ghost floppies.

FINALLY! someone who acknowledges that Maxtors suck.

On topic, You might try using Knoppix (linux distro) to boot from CD and cpy the data on the 80Gb drive bit-by-bit to the 120Gb drive. That would eliminate issues with not having the whole drive once the transfer is complete because you coulld leave the partitions intact.

But don't ask me for the commands to do it because I don't know. I've just seen it done and know it works.

Even a better usage of knoppix, boot to knoppix, and run Qt parted and resize your 120gb main partition split it however you like the extra space allows you to creat an extra NTFS partition via Win xP Cd, so once you do that you can now
Copy and paste your entire Wix xp 32-bit partition to the partition created in the 120gb harddrive and you should be up and running. :beer:

 

[grimdeath]

i ended up going with the lifeguard tools as i already had them installed, seemed to work pretty well BUT when i installed linux(using redhat till i get kubuntu to work) i get the bootloader that shows the linux kernel and one named "other" but when i try to load the other i get a couple lines of text but no command line, the OS doesnt boot up and i cant get out of it...have to restart with the case button

the partition is still showing up on that drive but i cant seem to access it, not sure what i can do to fix it...just hopeing when i get kubuntu on tonight it takes care of the problem but im worried that my partition isnt acessible....thats ok i guess but id rather not have to reinstall windows as i my copy is older and doesnt include updates like SP2 and such...would be a major pain heh

 

[grimdeath]

bump

 

[DidlySquat]

When you say "i get a couple lines of text but no command line" do you mean you get an error message ? what does it say ?
Usually the "other" option in the bootloader which was installed with linux is to boot windows, Even though it's easy to set up the bootloader to boot windows, some distros don't do it right. One of the most common problems I saw is that they use the grub "root" command instead of "rootnoverify" which is required sometimes. So if the "couple of lines of text" was an error about trying to access part of the disk illegally, then you can fix it by booting linux, and editing /boot/grub/menu.lst to replace the "root" command with "rootnoverify" in the section of this file which boots windows (should be in the section titled "other" in your case).

 

[grimdeath]

im sorry i knew i shoulda put down what it says something along the lines of:

booting "other"

bootnoverify
.....string(?) +1

cant remember the second line too well, just know it says +1 at the end...and i tried it again before i came back up to work and it was the same deal, just sits there and doesnt go anywhere, any ideas?

 

[DidlySquat]

Add these lines into the /boot/grub/menu.lst:

title WINDOWS
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
boot


You may need to change (hd0,0) to the partition where windows is installed. (hd0,0) means first hardisk, first partition. for example (hd1,2) means seconds hardisk, third partition.

 

[grimdeath]

so if its on 2nd hard drive, and only one partition it will be (hd2,1) ??

just making sure...and THANKS for the help!

 

[DidlySquat]

No, second hard disk first partition is (hd1,0). But if you really have windows on a separate hardisk you can probably tell the BIOS to boot from that hardisk, instead of from your other hardisk. Most bioses have a boot menu that you allows you to choose the boot device (hardisk1, hardisk2, cdrom, usb).

 

[grimdeath]

well your probably gonna hate me but ive finally go the distro installed i wanted in the first place, kubuntu 5.04, and now im having problems with the resolution, cant get above 1024 x 768 at 60hz(needless to say everythings huge and my eyes are bleeding from the refresh rate) so im gonna be working on that, but strangly enough the "other" partiton didnt show up with grub on here, im guessing i should add the same coding you mentioned above for this distro? btw i tried it in redhat and it did the same thing, just sat as well

 

[DidlySquat]

Congrats Ububntu/kubuntu is the best linux distro in my opinion. Yes, if kubuntu did not add an option to boot windows to the bootloader, you need to add it yourself. First, find out for sure which disk and partition windows is installed on. You can find out by installing "gparted" (go to ubuntuguide.org for instructions on how to install this and other useful stuff), and using it to see a list of all your disks and partitions. You should find out where the NTFS partition is - for example if it's /dev/hdb1 (as shown in gparted) then to boot it you need to add the block I listed above to /boot/grub/menu.lst, but use (hd1,0) in the "rootnoverify" line.



btw, for the resolution stuff in kubuntu - you need to install the video drivers for your graphics card. These are available in the "universe" repositories. Just go to ubuntuguide.org for instructions on how to install the drivers and then you'll be able to choose any resolution you want.

 

[grimdeath]

cool guide, any chance there is one geared towards kubuntu? not sure how much differnce there is but i was recommened to learn KDE before gnome

*edit* found the gparted section

 

[grimdeath]

trying to get my driver updates but im having some problems, first all that guide is geared towards nvidia but i use a sapphire ATI radeon 9800 pro videocard and theres ALOT to this guide but it doesnt really explain what and why im doing what i am lol, just meaningless commands dont help me much

trying to install gparted, typed in their command but get this:

sudo apt-get install gparted

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
E: Couldn't find package gparted

 

[DidlySquat]

Did you add the extra repositories like the guide CLEARLY tells you to do ?
In general it should be applicable to kubuntu, except for the gnome specific parts (e.g. the menu structure), but it's the same for most package installations.

For KDE there is a qtparted but I think even gparted should work fine. JUST FOLLOW THE GUIDE - IT'S EASY
For deeper questions, it's best to look at ubuntuforums.org - there is a huge information base there and people to help, but of course it's not as simple as ubuntuguide.org.

For ATI drivers see this thread:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=24557

Also index of HOWTO's is here:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=53050

The third place with helpgul info is the ubuntu wiki pages:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TitleIndex

 

[grimdeath]

THANKS, alot of great help here, im still getting issues with the ubuntu guide but hopefully i can get it worked out...just in case you can help this is what im doing:

on the repositories section:
had problems getting gedit to work(fails to mention i needed to install that previously :/ (again my point from earlier how was i suppose to know this?) but i figured it out and made the changes to the section listed...then i punch in: sudo apt-get update ... but comes up with 2 W(warnings?) and 1 E(error?) shown below:

Failed to fetch cdrom:[Ubuntu 5.04 _Hoary Hedgehog_ - Release i386 (20050407)]/dists/hoary/main/binary-amd64/Packages.gz Please use apt-cdrom to make this CD-ROM recognized by APT. apt-get update cannot be used to add new CD-ROMs
Failed to fetch cdrom:[Ubuntu 5.04 _Hoary Hedgehog_ - Release i386 (20050407)]/dists/hoary/restricted/binary-amd64/Packages.gz Please use apt-cdrom to make this CD-ROM recognized by APT. apt-get update cannot be used to add new CD-ROMs
Reading package lists... Done
W: Couldn't stat source package list cdrom://Ubuntu 5.04 _Hoary Hedgehog_ - Release i386 (20050407) hoary/main Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/Ubuntu%205.04%20%5fHoary%20Hedgehog%5f%20-%20Release%20i386
20(20050407)_dists_hoary_main_binary-amd64_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: Couldn't stat source package list cdrom://Ubuntu 5.04 _Hoary Hedgehog_ - Release i386 (20050407) hoary/restricted Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/Ubuntu%205.04%20%5fHoary%20Hedgehog%5f%20-%20Release%20i386
20(20050407)_dists_hoary_main_binary-amd64_Packages)(/var/lib/apt/lists/Ubuntu%205.04%20%5fHoary%20Hedgehog%5f%20-%20Release%20i386
20(20050407)_dists_hoary_restricted_binary-amd64_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems
E: Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

im not sure what ive done wrong, pretty sure ive gone step to step so far, just worried this is more of a intermediate guide instead of a noob guide like i need, im starting fresh learning linux, today is day 2 of my learning!

 

[DidlySquat]

You can edit files using any editor that you want, not necessarily gedit which I guess is a gnome utility. I'm sure KDE has something called kedit or something like that. Just make sure you specify sudo so you get root privileges to edit these config files. If you're really such a n00b that needs help in editing files, why don't you just install the regular Ubuntu so it will be easier to just follow the guide without worrying about the differences between GNOME and KDE. GNOME is very friendly and easy to work with, and you can always install KDE later on ubuntu, which would transform it into kubuntu.

All you need to do is copy the lines shown in ubuntuguide.org into your /etc/apt/source.list REPLACING EVERYTHING you had there before. You don't need the stupid CDROM lines. Anyway the errors you got are not serious and can be ignored.

After you finally manage to get a good "sources.list" just do "sudo apt-get update" followed by "sudo apt-get upgrade" (answering yes to all questions) and your system will be fully ready to install any available packages, like qtparted or gparted.