Question Full drive image for Windows 2000 SP4

[Golgatha]

I have an old 200GB SATA drive with a Windows 2000 SP4 install on it. Can I just pull the drive, hook it up externally, and image it with Macrium Reflect? If not, what's a good piece of software to accomplish this task with? I'm wanting to image it so I can restore it back to a 300GB WD Velociraptor drive I have laying around. This is for my retro gaming box that has a Voodoo 4 4500 installed in it.

 

[TheELF]

Yes you should be able to do that, you should do a full clone image though and not just partitions.
Then apply that image to the new disk and extend the partition to the full size.
This is so that the boot info stays intact, if you can repair boot issues in 2k a partition clone will do.

 

[Tech Junky]

Clonezilla will do a complete drive clone and as mentioned just extend the space when done.

 

[JackMDS]

After the installation you can use the Free Partiton Wizard to "olay" around with the build and software of the drive.

Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Wizard Free

As an all-in-one free partition manager and disk manager software, MiniTool Partition Wizard Free helps manage disk space safely on Windows 11/10/8/7.

www.partitionwizard.com

 

[mindless1]

Does it really "need" to be a mechanical HDD to be a retro box? I would take the opportunity to use an SSD instead, over any HDD but especially one that may be near the end of its lifespan.

 

[TheELF]

Does it really "need" to be a mechanical HDD to be a retro box? I would take the opportunity to use an SSD instead, over any HDD but especially one that may be near the end of its lifespan.

Well it also doesn't "need" to be an ssd drive, these old systems wouldn't be able to extract much speed out of them anyway and they don't need that much speed anyway.
But yeah in general if you have a ssd drive laying around you might as well use that but buying one just for that is not really worth it.

 

[Golgatha]

Well it also doesn't "need" to be an ssd drive, these old systems wouldn't be able to extract much speed out of them anyway and they don't need that much speed anyway.
But yeah in general if you have a ssd drive laying around you might as well use that but buying one just for that is not really worth it.

Yeah, my 300GB Velociraptors are worth about a whopping $10 these days. Figured I'd get a backup of the system while giving it a bit more pep too.

 

[mindless1]

Well it also doesn't "need" to be an ssd drive, these old systems wouldn't be able to extract much speed out of them anyway and they don't need that much speed anyway.
But yeah in general if you have a ssd drive laying around you might as well use that but buying one just for that is not really worth it.

An SSD would (most likely) give it a lot more time till drive failure, considering the age of the HDD.

Depends on what games, but an SSD can still make a difference in level load times, particularly if there are a lot of small files. I even had a huge improvement using one in an ATA133 (IDE) laptop with an adapter, though I mean running OS/apps, and of course the HDD it replaced wasn't a velociraptor.

 

[Golgatha]

An SSD would (most likely) give it a lot more time till drive failure, considering the age of the HDD.

Depends on what games, but an SSD can still make a difference in level load times, particularly if there are a lot of small files. I even had a huge improvement using one in an ATA133 (IDE) laptop with an adapter, though I mean running OS/apps, and of course the HDD it replaced wasn't a velociraptor.

I just so happen to have a spare MX300 525GB drive laying around now, and after some searching Online figured out it supports firmware level garbage collection.

I suppose I could also run an 80GB Intel X25-M G2 I have laying around, but I didn't ever use it because it doesn't have firmware level garbage collection. My MX300 does, but the endurance of the TLC NAND will be less versus MLC. Decisions, decisions...

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I suppose I could also run an 80GB Intel X25-M G2 I have laying around, but I didn't ever use it because it doesn't have firmware level garbage collection.

If you can still find it, Intel SSD Toolbox can do the garbage collection. We had to do that manually before 7 added support for TRIM.

Also, don't worry about write endurance. You'd have to try very hard to get a modern drive to fail that way.

 

[Golgatha]

If you can still find it, Intel SSD Toolbox can do the garbage collection. We had to do that manually before 7 added support for TRIM.

Also, don't worry about write endurance. You'd have to try very hard to get a modern drive to fail that way.

Did some searching. The Intel SSD Toolbox isn't supported under Win2k.

However, as a bit of good luck, I recently needed to upgrade a PS3 (yes Playstation 3) drive to more than 500GB. To my surprise, there was a MLC based 500GB Crucial MX200 in there! Boom, best of both worlds!