Image XP boot drive without additional software?

[elkinm]

I want to image my boot drive to another drives partition.

I recently found a website that gave a way to do this using Win XP built in features and nothing internal. As well as other nice tweaks and features.

Anybody know how I can do this or what is the website I am looking for?

Thanks

 

[elkinm]

This is what I was talking about. Anybody do something like that?

 

[jtusa]

I guess it'd work, but that'd take awhile using xcopy.

 

[elkinm]

Originally posted by: jtusa
I guess it'd work, but that'd take awhile using xcopy.

Is Xcopy really that slow? Also, since it copies to a blanc source. Does it defragment most of the files or does it copy randomly.

Is there any good free alternative. I have Ghost 2003, but it does not clone everything.

 

[biggestmuff]

sounds cool. anyone tried it?

 

[dbarton]

The awkward part would be to restore cos a drive you need XP running to use xcopy..

 

[Mutilator]

I've done it a couple times...
I use
xcopy /h/i/c/k/e/r/y

hickery is easy to remember. 🙂

Ghost should get everything though.

Just remember if you're going to try to boot to it on another partition you will probably have to play around with boot.ini.

 

[nova2]

try these free solutions:
http://www.mondorescue.org/about.shtml

http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page

you say 'without additional software', but whatever, these are free.

 

[elkinm]

Originally posted by: nova2
try these free solutions:
http://www.mondorescue.org/about.shtml

http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page

you say 'without additional software', but whatever, these are free.

Thanks, but I beat you to it. I already did the clone with Xcopy. It went quite well and it took about 2 hours which I think is not bad for 200 GB and it did defrayment most of the files on the drive, folder fragmentation was the bigger issue.

Next time I will try your suggestions.

 

[Barfo]

meh, already paid for Acronis and I love it.

 

[shawn130c]

Thanks, but I beat you to it. I already did the clone with Xcopy. It went quite well and it took about 2 hours which I think is not bad for 200 GB and it did defrayment most of the files on the drive, folder fragmentation was the bigger issue.

Next time I will try your suggestions.

I was wondering once you clone the hdd with xcopy to another hdd will all i need to do is just switch hdd if the hdd i cloned fails or would i have to do some other steps?

 

[Slowlearner]

I wonder how does Xcopy handle the swap files. I am guessing it either skips it or stops when it encounters it. I have heard that xcopy will also coppy corrupt or bad data that may cause problems later on.

I suppose the best way to fund out is to make a copy using it and switch hds to see if it actually works.