Greetings,

There are numerous inherent problems with backing-up,
copying, etc a running system. That's part of the
reason that backup software can be so expensive.

For whatever reasons, I have lately given up on
running a single image of a single OS on my deskside
system at home. Very nice large-and-fast HDD's aren't
tremendously expensive nowadaze ...

The other day I booted a clean install of W2K and,
using Win Explorer, copied a non-running upgrade-
from-NT-to-W2K to a new partition on a different HDD.
As I recall, I had to omit 2 directories (Sys Vol Info and
Recycler, I think).

I added yet another entry to boot.ini, and booted
the cloned system. I haven't had time to test
_everything_, but all the stuff I use on a daily
basis seems to work OK.

Just another possibility to consider ...

  David

>
> Date:    Wed, 14 Feb 2001 23:12:52 +1100
> From:    Ultra <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: best HDD copy solution
>
> Could someone tell me the best/safest HDD copy solution which
> is suitable
> for normal home user?
>
> I'm asking because I have a long unsolved problem. Whenever I need to
> complete copy from one HDD to another, I usually use Ghost,
> which is good
> for any win9x machine, however, when copy win2k/NT machine
> with large NTFS
> partition and/or extra security setting, Ghost usually failed
> to make a
> workable copy. The only "solution" was to try again and
> again, until got a
> copy that works, but as you can see, this makes Ghost a "bad"
> solution for
> such task.
>
> The basic problem with Ghost are: 1) it doesn't like large
> NTFS partition,
> as a result, the copy HDD won't boot; 2) Ghost may not be
> able to bring over
> the security setting, sounds strange.
>
> I really need to know how to make safe transfer from one HDD
> to another with
> NTFS and win2k/NT.
>
> The basic requirement would be:
> 1) the solution must be able to make the copied HDD bootable
> with large NTFS
> boot partition (eg C: drive larger than 8G)
> 2) all security settings much be carried over as what they were
> 3) all software reference must be kept as same as before
> 4) I'm not talking about MS backup to tape drive, then
> restore from tape, as
> normal PC won't have a tape drive.
> 5) preferred some software like Ghost
>
> TIA
>
> Jun Qian

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** David Nasser                     **     [log in to unmask]    **
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