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Best software/method to install ( XP + service pack + Drivers + Applications)at once?

2K views 20 replies 7 participants last post by  bbearren 
#1 ·
My hard disk is going to fail. I have collected data over 3 years.Please help me.

I heard that nlite and ghost will do this. But, I would like to have the suggestion from experts like you.

OS XP SP2
Environment : Home PC.

Thank you.
 
#2 ·
I would create a full disk image (all partitions) of that drive using Acronis, before the disk fails. There is also a clone feature, install the new hard drive as secondary and clone the failing hard drive to the new one. Remove the failing hard drive and swap in the new drive as master, it should boot up and be just like the old drive (without failures). Make the full disk image first, before cloning, this way you have a back up image of the drive just in case.

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

The Nlite you speak of will not back up your data, but they are tools to create a custom XP install CD, not really what you need. Ghost is outdated.
 
#3 ·
I completely agree with the Acronis........however, I found the cloning/slave/master, etc, a bit too confusing to do. What I did was use Acronis to make the bootable CD (very simple and easy to do). Used Acronis to make a full system image and saved it to an external hard drive.

Removed the old hard drive in the computer.

Installed a new hard drive.

Booted from the Acronis CD and browsed to the external hard drive (which was attached to the computer via USB).

Restored the image.

Now, the new hard drive I bought was bigger than the one I replaced, so I used EASEUS to extend the partition that Acronis created. (Acronis will create a partition of exactly the size of the old hard drive that it took an image of, leaving the rest of the new, bigger hard drive's space unallocated.) Using EASEUS to extend the partition to incorporate the entire new drive took about 15 seconds, lol. All you do is drag the borders of the partition to cover the whole of the shown space. That's it, literally, and now you have the whole new hard drive available.

If you install a new hard drive of exactly the same size as the old one, then just restore the image.
 
#6 ·
#7 ·
Cloning with Acronis will proportionally resize the partitions .. But I've never tried to downsize ??
When recovering from an "Image" recovery file .. You can specify the partition size(s) ..
so there's no need for additional partitioning.

The Trial DL is fully functional for 15 days.

Hey .. I see the new version is out now.
 
#8 ·
#9 ·
What Laura means is you cannot do this from the boot disk. It can only be done from the installed version of the app. If you are doing a bare metal restore of an image, I do not think this is an option. It is an option when doing a clone from the boot disk in advanced mode however I have never seen this option from a boot disk when doing an image restore to a new hard disk.

As for the poster's problem, I would attempt a clone first. If for some reason you cannot clone the drive ie errors, you can then attempt a restore of the image file you made.
 
#11 ·
Yes, just tried it with the new backup and recovery 10 which even has a plug-in for acronis disk director.

I did a complete restore using the boot disk from an image I made about an hour ago. There was no option to resize a partition [even though the disk director plug-in can be accessed using the boot disk]
 
#15 ·
I looked at your other thread. IMO you have waited too long for an image or cloning. Once you have corrupted files, errors, etc, then cloning will simply mirror those errors. Since you post you have data you need from the drive, here is what I would do.

1 Buy a new hard drive. They are very cheap now. I saw a newegg add for a 500gig for $49 with free shipping.

2 Clean install windows on the new drive. Install drivers, do updates, etc.

3 Once done with the install, connect the old drive and attempt to access the data files. Copy what you want. Once done with that, pull the old drive.

4 VERY IMPORTANT. Now come up with a backup plan. You can use an internal drive, external drive, NAS, mapped drive, whatever.

Remember data you do not backup is data you do not care about. With the price of drives so cheap, there is no excuse for the lack of a backup.
 
#16 ·
Yes, just tried it with the new backup and recovery 10 which even has a plug-in for acronis disk director.

I did a complete restore using the boot disk from an image I made about an hour ago. There was no option to resize a partition [even though the disk director plug-in can be accessed using the boot disk]
I restored a 40G drive image to a bare metal 80 and it let me use the entire drive with version 9.
 
#19 ·
I've just fired up the new version H2010 .. The trial DL is no longer fully functional for 15 days :mad:

I've had a HD failure .. So I wont have a spare HD to play with til Wednesday ..
But from what I see in the user guide, page 95>96, you can specify partition sizes ... :up:
It looks like there's even more options in the Partition sizing.

11.1.7. Changing the recovered partition size and location
You can resize and relocate a partition by dragging it or its borders with a mouse on the horizontal
bar on the screen or by entering corresponding values into the appropriate fields.
 
#21 ·
I would do a disk image of your failing drive, then restore the image to your new drive, then a repair/reinstall on the restored image on the new drive to get everything working as it should.

But I don't use Acronis, I use BootIt Next Generation. It will run from a floppy disk.

And my personal backup plan is drive images. Hard to beat.

Visit my homepage for more information.
 
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