HD Upgrade and R&R

[Dale H. Cook]

I don't see my questions covered completely in any other topic, so I'm starting a new one. If there is already an appropriate topic please refer me to it and I'll ask the moderator to kill this one.

When I received my T60 I made an R&R CD set. Now I'm ready to upgrade the HD, but want to maintain a working R&R CD set.

1) If I Ghost the old drive onto the new one will the old R&R set still work? If not, can I create a new set from the newly Ghosted drive?

2) If neither option above will work, can I use the existing R&R set to install XP on the new drive? I've seen this addressed for factory R&R sets, but mine is home-made, not factory. That, of course, would require re-installing all of my software on the new drive, which I would like to avoid.

[rbena]

1) I'm assuming your R&R CD set was created using the T60's internal program for creating 'Product Recovery discs' from the hidden partition on the hard drive. This R&R disc set will configure a hard drive (including your old or new drive) to the original factory state for the T60. Of course you would also lose any personal files you've installed, so you'll need to back up any important files first.

Of interest, once you've successfully configured the new hard drive using these R&R CD's, you can then create another set of R&R CD's from the new drive's factory installation - and these CD's will be identical to your first R&R CD set.

With your Ghost program, be sure you're aware of the correct procedure for cloning the old drive to the new drive on the T60. Otherwise you may not succeed in having a working hidden partition or indeed a bootable drive.

Acronis True Image is another excellent program for cloning drives on the T60, and allows manual resizing of partitions and setting file types prior to doing the clone.

Information on cloning using Ghost and Acronis is available by searching the forums.

2) You can also use your R&R discs to install an XP factory load on your new drive for the T60, providing the discs contain the XP factory installation. As you've mentioned, you would also have to install and reconfigure your personal software - but this is better than having to install a commercial XP CD, and then having to manually configure the T60 with all the proprietary drivers and apps - before installing your personal software.

3) Once you've set up your new hard drive and personal software, you may want to create an image of your new drive, again using Ghost or Acronis True Image. This image will allow you to reinstall your reconfigured system, versus a factory install from the R&R discs. This will save hours of time - if you're unfortunate to have your hard drive fail, or a virus or file corruption occurs.

[fataljn]

ah ok, I finally understand how R&R works. thanks.

[Dale H. Cook]

I'm assuming your R&R CD set was created using the T60's internal program for creating 'Product Recovery discs' from the hidden partition on the hard drive.

It was.

This R&R disc set will configure a hard drive (including your old or new drive) to the original factory state for the T60.

That is what I was looking for. I wanted to be able to set ant replacement drive to the factory state.

Acronis True Image is another excellent program for cloning drives on the T60, and allows manual resizing of partitions and setting file types prior to doing the clone.

After reading a numcer of threads, I opted for Acronis, as Ghost had to run from DOS to accomodate the -IB switch, and I had no DOS driver for my external drive housing.

The HD upgrade went flawlessly. I had considered the 200 GB 7200 RPM Hitachi, but the purpose of the upgrade was to gain maximum drive space in order to store data that had been on dozens of CDs and DVDs. Since storage was far more important than access speed I installed a 320 GB 5400 RPM Western Digital drive.

[rbena]

Good to hear you've had success with this - and that you've discovered Acronis.

I still find Ghost useful for imaging from DOS for Windows 2000, as it is extremely reliable.

However, with the added options of Acronis, I find it more attractive for disk cloning, as well as for imaging XP and Vista.

I would encourage you to test any images you make with Acronis, to ensure they perform OK. There are a few stories of images being created OK, but not loading successfully later on. This has never happenned for me in years of imaging with Ghost, but perhaps XP and Vista require extra care.

Again, many thanks for your feedback.

[ZaZ]

If you get a Seagate drive you can get a free download of DiscWizard from Seagate's website. DiscWizard is essentially True Image for all intents and purposes.