New HHD install question(s)......

[smw6230]

Background - I already have A31 recovery disks and a fully operational 40gb HD with XP and recovery program as a backup.

I've read so many posts on how to do this that I'm now confused.

Here is my issue - I want to do a clean XP install on a 250GB HDD. But unlike the 40gb HD I do NOT want to install the IBM factory recovery partition on this HD. Instead I'd like to use Acronis, Paragon, Easeus or some other copy/partition program and copy the new working XP OS, once I get everything up and loaded, into a recovery partition and in essence make that my recovery partition and not have to deal with XP updates that take hours to complete.

Toward that end would my order or processes be:

1 - Run Recovery CDs on new drive.
2 - Update XP with all new system updates.
3 - Load all my personal programs
4 - Download Acronis/Paragon
5 - Boot from said program and create a new recovery partition.

Here is where I'm stumped.

6 - What files should I copy to the new recovery partition. On my current HD the pre load is the entire 40gb HDD.

After I copy that do/should I go back and delete anything off of the main drive tree.

Sorry, I probably could have asked this better but I just couldn't think of a better way to explain it.

[mediasponge]

To me, the real test of recovery is being able to recover quickly in case the hard drive fails. A recovery partition won't do that. I'm not sure how one would build an automatic recovery partition like the OEMs create. What I do is boot from an Acronis CD and run the drive image out to an external drive, then keep the external drive somewhere safe. What you could do with a large internal drive is just make a separate NTFS partition and keep a local copy of the Acronis drive image out there. You need to make it an NTFS partition, because the size of the image file is guaranteed to be larger than 4Gb. I would still copy the image file off to an external drive. Drives are so cheap nowadays, there's no reason not to. I have also been using Clonezilla lately with good results.

[smw6230]

To me, the real test of recovery is being able to recover quickly in case the hard drive fails. A recovery partition won't do that. I'm not sure how one would build an automatic recovery partition like the OEMs create. What I do is boot from an Acronis CD and run the drive image out to an external drive, then keep the external drive somewhere safe. What you could do with a large internal drive is just make a separate NTFS partition and keep a local copy of the Acronis drive image out there. You need to make it an NTFS partition, because the size of the image file is guaranteed to be larger than 4Gb. I would still copy the image file off to an external drive. Drives are so cheap nowadays, there's no reason not to. I have also been using Clonezilla lately with good results.

Got it, so basically use an ultrabay 2nd HDD and just periodically copy the pre load from the new HD over to the old 40gb drive and use that as a backup in case of an emergency.

[mediasponge]

Got it, so basically use an ultrabay 2nd HDD and just periodically copy the pre load from the new HD over to the old 40gb drive and use that as a backup in case of an emergency.

Correct, but once you start updating it, it's no longer a preload, it's a snapshot. Kind of like a restore point, but you are (or should be) taking a snapshot of the entire drive. You can do incremental snapshots with Acronis too.

[smw6230]

Followup question, after I installed the 250 GB drive I notice that only 137gb is showing up. I've searched the board and come up with little concrete information on how to remedy this. Can anyone steer me in the right direction.

I'm pretty sure my problem lies with the partition in that the primary partition is 126gb while there is 104.89gb unallocated.

[Harryc]

You shouldn't be runnng into a 137GB barrier on an A31. Was this a used disc and did it have a Disc Overlay program on it? Or did you clone from another drive with a DO on it? Take us through your install steps ...

[smw6230]

You shouldn't be runnng into a 137GB barrier on an A31. Was this a used disc and did it have a Disc Overlay program on it?

Thanks Harry and to answer your question, it was a brand new straight from the factory sealed drive.

[Harryc]

Was it a fresh install or a clone?

[smw6230]

Was it a fresh install or a clone?

Completely fresh. As testament I went through 4 hours of Microsoft downloads last night.

Not fun!

[mediasponge]

Completely fresh. As testament I went through 4 hours of Microsoft downloads last night.
Not fun!

The horror ... The horror.

Perhaps you missed a prompt during the install and let it choose a partition size the installer thought was safe. If your partition is not the right size, a program like Partition Manager should be able to make it take up the full disk. You might try the UBCD for Windows, which does require some effort on your part to put it all together before burning. It uses your Windows install disks to build a Win-PE type of environment, and makes lots of useful utilities available from a CD boot. See: http://www.ubcd4win.com/index.htm

[smw6230]

The horror ... The horror.

Perhaps you missed a prompt during the install and let it choose a partition size the installer thought was safe. If your partition is not the right size, a program like Partition Manager should be able to make it take up the full disk.

I must have, anyway I got it fixed. I used EASEUS partition master and expanded the primary partition all the way to 230gb while keeping the IBM Service partition. Odd thing is though, f11 no longer appears during boot. The partition is there but the option to load it isn't. I must have screwed up somewhere as this was my first time using any type of partition manager. Easeus made it easy though.

Update - I created the Boot repair disk and used that to restore F11 and now everything works as it should. I'm surprised that I actually had an old floppy lying around.