Problem with system backup/restore (XP) Solved!

kf4sqb · Post by **kf4sqb** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 11:20 pm

OK, here's the situation. The hard drive in my brother's computer isn't dead yet, but it's got one foot in the grave. Bearings going out in it, from the sound of it. It does still work fine for the time being. My brother purchased a new hard drive, and I'm trying to swap everything over for him. What I did is to install a fresh copy of XP onto the new drive. I then swapped the new drive into the slave position, and hooked the old drive back up as the master. Booted up on the old HD, and ran backup, saving the backup file to a folder in the root of the new drive. Take the old drive back out, and swap the new back into the master position. Boot up on the new drive, and 'restore' the backup set saved from the old drive. Here's the problem. When you get through with the restore, it requests a restart. When you try to restart, it winds up in a continous reboot loop. It gets through the screen with the XP logo, and the little blue 'bar' scrolling across the screen, the flashes a BSOD by so fast you can't read it, and reboots. Won't boot in safe mode, either. I haven't tried safe mode with command prompt, because I wouldn't know what to do in this instance if I got a command prompt. I managed (after many, many tries

) to take a photo of the BSOD. It says something about a recent hardware change. The only recent change is the hard drive. What could possibly be the problem here?

k2hz · Post by **k2hz** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 7:12 am

kf4sqb wrote:It says something about a recent hardware change. The only recent change is the hard drive.

I think that is the answer. The system hardware configuration files created from the backup are looking for the old hard drive and do not recognize the new one. I am not very familiar with XP but I don't believe system restore is intended to do what you are attempting.

As far as I know, you need to "clone" the old drive to the new one with software like Norton Ghost or True Image.

Post by **wavetar** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 7:57 am

I'd have to agree. The 'new' XP registry is trying to reconcile with the 'old' XP registry in the back-up, and isn't liking it.

Ideally, the new HDD should be blanked. The old drive should be imaged with Norton or True Image as mentioned above (I like True Image, myself). When the image is loaded onto the new HDD, there won't be competing registry entries...just the original. XP should then have no problem with recognizing the new drive after bootup.

Someone else with more experience using the XP backup utility might be able to suggest something else. I don't know anyone who actually uses it, since the time-tested third party solutions tend to work so well.

Todd

tvsjr · Post by **tvsjr** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 8:40 am

This is easy...

Install both drives, boot from a Symantec Ghost floppy, and ghost partition-to-partition, increasing the size of the partition to fill the new drive. Done.

kb0nly · Post by **kb0nly** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 8:59 am

Yep, you need to copy the old hard drive's partition to the new drive. Been there done that like a hundred times or more by now doing upgrades to a larger drive.

I use Maxblast from Maxtor. You can download a .iso image file to create a bootable cd of the Maxblast III software from their website.

Norton Ghost is ok, but if there is errors on the source drive it's going to copy the error to the destination drive. The Maxblast software makes repairs, like running scandisk, as it does the copy.

Just boot from the CD and select the setting up a new drive, then copy, and just tell it which drive is the source and which is the destination, it will resize the partition to fit, copy the entire partition and make it active then you just switch the new drive to master and remove the old drive and boot up.

If your upgrading, not applicable in the case of replacing a failing drive, then read on...

This is important, don't boot up with the old drive connected as a Slave on the first boot! Boot up first and make sure everything starts up correctly first. Then if you want to put the old drive in as a slave shutdown and add it then boot back up and XP will recognize and install the drive.

ku4zs1 · Post by **ku4zs1** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 9:37 am

You can also use Maxtor Maxblast III CD to do this as well. If this new hard drive is a Maxtor, it comes with this CD. If it is not, I have been told/heard that the Maxtor CD will still work even if both drives are not Maxtors, and you can download the CD from maxtors site. Very easy to use utility, only thing I have seen with this tool is that it seems to take longer than it really should, but its not really really slow.

kb0nly · Post by **kb0nly** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 9:54 am

ku4zs1 wrote:You can also use Maxtor Maxblast III CD to do this as well. If this new hard drive is a Maxtor, it comes with this CD. If it is not, I have been told/heard that the Maxtor CD will still work even if both drives are not Maxtors, and you can download the CD from maxtors site. Very easy to use utility, only thing I have seen with this tool is that it seems to take longer than it really should, but its not really really slow.

The reason why it's a bit slower than others is because it makes repairs and moves stuff around a bit to clean up the existing data that is being transferred.

However, you should still do a disk defrag after you get the new drive going.

ku4zs1 · Post by **ku4zs1** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 1:14 pm

Ah, I see you already mentioned Maxblast, sorry. I should read all posts on a thread before jumping in

kb0nly · Post by **kb0nly** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 1:37 pm

ku4zs1 wrote:Ah, I see you already mentioned Maxblast, sorry. I should read all posts on a thread before jumping in

No problem, just consider it another vote.. LOL

I have been using Maxblast since the first release, now on version III. The version III is needed to deal with NTFS partitions, the older versions will only do FAT partitions.

The version III is a little more graphical than necessary in my opinion, but they dumbed it down so nearly anyone can use it through the pictures and descriptions.

OX · Post by OX » Thu Jan 26, 2006 4:15 am

Most hard disk manuf. provide downloadable software for free to image your old drive to your new drive. The software will read any manuf. drive but will only write to the specific manuf. drive (ie the Maxblast will read anything but only write Maxtor). This should be the recommended way of doing it since the newer drives may need to be prepped. Some computers actually have a utility partition that needs copied as well.

kb0nly · Post by **kb0nly** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 8:31 am

OX wrote:Most hard disk manuf. provide downloadable software for free to image your old drive to your new drive. The software will read any manuf. drive but will only write to the specific manuf. drive (ie the Maxblast will read anything but only write Maxtor). This should be the recommended way of doing it since the newer drives may need to be prepped. Some computers actually have a utility partition that needs copied as well.

Wrong! Well on one account.

The Maxblast software is not limited to writing to Maxtor drives, this i know for absolute certain. I used it just the other day to copy a Fujitsu to a Seagate. It can do any hard drive regardless of manufacturer. The only time it complains is if you try to run the advanced diagnostics on a non-Maxtor drive.

kf4sqb · Post by **kf4sqb** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 9:21 am

Thanks, Scott! MaxBlast did the trick. I had no idea that HD manufacturers had such software available. I knew they had utilities, such as disk diagnostics/repairer, zero-fill, and the like, but I had no idea they had an 'imaging' utility. I'll definately remember it the next time!

kb0nly · Post by **kb0nly** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 9:38 am

Your Welcome.

And what's even better is Maxblast is FREE!! I'm a cheap SOB.

kcbooboo · Post by **kcbooboo** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 12:17 pm

Is MaxBlast similar to DriveCopy and PartitionMagic? I forget who sells these, but I think DriveCopy (maybe it's called DriveImage) will let you make a clone of a disk, and it handles unequal partition sizes as well. I don't know if it does an image copy or a file copy, and I have a very old version of each.

Bob M.

kb0nly · Post by **kb0nly** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 12:24 pm

It's similar to other drive copy utilities. You just run it and select the source and destination drive and it does the rest.

It automatically resizes the partition from a smaller drive to a larger one, you can also go backwards provided that the used space on the larger drive is smaller than the available space on the smaller one.

It also low level formats and does diagnostic tests.

kf4sqb · Post by **kf4sqb** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 9:30 pm

kb0nly wrote:And what's even better is Maxblast is FREE!! I'm a cheap SOB.

I'll second that motion! I'm pretty cheap myself on some things. Also, I forgot to mention earlier, MaxBlast is up to version 4 now.

kb0nly · Post by **kb0nly** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 9:32 pm

Really? Wow.. I will have to go download that, the last time i checked it mentioned version four but it wasn't available for download yet.

Thanks for the heads up!

kf4sqb · Post by **kf4sqb** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 9:46 pm

No problem. This is why we need a chat forum of some sort on here. You and I at least are usually on here at the same time. Actually, in a way, I guess we do have a 'chat' feature. Did you sign up for a 'Bat-Phone' account?

kb0nly · Post by **kb0nly** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 9:55 pm

Bat-Phone... Ok, i missed something.

kf4sqb · Post by **kf4sqb** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 10:05 pm

It's a VoIP phone network for Batboard members. Free to us, graciously hosted by John, K4WTF. I'm not even sure it's still in place and working, but I think it is. You'd have to get with John to get an account. There were several topics/pages about it in the old lounge, which is, unfortunately, gone. Get with John about it, if you're interested.

BTW, you can use a hardware phone, or a software phone. I'm using a software phone. No fancy equipment needed, just a computer with speakers and mic, or a headset, and a piece of free (that's right, you cheap SOB, I said free!!!

) software.

kb0nly · Post by **kb0nly** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 10:17 pm

Me? Cheap?

Ok, i think i remember something about that from the lounge now that you mention it!

Anywho, i suppose we drifted off far enough from the original topic.

I downloaded the new version four of Maxblast, i'll make use of it next week on a hard drive upgrade and check it out. I'll report back if there is any real difference from version three. According to the info on it at the website it will still do any manufacturers drive.

Some just make their software usable only on their drives to encourage you to buy their products, not because it can't work with other drives. Other than the laptops here my computers have nothing but Maxtor drives in them, but only because i have had very little trouble with them.

kf4sqb · Post by **kf4sqb** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 10:49 pm

kb0nly wrote:I'm a cheap SOB.

Yes, you, cheap!

Anywho, thanks again for the help. I'm going to bed now (it's 1:50 AM here).

kcbooboo · Post by **kcbooboo** » Fri Jan 27, 2006 5:11 am

I think I heard that Maxtor is buying Seagate, or is it the other way around? That'll reduce the number of hard drive manufacturers a bit. It also may explain why MaxBlast doesn't restrict itself to just Maxtor drives.

I've had very bad luck with Maxtor drives, so I only use Western Digital. Unfortunately, WD shortened their warranty period (used to be 3 years like everyone else); I think you get 1 year for free but must pay for the luxury of getting 3 years. These days, drives are so cheap, does it really pay to send one back when you can get a larger one for less money and get it at commodity stores (Staples, OfficeMax, CircuitCity, BestBuy, etc)?

Bob M.

OX · Post by OX » Fri Jan 27, 2006 8:08 pm

Similar topic: Anyone have any suggestions at recovering files backed up using MS Migration Tool (aka File and Settings Transfer Wizard)? I have the resulting .DAT files but the originals are long gone.

I get the wizard running and it gets about 33% restored but then stops. The .DAT files are 13GB total. According to the docs, I need that times 4 to do a restore because it has the original files, unpacks to a temp directory, rebuilds the file structure and then renames the files, or something like that, but it says 4 times the original backup set size.

Anyone know of something that will "unzip" the files properly without all that extra drive space? The max I have available is 40GB on any one drive.

I found a command line utility that sort of does the trick, but it decompresses the first two .DAT files and stops.

Thanks.

MattSR · Post by **MattSR** » Thu May 11, 2006 6:27 pm

A quick note about the original topic - you can use NTBackup to restore one backup to a different hard drive, howeveryou need to use the ASR feature of XP. when you are installing XP on the new hard disk, press F8 at the prompt to start the ASR process.

I would always use an imaging tool over NTBackup ASR though... its much quicker and more reliable.

Cheers,
Matt

Problem with system backup/restore (XP) Solved!

Problem with system backup/restore (XP) Solved!

Re: Problem with system backup/restore (XP)

Problem solved!