[ale] OT: Copying a complete hard drive

[Calvin Harrigan]

John Wells wrote:

>Guys,
>
>Finally got this to work, although it wasn't very straightforward.
>
>I imaged the disk using partimage (partimage.org) and Knoppix.  I then
>booted the target laptop into knoppix, connected to the original machine,
>and transferred it over.  I took approximately 2 hours to restore 15 GB.
>
>However, Windows XP wouldn't boot.  The bootloader pulled up fine, but if
>I tried to boot in anything but safe mode, I'd get a blank screen.  If I
>*did* boot in safe mode, it would begin booting and list a number of
>drivers out of the multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partion(1)\Windows\System
>directory it was loading, and then it would just halt.
>
>As a last resort, I popped in the XP cd.  Instead of dropping to the
>recovery console, I pressed "Enter" to begin re-installing XP.  On the
>next screen, you have the option of choosing to try and repair a current
>installation.  I opted for that, and the system went through a (seemingly)
>full install process, with "Time remaining" indicators and standard in
>progress promotional material.
>
>When it was finished, I reboot, and voila...my system was restored.  All
>software from the original drive was in place and working.  All settings
>restored, etc.
>
>So, while it wasn't as easy as I had hoped, it still did work.  I'm not
>exactly certain what caused the problem initially, but glad the end turned
>out ok.
>
>Thanks,
>John
>
>
>
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>
>  
>
It probably halted on hardware mis-matches and driver issues..  Doing 
the repair seems to have taken care of it.  Congrats.