PCA Forums

Hey all,

I just got a WD 120GB 7200RPM to be used as my primary drive and will replace a WD 60GB. What is the easiest way to clone the 60GB to the 120GB and still have the remaining available. Will not need any partitions, just one BIG drive. Does WD have some software that does it for you?

Thanks in advance for your imputs

Morphius

You want their data lifeguard utility.
http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp

You just put that on a floppy, have both hard drives connected then boot up with a start up disk, switch to the data lifeguard disk and follow the directions to exact copy the contents of one hd to the other.

Depending on the size it may take a couple hours. I've done this many times with WD and maxtor hd's and it's always gone just fine.

Mike,

thanks bro

Anytime Dave

Mike,

BTW, I assume that when I put in the new drive to proceed with the cloning, it'll need to be set up as slave correct? Then after its completed, switch it back to master?

Thx again

I don't believe that matters, it'll ask which hd to copy from and to so you can choose. But then I've always added in the new one as slave, once copied over I switch. I've never tried it the other way but from what I remember it doesn't matter. Once in the data life utilty you'll see, if you have it a a way it won't work you can just turn the system off then set them as needed.

OK,

Got it started, then crapped out Gave me an error, do I need to do a FDISK before I start the copying?

I must be missing a step somewhere

Here is the error:

FATAL ERROR

Although the partitions were sucessfully created, formatting of drive 6 failed

Because copying of drive 5 to drive 6 failed

Because copying of partition 1 failed

Because the file allocation table could not be created

Because there was a device error zeroing drive 6

Absolute sector 730 count 127


Now I am totally baffled

I would say you'd need to fdsik and partition th edrive before you copied it... I've never used that utility but that would be my first guess...

All done,

Used Norton Ghost 2002, and it was a snap...

Using the drive right now and all is going well so far

thanks again for the help fellas

much appreciated

Power Quest's Drive Image is another prog that works for very well for the job as well.

thanks bro

Sorry Dave, I guess that datalife utility is too picky.

I've used the maxtor similar software more and have never had a problem copying one hd to another.

I too would like to copy a HDD to a new one but Ghost 2002 fails to even see the new HDD even though both the DOS end (startup) and Win2K does (Fdisked, formatted now too btw). I posted my situation at Symantecs tech support forum so if no one can come up with a solution, I'll either look for another type of software or give up and not even bother as it's questionable if the newer HDD (same size) is any faster IMO, I doubt that I'd notice it (new Cheetah X15-36LP vs 1.5 yr old Cheetah X15, not -36LP).

EH,

Cant say for certain about SCSI and if anything is different but this is what I did.

1. Made the new drive a slave
2. FDISK'd the new drive
3. Set Ghost 2002 to copy all sectors, even the boot
4. Reset the computer after it was done
6. Switched the slave to master and removed the old master

That was it, worked like a charm

Good Luck