How to duplicate entire sysetm on new drive

[edcentric]

Without buying a copy of Ghost. My wifes machine is eating yet another Deathstar drive (this will be #4). I am buying a new WD today.
Is there a simple way is W2k to mover everything to the new drive? I want to set it up as the master and wipe the old one. The IBM will work OK for data, but not OS.
Right now it bluescreens on every boot, but no other faults.

[Straight_Man]

TECHNICALLY, you pay for program or in learning time. Linux, from a live CD or recovery CD boot, can mirror a drive with the dd command-- innately. So, while there IS a way, you will want to copy things, keep old HD intact until you know move works, then delete later. Mid-price alternative is to use DiskCopy, from PowerQuest. It is more intuitive than doing this from the console in Linux and knowing lots of flags and switches, and not as expensive as Ghost Pro.

I've used Partition Magic to do this, partition by partition, and the key is to move the boot part first, make an extended part, then replicate the other logicals into the extended part. BUT, where you have dynamic volumes this will not work right-- if you have a single HD instance of XP, and no dynamic volumes, I can outline how to use just partition magic, though there will be some hoops you have to jump through carefully in the process. Note: PM 8.01 is what you want for XP, for easiest move IF you know part structures on HDs and how to make them.

[GHoosdum]

I haven't found a freeware ghosting program that was as bulletproof as Norton Ghost yet. The last time I tried to cheap out a ghosting, I wound up doing a complete reformat/reinstall a few weeks later, due to some extra very small partitions that the program produced on the drive, as well as some inaccessible data.

[tefleming]

Uhh, if you're BSOD-ing at every boot, do you really want to replicate the contents of the deathstar? I'd think you'd be better off installing clean on the WD and then transferring.

[Thrax]

It's BSODing because it's a deathstar and they suck. I'm about 97% sure that those errors won't be replicated.

[GHoosdum]

True. BSODs these days are usually hardware related.

[Mt_Goat]

WD's as well as some other drives come with what you want on the tools disc that comes with a new drive. It's all done in dos.

[Straight_Man]

It's BSODing because it's a deathstar and they suck. I'm about 97% sure that those errors won't be replicated.

Yeah, unless the Deathstar has already scragged things as far as system files.... TRY the move first, though!