Re-install recovery partition on new drive?

[katz]

I need to replace a hard drive in an XP desktop. No restore/recovery disks, but there is a recovery partition on the old drive.

Is there a way to copy that partition to the new drive & restore from it?

 

[alluseridsrejected]

you need a disk cloning program (assuming the old drive is readable). I personally use Ghost, but it is not free.

This thread has good suggestions:

http://www.technibble.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35859&highlight=acronis

 

[PCX]

ddrescue

or

gparted will work in some cases

 

[alluseridsrejected]

You can also get there with drive image xml which is free. It has been a while since I used it and it was painfully slow. The way I remember doing it was using UBCD4WIN. It is already installed in there. I booted from UBCD4WIN, took backup of C: drive with di xml. (need somewhere to backup to like network drive map or usb drive). Then I restored to the new drive hooked up as USB device.

You could also just hook the old and new drive into another PC and run di xml from there. again, it is still slow and as i remember, requires backup, then restore. But it is very easy.

Best way though is probably like what was already mentioned using ddrescue or other cloning. It is a breeze with Ghost!

 

[Knightsman]

I use EASEUS Todo Backup, works like a charm. Just make sure you set the partition as active.

 

[katz]

I use EASEUS Todo Backup, works like a charm. Just make sure you set the partition as active.

I am familiar with Easeus, I will give this a try. After it is copied over to new drive, will I get the recovery option screen when I boot the pc, or is there something I am missing here?

 

[Encrypted Existence]

I use EASEUS Todo Backup, works like a charm. Just make sure you set the partition as active.

+1...awesome program packed with functionality.

 

[Knightsman]

I am familiar with Easeus, I will give this a try. After it is copied over to new drive, will I get the recovery option screen when I boot the pc, or is there something I am missing here?

Depends on the manufacturer, each one has a different process of getting to the partition.

What kind is it?

 

[katz]

The manufacturer of the pc? It is an e-machines. I have the hard drive in my bench dock right now because I am pulling data off of it.

The pc won't boot, so I wanted to clone/copy the recovery partition off of it, if that is possible. Am I doing this the right way? I assume I choose "Partition clone"?

 

[katz]

First time doing this;

Do I want "sector by sector" clone? When I choose that option, will I be able to re-size the partition afterwards?

We don't want multiple storage partitions, just one main windows partition, and of course the recovery partition.

 

[Knightsman]

I tried an machine earlier today and wasn't able to get it to work. But I normally don't do sector by sector. It should give you an options at the beginning to make sure its the right size

Sent from my DROID2 using Tapatalk

 

[katz]

I'm cloning from a usb dock through my bench pc & out to another usb dock. I am attempting to clone around 185 gb.

So far it has taken 11 hrs. & it is about 60% completed. Does this sound like a typical time? Seems like it is taking too long. Maybe it is slower because I am using usb for both drives?

BTW, I am not doing sector by sector.

 

[katz]

I gave up on this clone, time to do a fresh install, I guess. It looks like the source drive is too damaged to read properly for the clone process.

 

[Larry Sabo]

I've had good luck in these cases by doing a drive image, skipping bad sectors, then restoring the image to the new drive. No idea why that works when the clone process itself fails because of errors, but it usually does. That's using ATI.

 

[katz]

I've had good luck in these cases by doing a drive image, skipping bad sectors, then restoring the image to the new drive. No idea why that works when the clone process itself fails because of errors, but it usually does. That's using ATI.

Good info., thanks. I will give that a try to see if it works for me.