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Installing an old hard drive question

P

Prizef1ghter

Weaksauce
Joined
Jun 10, 2004
Messages
105
I know that in general it is not a good idea to install a hard drive that already has an OS and program files onto a brand new mb and proc from a previous one. That said, if you absolutely, positively, had to do exactly that, how would you go about doing it? A long time ago, I did do it and it obviously booted up into Windows and I went through about an hour of chipset detections and reboots for the new hardwares. After it finished, it was fine. What about todays hardware and software? Would it be as forgiving? Any ideas you may have or web links to this question would be appreciated.

Keep in mind. I am well aware that in a sane world, one would backup the data/files and reinstall everything from an fdisked drive. But I don't have that luxury. The OS thats on the old drive is Win2kPro....going from an old 250mhz AMD chip and mb to a 1gig AMD TBird and an Asus MB with more ram. Also the old drive has 4 partitions.

Thanks for the replies in advance.

This is my first of many posts. I'm glad I found this place, its 100% born-again [H]ard!!!
 
You should not have data loss problems.
If the old hard drive was on the same chipset (exemple VIA) and your new mobo is also VIA chipset based , it wouldn't cause too much problems usuallly.
 
you shouldnt have any problems provided
1. its NTFS
2. your not booting into it
3. you deal with the permissions issues

attach the HDD in a physical configuration placing it after the current HDD in the boot scan order
the first HDD accessed is Primary Channel (IDE 0) Master (Device 0)
so if that is the current OS HDD, youll boot into that, (alternately, change your boot ord4er in the BIOS)

once your in disable simple file sharing and take ownership of files and folders

then start salvage operations
 
^^ This man speaks the truth. Follow his directions, and I'd be suprised if there are any problems.
 
What about this. Disable any hardware drivers that might be specific to the motherboard, IDE etc. Swap drive to new rig. Boot up to W2k CD. Perform install/repair when prompted.
 
Naw, the clone thing is not really applicable to what i'm gonna do. Good info and prog anyways.
 
Sysprep srtips an Windows W2K\XP of all hardware specific drivers and registry entries
so that you can cast it to say a couple of hundered different computers
with applications and other configurations in place

when you get to the part, where youd typically do the cast (clone)

just move the HDD to your new computer instead


but if something goes wrong your screwed cause you did it to your only copy
so clone it first as a backup, and if something does go wrong, review the proceedure again tweak abit and try again from the backup cklone (after making another copy)

--------------------------------------------------------cut and paste

Sysprep, properly employed works like a charm
however the properly employed part is the catch :p
the learning curve while not all that steep is there
so...
balance that against the time needed to reinstall from scatch

consider that this is an Admin tool that enables you to cast the OS to hundreds of computers, it works quite well

How to Prepare Images for Disk Duplication with Sysprep

you wont be duplicating but the prep is what counts

Sysprep is a tool designed for corporate system administrators, OEMs, and others who need to deploy the Windows® XP operating system on multiple computers. After performing the initial setup steps on a single system, you can run Sysprep to prepare the sample computer for cloning.

To use Sysprep as part of the disk duplication process, the following requirements must be met:

The master installation and the destination computers must have compatible hardware abstraction layers (HALs). For example, HAL APIC and HAL MPs (multiprocessor systems) are compatible, whereas HAL PIC (Programmable Interrupt Controller) is not compatible with either HAL APIC or HAL MPs.

The mass–storage controllers (IDE or SCSI) must be identical between the reference and destination computers.

Plug and Play devices such as modems, sound cards, network cards, video cards, and so on, do not have to be the same.

However, any device drivers not included in Drivers.cab should be included in the master installation before you run Sysprep.

Alternatively, make sure the uninstalled drivers are available on the destination computer at first run, so Plug and Play can detect and install the drivers.

Third–party software or disk–duplicating hardware devices are required. These products create binary images of a computer’s hard disk, and they either duplicate the image to another hard disk or store the image in a file on a separate disk.

The size of the destination computer’s hard disk must be at least the same size as the hard disk of the master installation. If the destination computer has a larger hard disk, the difference is not included in the primary partition. However, you can use the ExtendOemPartition entry in the Sysprep.inf file to extend the primary partition if it was formatted to use the NTFS file system.

Note If the reference and destination computers have different BIOS versions, you should test the process first to ensure success. When using Sysprep for Disk Duplication, Sysprep modifies the local computer Security ID (SID) so that it is unique to each computer

How to prepare a master installation for cloning

1 Install Windows XP on a master computer. As a best practice, Microsoft recommends that Windows XP be installed from a distribution folder by using an answer file to help ensure consistency in configuring the master installation, so that iterative builds can be created and tested more readily. See Unattend.txt for information about automating Windows Setup using an answer file.

2 Log on to the computer as an administrator.

3 (Optional) Install and customize applications, such as Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer favorite items, and so on.

4 (Optional) Install any device drivers not included in Drivers.cab and not installed by the answer file.

5 (Optional) Run audit tests.

6 (Optional) If you want, create a Sysprep.inf file manually or with the aid of Setup Manager. This file is used to further customize each computer for the user and helps to set the amount of information for which the user will be prompted during Mini–Setup.

7 Run Sysprep.exe. Make sure that both the Sysprep.exe and Setupcl.exe files exist together in the %systemdrive%\Sysprep folder on the local hard disk. When used, the Sysprep.inf also needs to be in the same folder or on a floppy disk that is inserted when the Windows boot menu appears.
Important If Setupcl.exe is not in the same directory as Sysprep.exe, Sysprep will not work.

8 If the computer is ACPI–compliant, the computer will shut down by itself. If not, a dialog box appears stating that it is safe to shut down the computer.
Click to expand...

9 Take out the system drive and move it to the new computer


More >

seems I made a slight error, you can go from a APIC single processor HAL to a APIC Dual Processor HAL
(Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller)
which all modern computers are currently employing


what I would do is clone your HDD as it is right now
then run the sysprep on the original and try it
if it doesnt work
you have the clone, you could try again to resolve whatever hung up the first time or simply do a fresh install and then add the clone to migrate any data over since your not booting into it


on my [H]ome|Forum members employ sysprep without issue all the time, but without a list of the components from and to, there could be issues, this could save you alot of time, but definately BACKUP first

note APIC and ACPI are two seperate and confusing acronyms :p

------------------------------------------------^ excerpt from an answer I made in a different forum
so overlook the inconsistancies in the "answer" to questions not asked :p

now if your just salvaging data from an old OS refer to my first post, you dont boot into or migrate the OS just conduct rescue operations and its far simpler
 
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