Changing harddisk

[alexander]

sanctus, were you able to boot from external?

[alexander]

sorry, another post, but what hardware are we talking about here, if you have a pre-made machine, can you post make and model, then we'll be able to tell you if it supports booting from USB, also if it is not a pre-made machine, can you post the mobo maker and model and the bios you are running?

 

that is ofcourse if you have not been able to boot externally :rolleyes:

[sanctus]

Since I'm working outside (cut wood all day today...the chainsaw can get quite heavy...) all day now at night I'm too tired to try out so far. And every time I turn my laptop on I forget to watch.

So it is a Dell Latitude D810.

 

Thanks for all so far.

[alexander]

from everything i am reading your system supports usb boot.... you may need to upgrade the bios :)

[freeztar]

You can boot from USB with that comp. :)

 

Running Windows XP from a USB-Stick / HDD

[LaurieAG]

wow, the oldest drive i have working is a 350MB Toshiba drive.... lol i should dig around school, i bet they have like a 40MB drive working somewhere.... Well hell, they have the like 5Mb disk stacks that have a case and all to carry them around. Dunno if its working.

 

Hi Alexander,

 

The last 40GB I handled was in 2002 when I upgraded an old PC (probably a 386). The interesting thing was that I had to use a 1998 Motherboard to transfer the old HDD data to another younger HDD that could be read by the 2002 Motherboard. It looks like they dropped the BIOS support for the older/smaller hard drives around 2000.

[freeztar]

The last 40GB I handled...

 

Hi LaurieAG,

 

I'm guessing you mean 40MB, no? ;)

[LaurieAG]

Hi LaurieAG,

 

I'm guessing you mean 40MB, no? ;)

 

You got it.

[alexander]

Hey Laurie,

 

Question for you, was it the computer that could not see the drive, or was it the OS that could not read it? Yes it may sound like the same thing, but it most certainly is not :hihi:

[LaurieAG]

Hey Laurie,

 

Question for you, was it the computer that could not see the drive, or was it the OS that could not read it? Yes it may sound like the same thing, but it most certainly is not ;)

 

Hi Alexander,

 

The old drive was circa 1992 and the new drive was 2002. The Award BIOS (Basic Input Output System) on the 2002 PC MB didn't support the older drives (?LBA) but they were supported on the PC with the 1998 MB so I could transfer the files as I stated.

[alexander]

very interesting.... hmm... i'll have to keep that one in mind, thank you for telling me something i've been pondering about for a great while for, yep you've confirmed my fears. Oh and i havent had time to test that, so it was an ever growing suspense :D

[alexander]

Oh and i would still have liked to see if you could connect that drive over a IDE/USB connector and see the data...

[sanctus]

Ok. so eventually I will get a new harddisk for my laptop and hence I have to do this I postponed for almost exactly a year B)

 

So you all propose to use dd?

And, what is the best way to check if it worked? I mean I can take out the old harddisk and then boot external and see if it works. But I have a feeling that this is no real test.

Thing is that I get the new harddisk on guarantee, that implies though that I have to send in the old one (which is still working, but since my guarantee ends tomorrow, I called today to get it) and hence I have to be sure that it works and all is there.

 

Eventually man dd doesn't say much and is not really clear:

XXX WARNING: old character encoding and/or character set
XXX
DD(1)                            User Commands                           DD(1)

NAME
      dd - convert and copy a file

SYNOPSIS
      dd [OPERAND]...
      dd OPTION

DESCRIPTION
      Copy a file, converting and formatting according to the operands.

(...)

It is not even shown where and how I have to write the file (actually complete disk) I want to copy...

[alexander]

sanctus, grab a copy of the system rescue cd, and use the partimage util, make several copies of your partitions to make sure.

 

also write down your partition table, file systems and partition sizes labels and options, it may prove very helpful when you are recreating them.

 

just grab an external drive, mount it and write the backups there, also compression helps a lot.

 

partimage is my favorite cd for that purpose B)

 

Main Page - SystemRescueCd

 

for documentation on partimage, visit their page: Main Page - Partimage

 

hope this helps :doh:

[sanctus]

Ok, I looked at the pages, sounds easy enough. But since it does images (which I don't really know what they are) can I save them to the external hardisk and then boot from there (ie image=clone) to check or is the image a really different thing?

I would love to have a clone.

 

also write down your partition table, file systems and partition sizes labels and options, it may prove very helpful when you are recreating them.

ok, to check if I understood right:

partition table is just the partitions I have,i.e. 1 dell,1 windows,1 shared, 3 linux, etc

file systems is if it is Ntfs,fat32 and so on

sizes and labels:that is obvious :)

 

Again huge thanks.

[alexander]

image just means an exact copy, thats all

 

yes partition table is the position (first second last), the size, and whether the partition is physical or logical (also it may be bootable or not) (i mean i can go into what it is in CS, but its info you probably care little about :) )

 

correct on the file system :)

[sanctus]

wtf, I just lost all my long message...this new touch pad (where you also have 3 and 4 finger option by the way!!) needs getting used to it.

 

anyway, partimage-site does that one should avoid to use fat system when possible, but the external hard disk I got is in fat32...I know to format it to any other system would not be a problem. But this actually raised another question: if I want to be able to boot from my external harddisk, I need to put every partition on my hardisk now to one in one of a corresponding format on the external hd? I mean if a copy just the images of my linux into an ntfs system it will store it (will it?) but I won't be able to use it.

 

Also, when putting back to the new harddisk , can I change the sizes of the different partitions as long as everything fits in?

 

And last question, the fact that partimage does not copy blanck spaces ilike dd s just a gain speed but not in efficiency