Re: Stopping USB drives from XY4

[J R FOX jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

--- Robert Holmgren  wrote:

> Another thing: if you think that, by thoroughly
> backing up your data to an
> image or to another machine, you'll be able to
> reinstall a Windows operating
> system on a replacement drive or another machine,
> think again. It won't work
> -- not unless the drive geometry is identical (same
> exact hardware).

Well, I'm close to putting part of this proposition to
the test. I've been doing a three drive cloning |
updating - rotation on the Shuttle for a year or two
now. There are multiple OSes on these, including two
boot partitions for W2K. Due to similar concerns for
the integrity of the clone operations, I very
deliberately had the HDDs all be the same 80G WD
model. What I'm hoping to do is to move to a three
drive rotation of identical 120G Seagate models. This
will entail using Partition Magic and DFSEE to adjust
the sizes of some partitions, after the xfer.
Needless to say, I'm hoping that this will work, and
that everything will still be bootable. DOS and eCS
I'm not concerned about, expecting that they should
have no major objections. W2K I'm not so sure about.
It does have its own Disk Administrator, which may or
may not be a safer choice for enlarging the NTFS
partitions.

The system BIOS and other hardware will be remaining
the same. There is really only room for one HDD in
this box, due to the small form factor, and I'm not
going to give up the multiboot. If this doesn't work
out for some reason, I can just go back to the 80 Gig
drives. All the drives were inexpensive, after
various rebates. None of them will go to waste.

> What you _can_ do is a barebones reinstall of the
OpSys, and
> then overwrite everything
> with your old data, excepting a few crucial files
> that are pertinent to the new
> hardware only.

Not good enough, for my purposes. Or too much
trouble.

> (Is it flatass impossible to restore
> an image on new hardware?
> No. If you have a thorough understanding of boot-up
> procedures and low-level
> sectors, of how to write MBRs appropriate to your
> operating system, and of how
> NT boots, you can do it. But unless there are
> deeply knowledgable lurkers
> here, I doubt that anybody in this group has
> anything close to that expertise.

And I definitely ain't one of 'em.

> And it won't be easy, or necessarily successful, in
> the end.)

Well, there are various migration programs on the
market. Aloha Bob PC Relocator was well thought of
for awhile in some circles, but there may now be some
better competitors on the market. I'll try to recall
the names or look them up, if anyone's interested.


Jordan