Cloning Vista Installation.

[FreoHeaveho]

I have recently bought a 200GB SATA2 drive from ebay that will be significantly faster than my current 232GB PATA drive that has my Vista installation.

I am very happy with the way I have my current set up and would prefer to clone it over to the new drive. Can someone assist me please on the best way to do this. I have read that the new (or destination) drive needs to be the same size or larger. Is this true and if so is there a way around that? I also would like some advice on any freeware, or relatively cheap and reliable software that would make this process as painless as possible.

thanking you guys in advance!

[dai]

the drive manufacturers usually have a utility in their d/l section for it
or
http://www.techsupportforum.com/

[Doby]

From what I heard xxclone is not compatible with vista, never tried it though,
anyone try it yet?

[FreoHeaveho]

Hey guys, I noticed from Dai's thread "how to copy operating system..." that there is an option of not writing the boot.ini file. As this is a Vista installation I want to copy, would it be better to not write the boot.ini file? Any other suggestions on ensuring a successful Vista clone?

[FreoHeaveho]

ps and what do you guys think of this http://www.multibooters.co.uk/cloning.html

[dai]

it appears to have it nailed down he's tried and tested it as ok

[FreoHeaveho]

ok, xxclone didn't give me any options for either source or destination drives?? Also, i get an error when trying to do a fresh install on the new SATA drive along the lines of "installation engine failed". Any clues?

[dai]

is the bios set up for the sata and did you load the driver with f6
i have never seen that message come up before

[FreoHeaveho]

Hi Dai

Yes I set the bios as per my mannual and there isn't any F6 option in Vista anymore. Although I did try to search for drivers when selecting which hard drive to install to. It finds none that are available. I go through the install from within window (on another drive), or i disconnect that drive and simply try a fresh install to the SATA drive as per normal.

It goes through the process of installing and then comes up with the "Sorry, installation deployment engine was unable to initialise...." Very anoying. Can someone take me through installation of a SATA2 drive on a 965P S3 board (http://www.giga-byte.co.uk/Support/M...l&FileID=17874)

I know this is a big ask, but basically I want to boot Vista from the SATA2 drive with a fresh installation. (i have given up on the cloning). The link above is the manual, which is for XP frustratingly, so I am doing a lot of guess work. Much appreciated!

[dai]

when the screen comes up listing the drives during the install
look at the bottom and you will see
load 3rd party drivers
format
make active ect.
look at page 65 in the manual
with the cmos set at default it should see the h/d
only connect the sata h/d to start with

[FreoHeaveho]

Thank you very much Dai. However I managed to use Paragon Drive Backup *(v8.1) to do a cloning - in a suprisingly easy and fast manner. It worked really really well, although I had to call MS to reactivate my Windows again, successful though. So I have increased my Windows Experience Index from 4.2 to 5.9 which is reasonable I think.

Thanks a lot guys, I am still learning in a steep curve so, cheers for the patience.

Ben

[dai]

mine is on 4.3 because of my p4 3.2 cpu
i like the look of that m/b

[FreoHeaveho]

Yes it is a nice mobo, however I would probably go for the solid capies if i bought it again ie the DS3.

Is that P4 oc'd?

I will be in WA in a few weeks cannot wait to get home actually.

[dai]

no i only surf not much point

[FreoHeaveho]

No, especially when considering the heat they pump out. Have a good one Dai and cheers!

[60307a]

Cloning the drive and using a virtual drive is against the EULA, just so ya know.