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Geek Culture / HDD Problems

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MSon
20
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Joined: 13th Jul 2004
Location: Earth, (I Think).
Posted: 24th Jun 2008 16:09 Edited at: 24th Jun 2008 16:11
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I've got a friend whos PC keeps restarting itself every few hours without any warning, sometimes when it restarts it fails to recognize the HDD so you have to switch it off then on at the wall, then go into Bios to redetect the HDD, it is an old drive so im thinking of tryng to transfering the contents to a new HDD to replace it, but is this possable as i know windows can be fissy about changing hardware, and if so then what free programme would you recommend for this?

Id perfer to do it this way as i cant be bothered reinstalling all his Software, Drivers ect.

Everyone Be Cool, You, Be Cool.
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Mr Makealotofsmoke
17
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Joined: 10th Dec 2006
Location: BillTown (Well Aust)
Posted: 25th Jun 2008 14:20 Edited at: 25th Jun 2008 14:21
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tried updating bios?

if the hdd has SMART on it just could get speedfan and use the SMART thingy in it to assess the hdd's life.

also for cloning the hdd use nortan ghost. Nortan is evil but it works. Used it on my dad's pc...30gig to 500gig, C:/ drive. Not free but u get that that..


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hessiess
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Joined: 30th Mar 2007
Location: pc!
Posted: 25th Jun 2008 23:47
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any Linux live cd would be able to move files from one hdd to another one.

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xyzz1233
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Joined: 18th Nov 2007
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Posted: 26th Jun 2008 00:40
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I think there is a worm that does this... Have you done a virus scan recently?
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MSon
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Joined: 13th Jul 2004
Location: Earth, (I Think).
Posted: 26th Jun 2008 12:01
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I did a virus scan, but it didn't help, I've got norton ghost somewhere because it came with a motherboard so ill switch the HDD this weekend, i cant say im supprised the HDD's starting to fail as this is about the 10th computer its been in over the years.

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Zappo
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Joined: 27th Oct 2004
Location: In the post
Posted: 26th Jun 2008 16:09
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For cloning a Windows hard drive I have had excellent results from DriveImage XML. Its completely free and can clone one drive to another, or copy the used sectors of any drive to another location as an image file (e.g. an external USB drive). Its very simple and can split the image file into 640Mb chunks as it goes so you can burn them off to CD later if you want to keep a backup - very handy. This also gets around the 2GB filesize limit on FAT32 drives, which most external USB drives are.
I created a bootable XP CD with it on (using Windows PE) so I could copy the primary booting drive in my laptop to my USB hard disk, install a new drive, then restore the image to that. Its faster this way because it can use Volume Locking but it should work fine if you boot to your primary drive as it can also use Volume Shadow Services to copy parts of the drive which are still in use.

Worked a treat for me.


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