eddy...
In short, yes - assuming you successfully clone the old drive
to the new laptop's drive, the cloning process will preserve
all the program files, personal settings and your preferences
within every program, as well as those within the Windows
operating system itself.
Cautions and pitfalls:
Laptops come with hard drives which allow for password protection.
If the drive you're cloning is password protected, make sure that
the password is removed before you clone it. Otherwise the password
might get cloned onto the new drive, and the password is dependent
on the computer in which the drive is installed. So make sure the
drive is unlocked in the old machine before it's cloned.
Microsoft XP recognizes the hardware configuration of the machine
it's installed on, and if it detects different hardware, such as
a different processor, sound card, or video processor, it may
require that you re-authenticate your copy of Windows. I didn't
keep XP for that reason, so I can't say for sure, but the worst
case scenario might be that MS wants to charge you for installing
your copy on a new machine. On the other hand, they may just give
you a new code to authenticate it on the new computer. There may
also be less-than-legal ways to get around this, but if this kind
of information exists, the GA Terms of Service prohibit me from
posting it.
If you're using a more lenient version of Windows, such as 2000,
the OS will still recognize changes in the hardware configuration
of your new system. Given the plug and play nature of Windows, it
will probably recover on first boot long enough to find and install
drivers for the new hardware, but there's a slim chance that it
won't be able to boot up to the point of initializing the plug
play process. This isn't likely to happen as a result of such
hardware as your video or sound, but it's conceivable that there
might be a problem with the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers or some
other critical piece of hardware which Windows needs to get up,
read the drive, and initialize the plug and play process.
If bootup fails for any other than the locked drive I first spoke
of, you've lost nothing but some time, as you can always reformat
the drive and start over with a reinstall. Offhand, I'd say your
chances are very good at succeeding, with my biggest reservation
being re-authenticating Windows XP.
Please do not rate this answer until you are satisfied that
the answer cannot be improved upon by way of a dialog
established through the "Request for Clarification" process.
sublime1-ga |
Request for Answer Clarification by
eddy05-ga
on
28 Dec 2005 07:40 PST
Thanks. These answers and comments have made me nervous, but also
wondering: I have the "image" of the original hard drive on an
external drive, made with Acronis True Image. On the new computer I
need to install Acronis, then open the software, point it to the image
on the external drive, then request that it restore the full image of
the drive onto the new computer's drive. Can it do that? Operate off
of a drive at the same time it is replacing the contents of the drive
or am I missing something. I don't know how to take drives out of
laptops, nor do I want to learn...
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Clarification of Answer by
sublime1-ga
on
28 Dec 2005 13:14 PST
eddy...
Your clarification brings up a plan which I had not anticipated.
I had thought you were familiar and comfortable with the process
of removing a laptop drive (as I really know of no other way to
clone a drive), and that you would be removing the drive from the
new laptop and slaving it to the old one in order to clone the
new to the old.
I'm not as familiar with Acronis as I am with other cloning tools,
so I don't know that it can work in the manner you've suggested,
but it seems unlikely. Restoring an image from another drive to
the operating drive doesn't seem plausible, since it requires
that the operating drive format itself and thus eliminate the
software it's using to restore the image.
The method I've used is to slave the new drive to the old, which
has the cloning software on it, then run the software, which can
either restore the slaved drive from an image on the old drive,
or from the active drive itself.
The software I've used which seems the easiest is Western Digital's
Data Lifeguard, which formats and partitions the slaved drive and
somehow manages to then copy every file, including system files in
use (which are sometimes inaccessible in Windows 2000 and XP while
the system is up and running) to the new drive.
I'm not sure if Data Lifeguard will work for non-Western Digital
drives, but it's free, and seems worth a try. It's the Tools for
Windows 11 on this page:
http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp
Another tool I've used with success is DrvClonerXP, which has
a terrific and educational helpfile about the process of
cloning, and can work from a command prompt. I'd recommend
downloading it if only for the sake of reading the helpfile
in order to learn more. It includes a tutorial on Drive
Imaging Basics for XP and instructs you on the use of
the Windows command xcopy for making clones, as well.
Here are reviews and a download from Sofotex.com:
http://www.sofotex.com/reviews/r7530.html
The same author also created DrvImagerXP, which makes
images of the hard drive, while DrvClonerXP simply does
a bit-to-bit copy:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Back-Up-and-Recovery/DrvImagerXP.shtml
As for Acronis, I waded through the 79-page helpfile,
and it seems to me you'd want to create an image file
of your current drive across multiple CDs. You could
then use the program on your current system to create
a Bootable Rescue Media. You can then boot your new
computer from the Rescue CD, and it will install
Acronis into a RAM, which allows you to remove the
Rescue CD and insert image CDs from which to restore
the drive. The only limit to this method is that,
as with DrvClonerXP, the partition size of the new
drive must be equal to or larger than the partition
size from which the images were created.
I also noticed that it says it takes longer to write
a set of images directly to CD, and it might be faster
to create multiple files to your hard drive first, of
a size which will fit onto a CD, and then write them
to CDs later.
Elsewhere, it indicates that Acronis can do what the
DrvClonerXP program does, and create a clone from
Windows while it is running, by selecting Disk Clone.
However, you would need to slave the new drive to the
old, first, in order to use this method.
The comment by gunnis-ga about using sysprep is
certainly worth consideration. The Acronis helpfile
mentions it, but notes that it is mainly an issue
with cloning drives onto computers that are part
of a workgroup or domain, due to the unique SIDs
(security identifiers) which Windows assigns to
each computer in a network. The main considerations
for a standalone computer would be:
"The reference and destination computers must have
compatible HALs. For example, Advanced Programmable
Interrupt Controller (APIC)?based MPS (multiprocessor
systems) must use the same APIC HAL. A standard HAL
Programmable Interrupt Controller (PIC)?based system
is not compatible with either the APIC HAL or the MPS
HAL.
The reference and destination computers must have the
same Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI)
support"
More on the page:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;302577&sd=tech
Make sure you get the latest version for the
operating system you're using.
sublime1-ga
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3 Comments
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