[phillpower2]

Hello Channeal,

 

This does suggest that the XP on the external HDD is not bootable and so should be deleted when appropriate.

 

With the computer as it is can you post a new screenshot of the Disk Manager please.

 

Go to Start then to Run/Search
Type in compmgmt.msc and click Enter
On the left side click on Disk Management
On the right side you will see your hard drive.
Now I need you to take an expanded screenshot and attach it to your next reply.

Do the following to take a screenshot while the above is open and showing on your desktop.

 

To capture and post a screenshot;

 

Click on the ALT key + PRT SCR key..its on the top row..right hand side..now click on start...all programs...accessories...paint....left click in the white area ...press CTRL + V...click on file...click on save...save it to your desktop...name it something related to the screen your capturing... BE SURE TO SAVE IT AS A .JPG ...otherwise it may be to big to upload... then after typing in any response you have... click on browse...desktop...find the screenshot..select it and click on the upload button...then on the lower left...after it says upload successful...click on add reply like you normally would.

 

The tutorial is very good but not relevant here, did you note the following;

 

WARNING: Steps 4a & 4b will wipe out anything on the USB Hard Disk. Make sure it’s empty or you have backups of files you want to keep.

 

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Hello..... and once again thanks for your reply.

 

 

This does suggest that the XP on the external HDD is not bootable and so should be deleted when appropriate.

 

Sorry, I am very puzzled by what you mean here. I know the files on the external drive are not bootable, but why would I want to delete them? Are you saying that, if you were me, you would have files created by a full cloning operation on the external drive?

 

The link you gave me the other day to the Acronis article entitled 'Difference Between Backup and Disc Clone' says "Disk Clone operation it is not generally used as a backup strategy, as it offers little flexibility. In general, disk clone is a one time operation designed to clone one disk to a different one for the purpose of migrating to a larger hard drive or to a new machine. A backup operation offers greater flexibility as a backup strategy."

 

I believe that if I wanted to restore everything, I would need to use the Acronis program CD (which is bootable) and then start a rescue operation. But I am thinking that you do not believe that these Acronis back-ups are a good idea..... is that correct? We purchased both the external hard drive and the Acronis program a few years ago when my husband was still working because the tech guys in his workplace recommended them.

 

Am confused as usual!

 

With the computer as it is can you post a new screenshot of the Disk Manager please.

 

Ah, this is something I understand and can do! This time the external hard drive shows up, because it was turned on at the time.

 

 

Bye for now,

Chris.

Edited by Channeal, 29 May 2014 - 09:04 AM.

[Channeal]

Hello..... and once again thanks for your reply.

 

 

This does suggest that the XP on the external HDD is not bootable and so should be deleted when appropriate.

 

Sorry, I am very puzzled by what you mean here. I know the files on the external drive are not bootable, but why would I want to delete them? Are you saying that, if you were me, you would have files created by a full cloning operation on the external drive?

 

The link you gave me the other day to the Acronis article entitled 'Difference Between Backup and Disc Clone' says "Disk Clone operation it is not generally used as a backup strategy, as it offers little flexibility. In general, disk clone is a one time operation designed to clone one disk to a different one for the purpose of migrating to a larger hard drive or to a new machine. A backup operation offers greater flexibility as a backup strategy."

 

I believe that if I wanted to restore everything, I would need to use the Acronis program CD (which is bootable) and then start a rescue operation. But I am thinking that you do not believe that these Acronis back-ups are a good idea..... is that correct? We purchased both the external hard drive and the Acronis program a few years ago when my husband was still working because the tech guys in his workplace recommended them.

 

Am confused as usual!

 

With the computer as it is can you post a new screenshot of the Disk Manager please.

 

Ah, this is something I understand and can do! This time the external hard drive shows up, because it was turned on at the time.

 

 

Bye for now,

Chris.

Edited by Channeal, 29 May 2014 - 09:04 AM.

[phillpower2]

Hello Channeal,

 

The copy of XP that you have on your HDD is of no use as it is not bootable, you cannot simply copy an OS or any other program for that matter from one device to another as they will not work/run, this is due to exe files, see here you have proven this by the fact that you changed the boot sequence so that your USB HDD was first in the boot order but the computer still booted from the C: drive.

 

disk clone is a one time operation designed to clone one disk to a different one for the purpose of migrating to a larger hard drive or to a new machine

 

This is correct, you are doing a one off clone and not making regular back ups.

 

A backup operation offers greater flexibility as a backup strategy."

 

Note the word strategy, this suggests backing up on a regular basis and not a one off clone.

 

Regarding Acronis, I do not use it and so I am not familiar with it therefore I can neither approve or disapprove of it.

 

Looking at your screenshot you do not have sufficient room on the external HDD,  you should always keep between 20 and 25% free drive space at all times or you risk corrupting the data on the drive.

 

What you need to proceed is a clean D: drive so that you can clone the OS from the C: drive to it, this is why I suggested that you backed up your photos/videos and music to the external HDD from the C: drive first, after confirming that they were all backed up safely you would then delete them from the C: drive and then clone the lesser amount of data from the C: drive to the smaller D: drive, after making sure that the computer boots from the smaller HDD successfully you can consider the job done.

 

The benefits of this are, you have your OS on it`s own HDD away from harm + you have a back up of your OS on a second HDD should you ever need it.

[Channeal]

Hello and thanks again for your reply,

 

You know, I am beginning to have an inkling that we might possibly have been talking slightly at cross purposes about this external hard drive business. Not sure.....

 

I put the back-up files on the external hard drive purely because it was something I had been intending to do for some time. I never thought that they would play any role in the proposed drive swap, other than to provide a second back-up of files if I managed to mess everything up (and in fact now they will be the only back-up of the files that are going to be deleted from the present C drive to make more room). I only mentioned these files as an example of what I at first thought was going to be used to copy the OS from drive C to drive D, as I was always of the opinion that these files would not be bootable (something which has now been proved correct). Once I learned of the existence of a completely seperate cloning option though, everything made much more sense to me..... and I was happy to just forget the files on the external hard drive altogether apart from using them to back up data.

 

 

Looking at your screenshot you do not have sufficient room on the external HDD,  you should always keep between 20 and 25% free drive space at all times or you risk corrupting the data on the drive.

 

Ow! I don't like the sound of this!

 

I think I mentioned to you before that our daughter has some files on there that I have been begging/pleading with her for a very long time to look at, as I want to delete them. (She says she will look, but never does it!). I think for the time being I willl have to delete my files and just store the documents, photos etc on there, Eventuallly, I am just going to have to tell my daughter that I am deleting her stuff anyway, as she has been given more than long enough to do it!

 

I do like Acronis, because of the option to do incremental back-ups. As I mentioned before, since our hard drive crashed last year I have kept our files backed up on the D drive (where they were hurriedly saved to when the drive was failing). The problem with that though is that with the large folder containing music files for example, when I come to back it up every so often the only way I know is to relace the whole folder - which takes ages!

 

I obviously need to find out more about the Acronis program at some time in the future. There must be some benefit to doing what it does: i.e producing an image of all the files including some system ones, even if the resulting files are not bootable! The manual says: Backing up the entire system disk (creating a disk image) takes more disk space but enables you to restore the system in minutes in case of severe data damage or hardware failure. Moreover, the imaging procedure is much faster than copying files, and may significantly speed the backup process when it comes to backing up large volumes of data. So, even though the files do not produce a bootable drive you can apparently still restore the system with it in minutes. Very strange! Not your problem though because, as you say, you do not know anything about the program.

 

Anyway, now we seem to have got that silly red herring of the external drive out of the way, I will go ahead with copying/deleting files as appropriate.

 

I guess I should alter the boot sequence again. I guess it should be the same as before, only probably the Floppy drive and the IDE one should remain last?

 

Bye for now,

Chris.

[phillpower2]

Hello Channeal,

 

Aye crossed purposes it would appear 

 

You seem to have the task in hand now but as a reminder please see the following from my reply #79

You are one step ahead already having backed up the entire C: drive to the external HDD so I will list the steps that you will need to do in numerical order, please note that you must confirm for yourself that there is nothing on the smaller D: drive that you have not backed up before you proceed;

1: Format the smaller D: drive.

2: Use Acronis** to create an image of the C: drive on the D: drive.

3: Change the drive letter of the larger HDD to something easily identifiable such as K and make a note of it.

4: Check that the smaller HDD has now been given the drive letter C:, if for some reason it hasn't change it manually using the steps here

5: Restart the computer and confirm that it boots from the new smaller C: drive.

 

** You must use suitable imaging software for the procedure as the transferred programs including XP will not run if simply copied across.

 

Post back with an update when done and any questions along the way please let us know.

 

 

The external HDD will be ok in the short term but no further data should be backed up to it, just so that you are aware, a common result of an overly full external HDD is being unable to access any data on the drive and another is being told that the drive is empty and needs to be formatted, both can result in the loss of all data.

 

Acknowledged that you will be changing the boot sequence in the BIOS.

 

We will be here should you have any questions along the way.

[Channeal]

Okay, thanks. Will probably attempt to do this sometime next week, as my husband is in the middle of doing something on the computer at the moment and might not appreciate it too much if all his files suddenly disappeared! :-)

If I don't post on here again, it will probably be because I have somehow managed to blow the computer up and am too embarrassed to tell you! :-)

Cheers,
Chris.

[phillpower2]

Plan the task in advance and ask any questions that you may have first and you will be fine 

[Channeal]

Hi Phillpower2,

 

I have one or two questions, as usual!

 

First of all, after confirming that everything was safely backed up on the external drive, I  deleted every bit of data from Drive C, so that only the programs remain. I have also formatted Drive D.

 

I had a very quick trial run at starting the cloning operation, though I have stopped it for now. Acronis was asking me to confirm that it was okay to delete all the partitions on the destination drive. I believe there is a small partition on drive D which is marked as '16MB Unallocated'. Would you please confirm that it is alright to say yes to deleting this?

 

I have a couple of further question which have been in my head for a while, but which I have not been able to find an answer to myself. These are to do with what will happen to the larger drive once the cloning has been completed........

 

You intially suggested that: 'The new larger D: drive can now be formatted, you do not need to partition it if you do not want to, an easier option would be to create individual folders for each theme'...... although more recently I was a bit unsure about whether you had changed you mind and that you maybe now thought that it might be better to keep a copy of XP on both drives. Please could you confirm what you think would be the best option?

 

Supposing though that I did go on to format the larger drive after the cloning has eventually been (hopefully) successfully completed. I have inspected the newly formatted smaller drive now and I am currently a bit uncertain about how to store all my data folders on the larger drive, were it to be formatted. Can you please confirm that this would be possible without doing anything else to the formatted drive?

 

I ask this because I am now confused about what was on the smaller drive before it was formatted. There were quite a few system files on there (you may possibly recall me saying previously that all my backed up data files were just stored amongst all the system files on there when I looked at it in Windows Explorer). From looking at the currently newly formatted smaller drive, I see that there are absolutely no system files whatsoever on there now. If - as I think you believed - XP was not loaded on both drives, then what were all those system files about? And would I need to have similar files on the formatted drive in order to store folders for my data?

 

Sorry.... there are always so many questions just buzzing around in my head! Thanks in advance for answering them for me.

 

Chris.

[phillpower2]

Hello Channeal,

 

Yes the 16MB partition can be formatted.

 

I suggest that XP is left on the larger drive as your back up in case you ever have problems with the new smaller C: drive, having your various themes in their own named folders is an easy and safe way of keeping your data organised and quickly to hand.

 

If you were to format the larger HDD, once XP etc had been successfully cloned to the smaller HDD all that you would do is copy any data that you wanted off the external HDD to the new larger HDD, remember that I said to allocate it a drive letter that you would easily remember + make a note of the new drive letter.

 

I can't begin to suggest what files were on the smaller HDD as we have only ever been told that it was data that you had backed up to the drive,

 

If you wish to store personal data only on a formatted HDD you only need to copy the data from the source to the target HDD, you do not need to do anything else first.

 

Put all your various saved data into itemised folders on your external HDD as in music in a music folder, pictures in a pictures folder and when they are all done copy each folder across to your new larger data only HDD.

[Channeal]

Hello again,
 
Everything has now been successfully cloned from Drive C to Drive D.
 
When I attempt to change the Drive letter of the current (larger) Drive C it tells me that 'Windows cannot modify the drive letter of your system volume or boot volume'.
 
I searched on the internet and it seems to be telling me that there is no way of doing this without reinstalling windows.
 
I am quickly learning that things seldom go smoothly in the world of computers!
 
Chris.

PS I have looked at the BIOS. Drive 0 is turned on, but Drive 1 is turned off. What effect does that have and is it relevant to my current problems?
 
 

Edited by Channeal, 05 June 2014 - 10:42 AM.

[phillpower2]

Hello Channeal,

 

Can you post an updated screenshot of Disk Management please.

[Channeal]

Hello Phillpower2,

 

As requested, here is the latest Disk Management screenshot: -

 

 

When the cloning operation was completed, I received a message from Acronis which I wrote down and which I will now type in here just in case it is any help: -

 

You have successfully completed the hard disk cloning procedure. If you have used the automatic mode (which I did) or manually configured the new hard drive disk as the bootable drive be sure to make it Primary Master by switching the appropriate jumpers on it before booting (please see the guide supplied with your new hard disk for details).

 

Cheers,

Chris.

 

[phillpower2]

Hello Channeal,

 

You now need to change the boot sequence in the BIOS so that the computer boots from the D: drive.

[Channeal]

Hi Phillpower2,

 

Many thanks for your last message. I hope you are well.

 

 

You now need to change the boot sequence in the BIOS so that the computer boots from the D: drive.

 

This is, I guess, the obvious answer....... but you should know by now that both me and my computer are very difficult entities and that the obvious solution very seldom works for us!

 

In message #88, I said: -

 

 

Okay.... I went and looked at the current boot sequence and this is what I saw: -

 

1. Onboard or USB CD-ROM Drive

2. Onboard or USB Floppy Drive (not present)

3. Onboard SATA Hard Drive

4. Onboard IDE Hard Drive (not present)

5. USB Device.

 

And in message #89 you replied: -

 

 

The BIOS is showing that a SATA type HDD has been detected and not specifically identifying it as the C: or D: drive, if you highlight the SATA HDD option you will either see the two HDDs listed or only the present C: drive because it has the OS on it, not all BIOS is the same and brand names such as Dell and HP have their own versions of BIOS (they incorporate their logo into the splash screen etc) and the BIOS can vary from one model of Dell to another.

 

In message #90 my response was: -

 

 

Okay.... I went back into the BIOS and changed the boot sequence so that it now reads: -

 

1. USB Device.

2. Onboard SATA Hard Drive (no further details were available when this was highlighted)

3. Onboard or USB CD-ROM Drive

4. Onboard or USB Floppy Drive (not present)

5. Onboard IDE Hard Drive (not present)

 

So there is no way to change the boot sequence so that the computer boots from the D drive (unless, of course, you know differently).

 

Moreover..... perhaps you will recall that in message #100 I said: -

 

 

PS I have looked at the BIOS. Drive 0 is turned on, but Drive 1 is turned off. What effect does that have and is it relevant to my current problems?
 

 

You did not respond to this PS , so I went into the BIOS (very reluctantly, as I am extremely nervous of doing anything there without being told to!) and tried to turn Drive 1 on. My thinking was that if the drive was set to 'on' (though I do not really know what that means), it might then perhaps make it appear in the boot sequence. Unfortunately though, this did not happen....... what did happen was that I got the following message: -

 

Drive 1 not found. Serial ATA, SATA-1

 

I am really sorry that this is proving not to be as straightforward as you perhaps thought it was going to be. I really do not want to cause you any further problems. As always, I am extremely grateful for all the time and effort which you have put into helping me.

 

Chris.

[phillpower2]

Acronis (as I now know) does not play well with cloning a Dell OS, this is new to me and I apologise for not being so astute, there is a Microsoft explanation and procedure here

 

Once again I apologise for your loss of time