Partition Commander???

[W3MIV]

Anybody here use Partition Commander?

I am in the midst of replacing a HHD with a larger drive, and I wanted to move everything to the new drive without the tedious problem of reinstalling all of the programs. I used Partition Commander 11 to clone the drive onto a USB external drive and am now in the process of cloning that drive to the newly installed replacement drive. What a PITA this has turned out to be. It is taking forever. The process has been running now for nineteen hours and is just about half way.

[kf0rt]

I always use "larger drive" as an excuse to reinstall everything from scratch. I can usually have the thing serviceable in an afternoon.

[W3MIV]

I now regret not having bitten that bullet, but I have so many proprietary programs that require keys and serial numbers that I opted for the Partition Commander approach. I guess the problem is that, the new drive being formatted only and without any system at all, the copying process is being carried out through BIOS.

Live and learn. :roll:

[WØTKX]

I use it, but I always connect the drives with data cables. Never have used a USB drive for anything but a backup, or "traveling media". Using Partition Commander to help a local ham buddy recover from "the mouse stopped working, so I reinstalled Windows XP".

Reinstalling Windows is a PITA with the stoooooopid Gatway restore disks, and makes a HUGE mess of things. I helped him this summer with a very ugly virus, and now I'm the "go to guy".

Never ever EVER reinstall any Microsoft OS till somebody has a chance to check it. :wall:

He updated the mouse driver because a "driver update utility" told him to, even though it worked fine. This killed the mouse and he thought he could fix it by reinstalling Windows. That trick never works! Stopped him in time, and the data is still there... the drive won't boot till I mess with it.

Aaaargh?

[W3MIV]

Some of us seem born to do things the hard way. :(


I use it, but I always connect the drives with data cables. Never have used a USB drive for anything but a backup, or "traveling media". Using Partition Commander to help a local ham buddy recover from "the mouse stopped working, so I reinstalled Windows XP".

Reinstalling Windows is a PITA with the stoooooopid Gatway restore disks, and makes a HUGE mess of things. I helped him this summer with a very ugly virus, and now I'm the "go to guy".

Never ever EVER reinstall any Microsoft OS till somebody has a chance to check it. :wall:

He updated the mouse driver because a "driver update utility" told him to, even though it worked fine. This killed the mouse and he thought he could fix it by reinstalling Windows. That trick never works! Stopped him in time, and the data is still there... the drive won't boot till I mess with it.

Aaaargh?

[kf0rt]

My "routine" for many years now has been to use a new, bigger drive for the reinstall. The old drive immediately becomes a "backup" that remains untouched until I'm real sure I don't need anything it contains.

This usually happens when I need more space, but with big drives being real cheap, my boot/program drive is now 1TB and I don't keep any data on it. Ought to be good till it hits MTBF.

[KC2UGV]

Yeah, you would have been better off pulling the USB drive from it's cage, and mounting it in the PC. USB is sloooooow.

http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/slowpoke.gif

[WØTKX]

I've had this funny habit with Winders for years... either two partitions or two physical drives, the latter is preferred.

C: is bootup for Windows
D: is for all applications, data

Registry is backed up before every bootup, and I make an .ISO of the boot drive whenever appropriate.

That said, Windows 7 is a big improvement over the legacy Windows nonsense.

[kf0rt]

I don't do the registry or ISO the boot drive (probably should), but the C/D thing has been my religion for eons -- I install programs on the Windows drive though. Due to the registry these days, Windows and installed software are pretty inseparable anyway. Got a D:\Data directory that contains all my created data, and this is the only thing I back up. The data also directory contains ISO's of all installed software.

[W3MIV]

I have an older computer, and it has only two SATA sockets on the MB. One of them is to the DVD drive, the other to the HDD. I have not touched or altered the HDD that I removed to install the new one.

I originally considered disconnecting the DVD drive and hooking both HDDs to the MB and seeing if I could do a diskcopy of the old to the new. As any of you can probably tell, Bill Gates I am not. I figured that Windows would balk at a mere duplication and I might have more trouble than that with led me to this fiasco. I happened to have a copy of PC 11, so decided to use it since everything in their literature told me "cloning" one drive to another is a snap.

Guess Avanquest's idea of a "snap" is a little bit longer in duration than mine.

:(

The process is now a tad more than half complete, and I do not dare interrupt it for fear of having to start the process over.

:( :(

Fortunately, it is only one of a herd of computers here. Unfortunately, it is the shack computer. :( :( :(

[W3MIV]

Sometimes I amaze myself with stupid actions. I believe, were I to want to visit Federick, MD, I would start walking east.

I stopped the process. Temporarily unrigged the DVD and connected that SATA cable to the new drive, leaving the old drive on its cable. I was worried that I might need the DVD to boot should I run into problems. That may well be the case, but I have now figured that I can alway reconnect it if I have to. DUH! :nuts:

:roll:

The system booted normally; PC11 was invoked and ordered to clone the old disk to the new. It is already past the point at which I stopped it, and it had been running steadily since mid-day yesterday!!!

If all goes as I pray :pray: I shall have that system back on line shortly.

Sometimes I look in the mirror and ask, "just who in hell IS that guy, anyway?"

[KA5PIU]

Hello.

I have configured dozens of computers with a 2047k C and E drive and the D drive being whatever remains to allow some legacy hardware to work, an IBM CPDP wireless modem for police use.
This means that a 10 gig drive is partitioned into 3 logical drives that I may remap so that the D drive is the CD or DVD drive.
Now, somebody comes along a reinstalls windows, and has one larger C drive, but can not find the other 2 drives, fun.
Needless to say the modem will not work.
I set a flat rate $200 for reinstall and that quickly stopped.
For anything other than the agency I work for (Reserve) I require a formal letterhead before doing anything.
This ended the rest of it.
Now that analog cellular is nearly all gone this is less of an issue, the GSM modems will run under windows 2000/XP but not Vista.
But once installed the software needs to run on that drive.
Putting it on a larger drive will not work as the volume ID will not match.
The preferred solution is to remove the original drive, not changing it in any way, installing a new larger drive, reinstalling the OS or restore, connecting the old drive into a dual drive configuration, and transferring everything between the 2 drives.
Of course installed programs simply do not transfer but the data does and you can create the files on the fly.
Now simply upgrade/reinstall the programs to the larger drive.
Even the ultra high security FBI approved NCIC thing will reinstall since it sees a corrupt install on the same machine and not an external drive.
And yes you can buy long 2 drive 3.5" drive cables that will allow you to connect 2 drives as master/slave to a laptop.
If the new drive is thin enough you may be able to keep this cable attached, otherwise you will need to replace the original cable.

[N1LAF]

...
That said, Windows 7 is a big improvement over the legacy Windows nonsense.

From a dumb user perspective...

[NQ6U]

I thought that Partition Commander was some sort of female dominance fetish.

[W3MIV]

I thought that Partition Commander was some sort of female dominance fetish.

Could be. It is certainly an "albi-dominance" fetish. I'm too damned old to waste that much time screwing around with computers. Fer shure.

I am posting this witless bit of prose on the corrected computer. So far, it seems I have not lost anything, and I do not have to re-download some tens of bazillions of meggerbites of Windoze updates -- such fate would have bitten hard on the ass had I reinstalled the OS from the OEM CD I bought when this bucket of silicon bits and sundries was but a neatly packaged equivalent of any ham's junk box.

Suitable to the tasks to which it is assigned, though I confess that in terms of "state-of-the-art," it is the practical equal of Ollie Evinrude's first prototype versus a canoe paddle.

[kf0rt]

From a dumb user perspective...

Get over your bad-self Paul and write your own OS already. Fly it up the flagpole and let's see who salutes.