Q. I have bought a new disk, how do I
move NT to this new disk?
A. There are various methods,
depending on your setup and needs. The best method is to:
- Backup your NT disk to a tape
- Create a new, up to date ERD (rdisk -s)
- Shutdown NT and insert the new Hard Disk
- Install a basic installation of NT to a
directory with a different name than your
final NT installation directory
- Once the installation is finished restore
your backup tape
- There are sometimes problems with registry
entries, so reboot and boot off of the NT installation disks
- After disk 2 choose repair, and select
everything except "Check System Files". You will
need to insert disk 3 and then the ERD
- Reboot and NT should work as required
If the tape drive is not an option and the
partition is NTFS you still have a number of options, you could
setup the new disk as a mirror of your existing disk, then break
the mirror and remove the old disk setting the new disk as the
boot disk. You can also use the utility scopy
that is supplied with the NT resource kit by fitting the new hard
disk, creating an NTFS partition on it and then performing
scopy <source drive>: <target
drive>: /o /a /s
To use the scopy command you must have Backup
and Restore User Rights. Once the copy is complete shutdown NT,
remove the old drive, and set the new drive to master (if IDE) or
SCSI 0/6 (if SCSI) and boot of the NT installation disks, and
again repair everything except "Check System Files". If
you have time it can be worth creating a temporary NT installation
on the drive before performing the copy, booting off of this
minimal installation and perform the scopy from
there as this means no files will be locked, and then you would
only need to repair the boot sector.
Other methods include ghost copy from http://www.ghostsoft.com
and DriveCopy from http://www.powerquest.com
which copy and entire disk which should eliminate the need for
performing a repair. I have used the ghostsoft utility and it
works well.
Make sure if you are moving NT to a different
type of disk, i.e. one that needs a different driver, you install
the new driver before you perform the copy so that when NT boots
off of the new disk it has the needed drivers.
Another option would be to use Mirroring (if you
have Server). Install the new disk and make it a mirror of the
boot/system partitions. Once it is up-to-date remove the old disk
and use the new.
This FAQ is copyright © 1998
John Savill (SavillTech Ltd). No part of this document should be
reproduced, distributed or altered without my written permission. john@savilltech.com
