windows cloning?

[badbadtz560]

So I have two hds, one of which has a windows xp installation. I want to clone the windows xp installtion to the other hd.. is this possible? I tried norton ghost, but it designates the second drive as D, and doesn't allow it to boot windows, since the boot file looks for the "C:" drive.

for some reason the ultimate bootcd fails to use maxblast to clone it - just freezes at 100% and the screen goes all colorful

does anybody know if there's a way to do this? It seems this question is constantly asked but never answered. I've used seagate and WD software to do stuff like this in the past, so I know its possible, but I have no floppy drive to use the maxblast w/o having to pull it from the ultimate bootcd

forgot to mention I tried acronis... but when i try to boot windows it says somethin to the effect of... the boot file is poitnitn towards the wrong drive.. yadda yadda... looks like i'm just gonna do a reformat and lose my old windows

 

[scotlandrocks]

Whats the purpose of your cloning are you trying to move your installation to the second hard drive and still be able to access the first. Are you trying to mirror the drives for redundancy. Might be able to help with some more information.

 

[badbadtz560]

yes.. was tryin to move the installation from my SATA to an IDE since I needed the SATA in the new comp

 

[Spetsnaz Op]

I did something similar in the past with a win2k install - however I really can't remember if I used ultimate bootcd or partition magic. Hmmm....I think I used partition magic but I honestly can't recall....but since the bootcd isn't working for you I'd try partitionmagic or a similar free app if you can find one. In addition to that I'm sure tha tone of the linux livecd's (such as knoppix) has a drive clone utility if you're willing to go that far. If you use partition magic be prepared for windows to run some kind of inspection/repair/chkdsk thing the first time through....I think it worked for me though. I was upgrading from an 80GB hdd to a 120GB HDD, both from the WD JB series.

 

[badbadtz560]

partition magic did not work for me in the past, so I didn't use it. So far the clone has worked using acronis though. However, I did have to use windows repair to finalize everything. so far, I have to reinstall all drivers b/c the repair basically wiped out anything in the windows registry I think. other than that, everything else looks fine'n dandy. Way back then, I'd buy retail drives and use the software they gave to clone.... but ultimate bootcd's maxblast4 just didnt' do it for me ... very odd... maybe it's b/c i was transferring from SATA to ide