yunikon
asked on
How do I copy a hard drive?
Installed a new Seagate SATA hard drive and formatted it with Seagate Disk Utility. The old drive ,Seagate SATA has windows 2000. I restarted the PC and got message 'NTLDR is missing press crtl, alt, del to restart'. The two hard drives were detected at start up. I would like to copy the old drive information to the new drive. How do I do this? Do I have to adjust BIOS boot sequence?
souseran
When you say "the old drive information" do you mean the Windows operating system, all programs, etc. or do you just mean any data you had on the old drive? Is your intent to use the old drive information to make the new drive bootable?
Yes, you will have setup boot order in bios to boot from old drive.
ASKER
I mean the windows 2000 OS, all programs etc on the old drive. The old drive info is to make the new drive bootable. In effect I am making a complete copy of the old drive. Will windows 2000 automatically make the old drive #0 in the BIOS, ie. the 1st or will I have to adjust this?
ASKER
The new HDD is in an external SATA enclosure.
ASKER
I can boot to the old hard drive with it only installed. Installing both hard drives gives 'NTLDR is missiing, press crtl + alt + del to restart'.
Ok. Now we got something here. The old drive is sata drive and it is system, and new drive is in an usb enclosure, correct? If so, remove the usb drive off system during boot / post. You connect it when windows OS loaded, and you should the windows detect new hardware as usb drive. There, check in My Comupter see if you can see the new drive, if yes, you good to go to copy data to new drive. If not, check in disk management see if the new drive there as no-name drive or unallocated drive, in this case, right click and select format, assign drive letter, partition, etc. as you want.
ASKER
The new drive is SATA and is in a SATA enclosure not a USB enclosure. So I will have to use a cloning software to copy the old system to the new drive? Want to create a bootable backup system.
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ASKER
Using Apricorn EZ Gig 11 cloning software. Didn't know I had to boot to the old drive 1st before connecting the new drive.
ASKER
Connected the external drive afer booting to the old system. The new drive doesn't appear in My Computer or Disk Management.
ASKER
I will be off the air for a while as hurricane Dean is about to hit us here in Jamaica. I should be safe and I hope to be able to return soon.
Be safe. Post back when you return.
ASKER
I'm fine and Just got back electricity. Wondering when should I load the drivers for the new SATA drive since i'm using Win2kPro. Since the new drive is detected at bootup this may not be necessary.
ASKER
I booted with Apricorn EZ Gig II Rescue diskettes. The Gig II cloning software came with my Apricorn external hard drive enclosure. The Gig II Wizard walked me through the cloning process and I successfully cloned a bootable hard drive. Thanks for your help.