Bekster
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Old Hard Drive Clone
I need to clone a 13GB IDe drive in a 11 year old HP Vectra VLi8 MT PIII-550.
Does anyone know if this system will support a 40Gb IDE drive? It seems to be the smallest that I can easily get. I was going to use a Startech ddrive duplicator with IDE adapter to clone the drive since I dont have a system handy with IDE
http://us.startech.com/product/SATDOCK22R-USB-to-SATA-Standalone-Hard-Drive-Duplicator-Dock-HDD-Docking-Station
Does anyone know if this system will support a 40Gb IDE drive? It seems to be the smallest that I can easily get. I was going to use a Startech ddrive duplicator with IDE adapter to clone the drive since I dont have a system handy with IDE
http://us.startech.com/product/SATDOCK22R-USB-to-SATA-Standalone-Hard-Drive-Duplicator-Dock-HDD-Docking-Station
What is the part number on the HP? The number i'm asking for should end in #ABA
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40 gb should be supported in the bios, else use a ATA2USB adapter and port the data to a relatively new computer.
http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Adapter-Converter-Optical-External/dp/B002OV1VJW
this product does support PATA HDDs
http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Adapter-Converter-Optical-External/dp/B002OV1VJW
this product does support PATA HDDs
ASKER
Its running NT 4 workstation. It runs custom software on one of the chop saws in our factory and the manufacturer is no longer in business.
I need to clone the drive - if it fails we are screwed. What was that comment about having to repair the OS?
I need to clone the drive - if it fails we are screwed. What was that comment about having to repair the OS?
Hmm.. NT 4? Good grief, I don't recall the repair steps for that.
Now, just remember that you can clone without screwing up your primary host disk. As long as you don't clone the wrong direction.
Now, just remember that you can clone without screwing up your primary host disk. As long as you don't clone the wrong direction.
Unless you have an Award BIOS with a relatively obscure 65536 cylinder issue (which would limit the drive size to 31.5GB), you should not have any issue using an 80GB drive.
Beyond that possibility, the only significant issue is the 28 vs 48 bit LBA issue -- which doesn't occur until the 128GB point ... which your 80GB drive is well below.
One simple way to completely avoid any size issue: Install the drive on another system with an IDE interface; then run HDAT [http://www.hdat2.com/ ] and use the Set Max Address function to set the apparent drive size to whatever you want it to be. This size will be seen in the BIOS; in Disk Management; etc. -- i.e. the rest of the drive will simply not be available. This will effectively turn your 80GB drive into whatever size drive you want (e.g. 13GB).
... to do that, you WILL, of course, need access to a system with an IDE port. Although you said you don't have a system handy with IDE, look again -- MANY systems still have a single IDE channel on the motherboard ... you may simply need an IDE cable to connect the drive.
But the chances are pretty good that you don't need to fool with HDAT -- the drive will likely clone just fine.
In any event, I presume there's a reason you're cloning this drive -- if it's because it's exhibiting signs of failure don't delay !! In fact, if it's already failed to some extent, you may find that you can't clone it successfully. Hopefully that's not the case -- but in any event, once you've got a successful clone, be sure to make an IMAGE of the drive and "tuck it away" so any future issue like this is a simple restore of the image.
Beyond that possibility, the only significant issue is the 28 vs 48 bit LBA issue -- which doesn't occur until the 128GB point ... which your 80GB drive is well below.
One simple way to completely avoid any size issue: Install the drive on another system with an IDE interface; then run HDAT [http://www.hdat2.com/ ] and use the Set Max Address function to set the apparent drive size to whatever you want it to be. This size will be seen in the BIOS; in Disk Management; etc. -- i.e. the rest of the drive will simply not be available. This will effectively turn your 80GB drive into whatever size drive you want (e.g. 13GB).
... to do that, you WILL, of course, need access to a system with an IDE port. Although you said you don't have a system handy with IDE, look again -- MANY systems still have a single IDE channel on the motherboard ... you may simply need an IDE cable to connect the drive.
But the chances are pretty good that you don't need to fool with HDAT -- the drive will likely clone just fine.
In any event, I presume there's a reason you're cloning this drive -- if it's because it's exhibiting signs of failure don't delay !! In fact, if it's already failed to some extent, you may find that you can't clone it successfully. Hopefully that's not the case -- but in any event, once you've got a successful clone, be sure to make an IMAGE of the drive and "tuck it away" so any future issue like this is a simple restore of the image.
Check the jumper settings on the destination drive - some of them have a jumper setting to limit their capacity to N GB.
... by the way, I have a few old drives in my "stash" of stuff (13.6GB, 15GB, 20GB) ... if you decide you really need one in that size category send me an e-mail [address in profile]. When I recycle old systems I run Spinrite at Level 4 against he drives -- and if they pass error-free I keep the drives.
also NT WS 4.0 supported max 4GB primary partition on NTFS and 2GB on FAT during install. You shouldn't have any problems after cloning even if you make the boot partition the full capacity of the destination drive, but don't be surprised to see it run CHKDSK on the first boot.
I think it will easily support a 40 GB hard drive.
Cheers