Re: OT - Cloning and CopyWipe

In article <00a2da06$0$23916$c3e8da3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
bill horne <redydog@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Robert Bonomi wrote:
In article <00a339c9$0$6863$c3e8da3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
bill horne <redydog@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Bruce S wrote:
richard wrote:
On Sun, 12 Jul 2009 11:32:17 -0700, "Bruce S" <bruce.snell@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

For all those people who use Copywipe for cloning their hard drives,
I have a question.

I bought a 500 gig hard drive to replace the 80 gig drive in the
laptop. I ran CopyWipe for DOS from a CD on startup. It went to
work, and a couple hours later told me the drive had been copied. I
installed the drive, and it still only shows 80 gigs, not the 500
gigs it is supposed to be.

So, is that normal?

If not what might I have done wrong? (I have tried it three times
now.)

Could the fact that I never ran Fdisk be the problem? (Does Fdisk
even exist anymore?)

Help!!!!

Bruce (Thank you)

When you partition the new drive, you should partition the first
section to 82 gigs. Not 80. The extra room for any information the
puter puts in the partition.
Thanks for the suggestion, but now the problem is that since the computer
recognized it as 80 gigs, instead of the 500 gigs it really is, XP refuses
to see it as anything other than 80 gigs. And XP does not have DOS
anymore,
so no fdisk to go in and start over again. If I could get the computer to
recognize the drive as 500 gigs, perhaps I could put some of the
other ideas
to work.

Bruce
Rightclick on My Computer, Select Manage, then select Disk Management.

XP Disk Manager should show the other 400+ gigs on that disk as
"unallocated". With Disk Manager, you can create a partition out of
that 400+ gigs, make it a logical drive, assign it a drive letter, and
format it. Do that by rightclicking on that unallocated block and
follow the menus.

This _won't_ work, *IF* the disk geometry in the MBR (master boot record,
the absolute 1st sector on the disk) has been written with the geometry
info from the 80 gig drive. Windows (and MS-DOS before it) *believes*
that geometry information if it is present, and won't look at anything
else.

'unallocated' space is space that is not part of a partition in MBR, but _IS_
shown in the disk geometry recorded there. Garbage the disk geometry data,
it is -very- hard to get anything (MS-based, that is) to 'see' the full disk
capacity.

If that is all so, why can I CopyWipe my disk to a larger disk, and
get the original disk plus the remainder of the new disk in
"unallocated" space?

There are the proverbial "forty leven" ways to copy the contents of one disk
to a different one. If you use the *WRONG* one (a byte-by-byte copy of the
_entire_ physical disk -- not a copy of a single 'partition' on the disk),
you get this problem.

If you copy just a _partition_ from one drive to a drive with a MBR, but
no established partitions (or give permission to over-write the existing
partitions) then things _are_ copacetic.

For someone who has only one drive letter (partition) assigned to a given
physical disk, they may not realize that there is any difference between
"copy disk", and "Copy drive partition". or, even more confusingly, between
"copy disk", and "copy drive".

Get 'unlucky', and pick the 'wrong' choice, and and you get results that are
*WILDLY* different than what was "expected". Not knowing what you don't know
_can_ 'kill' you. <wry grin>


<soapbox mode=rant>

Tools like CopyWipe, Partition Magic, etc. are *DANGEROUS* in un-skilled hands.

Microsoft has built into their system a _whole_bunch_ of things to prevent
users from 'doing something stupid' that could/*would* screw it up. And they
_assume_ that everybody always works -within- those safety nets. (But,
unfortunately, for as "fool-proof" a system as MS can _possibly_ develop -- and
they're not all the way there *yet*, "there exists a _sufficiently_determined_
fool capable of breaking it".)

Tools like CopyWipe, Partition Magic, etc. deliberately, and intentionally,
BYPASS those Microsoft built-in protections. This is precisely the reason
why they *can* do their 'magic'. HOWEVER, when using one of those programs
that _will_ do "whatever you tell it to, sensible *OR*NOT*", it becomes the
responsibility of the *user* to '_know_ what they are doing' -- they cannot
rely on the software to 'protect them from themselves'.

*MICROSOFT* aggravates this problem by preaching that "you don't need to know"
what goes on under the covers -- that their 'magic' will take care of all of
it for you, always.

Put a person 'brainwashed' by that M$ philosophy together with a program that
_will_ "do *exactly* what you told it to, reasonable or not" (or, as it has
been sometimes put: "will _willingly_ hand you enough rope to hang yourself"),
and "disasters" *will* happen. Not every time, nor for every person, but it
*will* happen for a fair number of users.

And, when it does, virtually -all- M$ tools are _worthless_ for dealing with
the situation -- the rules of the 'magic' that they assume always apply have
been broken, and things that they -rely- on being correct, simply _aren't_.

It takes a 'specialist' -- with an _in-depth_knowledge_ of how things really
work 'underneath the covers' -- to repair the situation. And _more_ more
use of some of those 'dangerous' tools, to put things back to the way the
specialist knows they "should be" -- regardless of what they currently *are*.

Computer management -- especially 'network' and 'systems' management -- *is*
an area requiring specialized skills and knowledge to do it *WELL*. All the
more so when something 'unexpected' happens. Microsoft has done the world a
_TREMENDOUS_ DIS-SERVICE by touting systems where they claim there is no need
for an expert or professional administrator to manage it.


</soapbox>
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: OT - Cloning and CopyWipe
    ... drives, I have a question. ... I installed the drive, and it still only shows 80 gigs, not the 500 ... When you partition the new drive, ... Rightclick on My Computer, Select Manage, then select Disk Management. ...
    (rec.outdoors.rv-travel)
  • Re: OT - Cloning and CopyWipe
    ... gigs it is supposed to be. ... When you partition the new drive, ... XP Disk Manager should show the other 400+ gigs on that disk as "unallocated". ... shown in the disk geometry recorded there. ...
    (rec.outdoors.rv-travel)
  • RE: Plz Help - Disk Usage Shown by Windows Is Incorrect and VERY High
    ... would recommend using Spybot - Search & Destroy or Windows Defender. ... telling you that Windows has began checking your disk. ... My problem is that Windows is showing that I have used 245 Gigs of my Hard ... months,whene ever I checked my free space there was always approx 190 Gigs ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)
  • Re: This Iris Indigo is going to drive me nuts !!!!!!!!!!
    ... I fx the disk forcing it to just use 8 gigs and not all 9.11 gigs but I could not get the software ... had made a backup of the original 1 gig hard disk so I used it and BANG finally I have something that works. ... thankfully the xpio missing from slot 0 xpio missing from slot 1 gtro missing has gone away for good. ... >>for this computer never realized what a nightmare it would be. ...
    (comp.sys.sgi.misc)
  • Re: OT - Cloning and CopyWipe
    ... bill horne wrote: ... gigs it is supposed to be. ... When you partition the new drive, ... XP Disk Manager should show the other 400+ gigs on that disk as "unallocated". ...
    (rec.outdoors.rv-travel)
Loading