Hard drive is dying

[Ware]

This is my wife's computer that the hard drive is dying on. (The Bearings are starting to grind)

It was a "Pre Built" system that was purchased as a floor model on black Friday so i don't have an OS disk for it.

I know there is a way to "Ghost" and or clone the drive and just make a duplicate copy of the drive, that is what i really would like to do, i don't want any counter-fit copy's of windows and i also don't want to have to buy another windows disc. i just want to buy the new drive and hook them both up to the computer and transfer all the data to a new drive. Can i do that, if so how?

any help here will be greatly appreciated.

RS

David Ware

[Goodwin 1st MRB]

Well, I know Norton has "Ghost" which you may or may not be able to obtain a copy of 'illegally'...

However - there is also an amazing free program called "FOG", that is the same thing - it creates images and is able to image a machine in no time at all over a network (remotely).

I used it at my last job - and it took a little setting up - but it ran great!

I can't remember if you have to use it on a linux machine, or if it can be ran via windows as well. If it can be used via Windows - you should be able to install it on your computer, make an 'image' of your wife's PC, install her new HD, and upload the image to that HD and be up and running again in under 10 mins.

http://www.fogproject.org/

***I did notice this:

FOG can run on nearly any Linux distribution, but the installer we have written runs on Fedora 7+ and Ubuntu?

FOG is good for anyone running Windows XP, Vista and 7. FOG is currently being used by many schools and small businesses who can't afford the licensing of commercial products.

If you've got an extra old machine laying around - Ubuntu is EASY to install, and works just like Windows for the most part. The installer takes a lot of the work out of installing it. If you already got a linux box, then have at it.

I'm sure there is probably some windows based imagers out there somewhere too...

[Ware]

Ok i went and bought the new HD yesterday along with norton ghost cause it has a 50$ rebate if you buy it with a new HD.

but im having issues.

I hooked both drives up, the bios can see it, but once windows starts up and the drivers installed automatically, i cant see the drive in "My computer" i can see it in the hardware manager and when i start up norton ghost it cant see the drive either, which is obviously a problem cause i need to see it to tell NG to copy the current drive onto the new one.

I cant figure out how to designate the new drive as Slave, the BIOS on her comp is terrible and i cant figure it out, and there is no "jumper display" on the top of the drive or in the Docs that came with it that tell me if i do it Via jumpers.

THe drive i got was a 500GB WD5000CSRT with 8 MB cache

[Jasko]

Do you have windows 7?

if so the drive won't work with windows 7

[Ware]

nope i have vista, but the box says its compatible with XP, Vista, and W7 anyway

[Janke 1st MRB]

Being a SATA drive it doesn't use jumpers to tell the BIOS what kind of drive it is, SATA is "smarter" than IDE, it doesn't need jumpers. When you first get a hard drive, it's set up as unallocated space, and needs to be formatted and partitioned into a format that Windows can read. Try reading the following tutorial and see if it helps:

http://www.top-windows-tutorials.com/format-hard-drive.html

[Ware]

Nice, that explained what i just figured out about 20 min before you posted that.

Thanks anyway though

O and im curious, does Windows do that automatically when you install the OS because i didn't have to do any of this when i built my machine, this is the 1st time ive had to replace a HD hence me not knowing that i had to do this.

Just call me a noob, o well ya live and ya learn, and learning has occurred today

Dave

Edited June 12, 2010 by Ware 1st MRB

[Jasko]

Yes, when windows is installed on a hard drive that drive is formatted by windows.