Boot setup is on a hard drive.. how to transfer to another?
 

How can you transfer the boot config to another hard drive?
currently i have a 20 gig and 40 gig hd, os is on 40 gig

i got a new 80 gig one to replace the 20 one, but the boot info is on the 20 one.

how can i get all the info on the other drive (what to copy over) so i can get it running just like before?

i just need it to show the os list, so i can select the one that is on my 40 gig hd

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb
Assuming the hard drive to read is on IDE1 as master and hard drive to write is on IDE1 as slave. Get any linux rescue CD, or any live demo CD, or any install CD (stop the installer and run that command once you booted from the CD)

command explaination:

dd -> direct byte to byte copy (same as rawrite).
if -> Device to be readed
of -> Device to write to.

hda -> IDE1 Master
hdb -> IDE1 Slave
hdc -> IDE2 Master
hdd -> IDE2 Slave

In case you are using SCSI disks then replace hd... with:
sda -> SCSI1
sdb -> SCSI2
sdc -> SCSI3 ... etc...

Hope this helps you

partition is ntfs, will it still work?

lets say boot info is on hd1

isnt it possible just to copy the boot.ini over to hd2, install the new hd (becomes the new hd1) and copy boot.ini from 2 to 1?

It will work. This command will copy the entire disk contents, including partition table. This is the reason you will need to run partition magic after that, unless you want to have a 80 gig hard drive with a 20 gig partition and 60 gigs unused space.

If it does not work, you will need to search another method and repartition the 80 gig hard drive.
I am using this method to restore my windows 98 clean installation from an image stored into my FTP server. In your case it's more direct, so it must work.

Use Norton (symantec) Ghost, it will copy an exact image to a new drive but will make the new drive max size. I.e. copy a 20 gb drive to an 80 gb drive with 10 gb of data, new drive will be the same but 80 gb with 10 gb of data. Just make sure to make the drive active when you format it if it needs to be an active drive. This has worked for me many times, I keep a clean install of XP on a drive with all the programs I use installed so if I crash a hard drive (being stupid) I can ghost it and be up and running in a couple of hours instead of a couple of days.

Hope this helps...

i cant do that..

i dont have enough room on the 40 for the data on the 20

i need to be able to copy data from the 40 to the 80 to free space, then copy data from 20 to 40, then put in the 80 permanently...

anyone know how to do this?

only problem is, boot is on 20 (how can i get it to be on the 40??) and os is on 40

i cant do that..

i dont have enough room on the 40 for the data on the 20

i need to be able to copy data from the 40 to the 80 to free space, then copy data from 20 to 40, then put in the 80 permanently...

anyone know how to do this?

only problem is, boot is on 20 (how can i get it to be on the 40??) and os is on 40

anyone?

I'm not sure what you want but if its just to make a hard drive bootable then try this.

1 make sure your drive is formatted then make a windows recovery disc (you make it from the "add / remove programs" in control panel)

Shut down your computer and reboot from the floppy disc, if you get a list of options you want DOS with no CD ROM support.

Make sure you know the drive letter C: D: E: ... as it sometimes changes if RAM disc is loaded.

To make the drive bootable just type "sys e:" without the speech marks and that would write a bootstrap to drive E:\ and make it bootable.

make a dos boot disk then remove the 40 gig drive and replace it with the 80 then partition and format the 80 using the dos disk creating a 20 gig and 60 gig drive. Run ghost from the boot disk and copy the 20 gig image to the 60 gig partition once it is complete copy the image on the 60 partition to the 20 gig partition using ghost. shut down the computer remove the 20 change the jumpers on the 80 to match the 20 reinstall the 40 and you should be done

Nbritt

In c:\boot.ini i have

[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINXP="Microso ft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect

first, i could remove 40, put in 80, and then format the 80 to fat32. then, couldnt i just copy that boot.ini file to the 80, make the 80 match the jumper settings of the 20, put the 40 back in and reboot?

once i have the 40 and 80 together, i can move stuff from 40 to 80, then go back and put 20 stuff to 80

WHO BE LINK HOTTIN ME?

gah?