Abnormal Disk Image?

[Guest Watty]

Continuing my story from "Foiled Again?". A quick review.

 

My 80G drive apparently failed. A shop got the contents to an external

drive I gave them. I installed XP on a new 320G drive, and then used

unstoppable copier to it. I think this is an image copier. I was able to

fire up XP on the 320G drive, but it was obvious some programs were not

working properly. The most frequent msg on them was something about DLLs.

 

Supposedly, the point of installing XP and onto the the new drive was to

produce an MBR. I just talked to WDC, and they said an image copy should

have done the trick. There was no need to make a MBR. Either way, that

leaves some mysteries. BTW, I grabbed their image copy software.

 

Perhaps some other clues remain.

 

First, I just noticed something interesting about this re-build from the

restored disk contents. On the Start menu, I see a title that I used in

the install to the new drive. If my unstoppable copier was an image

copy, I would think it would be the old title. ??

 

Second, the items in the Start->All Programs look OK. I had two folders

on the desktop. They are no longer there, but they are under /Doc... and

Settings/admin.../desktop/.

 

Comments?

 

Since the shop managed to get the 80G drive up long enough to copy the

contents, I think I may try it in the machine again. If that doesn't

work, then I'll try the WDC image copy utility.

[Guest smlunatick]

Re: Abnormal Disk Image?

 

On Oct 7, 2:39 pm, Watty <notva...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> Continuing my story from "Foiled Again?". A quick review.

>

> My 80G drive apparently failed. A shop got the contents to an external

> drive I gave them. I installed XP on a new 320G drive, and then used

> unstoppable copier to it. I think this is an image copier. I was able to

> fire up XP on the 320G drive, but it was obvious some programs were not

> working properly. The most frequent msg on them was something about DLLs.

>

> Supposedly, the point of installing XP and onto the the new drive was to

> produce an MBR. I just talked to WDC, and they said an image copy should

> have done the trick. There was no need to make a MBR. Either way, that

> leaves some mysteries. BTW, I grabbed their image copy software.

>

> Perhaps some other clues remain.

>

> First, I just noticed something interesting about this re-build from the

> restored disk contents. On the Start menu, I see a title that I used in

> the install to the new drive. If my unstoppable copier was an image

> copy, I would think it would be the old title. ??

>

> Second, the items in the Start->All Programs look OK. I had two folders

> on the desktop. They are no longer there, but they are under /Doc... and

> Settings/admin.../desktop/.

>

> Comments?

>

> Since the shop managed to get the 80G drive up long enough to copy the

> contents, I think I may try it in the machine again. If that doesn't

> work, then I'll try the WDC image copy utility.

 

Any image from a failed hard drive can / should not be considered

reliable. Depending on the failure, you can be missing huge gaps in

the data from the failed drive. You are recourse is a complete re-

install and consider starting from scratch.

[Guest Watty]

Re: Abnormal Disk Image?

 

smlunatick wrote:

> On Oct 7, 2:39 pm, Watty <notva...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

>> Continuing my story from "Foiled Again?". A quick review.

>>

>> My 80G drive apparently failed. A shop got the contents to an external

>> drive I gave them. I installed XP on a new 320G drive, and then used

>> unstoppable copier to it. I think this is an image copier. I was able to

>> fire up XP on the 320G drive, but it was obvious some programs were not

>> working properly. The most frequent msg on them was something about DLLs.

>>

>> Supposedly, the point of installing XP and onto the the new drive was to

>> produce an MBR. I just talked to WDC, and they said an image copy should

>> have done the trick. There was no need to make a MBR. Either way, that

>> leaves some mysteries. BTW, I grabbed their image copy software.

>>

>> Perhaps some other clues remain.

>>

>> First, I just noticed something interesting about this re-build from the

>> restored disk contents. On the Start menu, I see a title that I used in

>> the install to the new drive. If my unstoppable copier was an image

>> copy, I would think it would be the old title. ??

>>

>> Second, the items in the Start->All Programs look OK. I had two folders

>> on the desktop. They are no longer there, but they are under /Doc... and

>> Settings/admin.../desktop/.

>>

>> Comments?

>>

>> Since the shop managed to get the 80G drive up long enough to copy the

>> contents, I think I may try it in the machine again. If that doesn't

>> work, then I'll try the WDC image copy utility.

>

> Any image from a failed hard drive can / should not be considered

> reliable. Depending on the failure, you can be missing huge gaps in

> the data from the failed drive. You are recourse is a complete re-

> install and consider starting from scratch.

Yes, a complete install may be in order, but if I can dig the old one

out of the capture the shop made that would be very good. If I can't

then the PC this occurred on will likely be home for Linux, and the

whole PC put on the sideline while I start into this on a new Vista

machine. Of course, even with I can see on the semi-restored XP PC is

helpful in restoring all this under Vista. Foruntately, some potentially

lost files are now available to me.

 

Next stop is trying the old HD again to see if burps to life.