Bill Patten
bill_patten at embarqmail.com
Fri May 30 11:25:37 CDT 2008
Steve, before you go to all that trouble, and you can easily practice on a different PC, check out Acronis Universal Restore. It has many of the drivers needed built into it. If you look on there site you will find Acronis has a package deal for Echo Workstation and Universal restore for about $89. I know personally of 2 cases where it saved the day. I had a friend that tried to restore a PC image on a laptop. It would not work, and windows repair would not fix it. He used the Universal repair and on the first try got the image working. I have a Vista 64 machine that I set up with Raid 0 etc. and had all kinds of problems with the Intel/Dell/64 bit combination. One of the suggested solutions was to revert back to the Auto Raid choice in the ROM Bios. It would not boot. A restore would not work, booting with the Vista disk and repair would not work. So I tested trying to install a fresh Vista installation with that configuration and it worked, indicating that Vista install did in fact have the correct drivers. So then I made an image using Acronis Workstation Echo, created a boot CD from the Acronis install and clicked the use Universal Restore when I built it. Made the change in the bios, installed a fresh SATA drive, booted to the CD and viola, it worked. The system has been working for about a month now and is much more stable the before. It's a fairly low risk deal as long has you hang on to the original disk, you can always go back if needed. And by the way I did not use DVD's or anything just placed the image on my server, then when I booted on boot cd, went across the network and restored. Oh Acronis Boot disk will find most networks and even USB's If I can be of more help or you have any questions give me a shout. Bill PS, No I do not work for or have any affiliation with Acronis. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Erbach" <erbachs at gmail.com> To: "Discussion of Hardware and Software issues" <dba-tech at databaseadvisors.com> Sent: Friday, May 30, 2008 6:17 AM Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] Really and for true, how can I... Lembit, It isn't magic, no; but if the goal is to get up and running on a new system with all the old software, burning DVDs takes longer. I am eager to try this controller card method. Steve Erbach Neenah, WI USA On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 6:52 AM, Lembit Soobik <lembit.dbamail at t-online.de> wrote: > thanks, Steve. > > doing image backups to DVD is no magic, is it? > so if that path works, I much prefer it. > > OTOH, your step 3 sounds like requiring black magic? > "Unhook the new PC's C: drive from its internal >> controllers and just let it sit there unpowered for a while. (I'm not >> sure whether the new PC should be booted with just the new IDE >> controller card installed." > > are you going to try that? > > Lembit > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Steve Erbach" <erbachs at gmail.com> > To: "Discussion of Hardware and Software issues" > <dba-tech at databaseadvisors.com> > Sent: Friday, May 30, 2008 12:16 PM > Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] Really and for true, how can I... > > >> Lembit, Jon, and Jim L., >> >> Our network administrator at work had good things to say about >> Acronis. However he seemed to think that to really get the "restore >> the system to dissimilar hardware" to work right, one needed to do >> image backups onto DVD. That's what he said. >> >> He did offer an alternative, though, one that might just do the trick. >> Here's the routine (assuming IDE drives...but it's similar for SATA): >> >> 1) Install a new IDE controller card in the old PC and make sure the >> current drivers are installed. >> >> 2) Shut down the old PC, disconnect the C: drive (the one you want to >> transfer to the new box) from the internal IDE controller, wire it up >> to the new IDE controller, and fire up the old PC to ensure that the >> C: drive will boot from the new controller. Shut down. >> >> 3) Install that same new IDE controller card in the NEW PC along with >> the old C: drive. Unhook the new PC's C: drive from its internal >> controllers and just let it sit there unpowered for a while. (I'm not >> sure whether the new PC should be booted with just the new IDE >> controller card installed. I'm not clear on whether the ROMs in the >> PC are supposed to recognize the new hardware first...if that's even >> something that normally happens. Does the hard disk store all the >> configuration information?) >> >> 4) Fire up the NEW PC. The old disk drive SHOULD boot from that new >> IDE controller. Then Windows on the old drive will detect that >> there's new hardware that requires drivers: sound, video, etc. The >> key to all this is that the drive should "know" about the controller >> it's hooked to. All the other drivers are secondary to the disk >> controller. If the boot drive already has drivers for that particular >> controller then it should be happy to boot from it and the rest of the >> drivers can be installed when the "new hardware detected" messages >> appear. >> >> 5) Once all the drivers are installed, the old drive should be ready >> to go as the main boot drive in the new system with all the old >> programs in place and ready to go. >> >> 6) Finally, reconnect the new drive in a slave mode, use Casper (our >> net admin's favorite) to clone the old drive onto the new one, unhook >> the old drive and set the new drive to be the master, and fire up the >> new PC with its newly cloned new drive...and Bob's your uncle, Fanny's >> your aunt. >> >> All of this is simpler if one uses SATA drives, but the fact that it >> appears possible with plain old IDE drives is very encouraging...all >> for the cost of an IDE controller and Casper. >> >> Steve Erbach _______________________________________________ dba-Tech mailing list dba-Tech at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-tech Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com