Abnormal Disk Image?

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Watty

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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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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