'Drive Transplant' using Retrospect Express??

[curious123]

I have a laptop with Windows 2000 and a 10Gb drive that's now too small. I want to upgrade it to a 40Gb drive.

 

I think that the Retrospect Express disaster recovery procedure *might* work for me based on what I've read in ther FAQ but I'm not certain. I was not able to find explicit mention of doing a 'drive transplant' in the on-line FAQ.

 

I was thinking of purchasing a Maxtor external USB drive that comes with Retrospect Express to help me in this process.

 

 

I think what I have to do is:

 

a) Install the Maxtor drive and Retrospect Express on the laptop.

 

Backup the laptop 10Gb drive using the disaster recovery procedure.

 

c) Copy the disaster recovery ISO CD image to a CD.

 

d) Remove the 10Gb drive from the laptop.

 

e) Install the 40Gb drive in the laptop.

 

f) Boot the laptop using the disaster recovery CD made in step c) above.

 

g) Somehow copy the backed-up files from the external USB drive on to the new 40Gb drive.

 

I presume that at the end of this process the laptop o/s and applications will be as they were prior to the exchange of the laptop drives.

 

Is Retrospect Express capable of this task or do I need to buy the full version of Retrospect to do this?

 

Do I have to re-install Win2000 before I try to recover the backed-up image?

 

Please let me know if I have this correct, and if not, can you please correct me where I am wrong?

 

 

Thank you.

 

[AmyJ]

You've got it correct. The steps you outlined should work. We don't support swapping out hardware on a computer before a full system restore. The restored system state information may not match up with the new hardware and may cause problems, including not being able to boot.

 

That being said, providing you're swapping out a 'like' hard drive and not going from SCSI to IDE or vice versa, there are usually no problems with an upgraded hard drive. Hardware such as motherboards, video and audio cards, etc. are much more problematic when swapped out.

 

You shouldn't need to reinstall Windows2K before doing DR. The bootable CD is designed to install a temporary OS and run a restore wizard.

 

After creating the ISO image, be sure to create a CD from the image - not just burn the ISO file onto the CD. A properly created CD will have a mix of files and folders when explored - not a single ISO file. See the Retrospect Read Me for information on creating CD's from an image.

[curious123]

Forgot to ask....

 

I presume that I can physically install the new drive in the laptop without doing any partitioning or formatting AND THEN run the Retrospect disaster recovery boot CD to begin the full setup/recovery of my system files and data.

 

Is this correct?

 

I wish there was a tech note on this subject....I'm sure that there are a lot of people who buy Retrospect/RE and external USB drives to do exactly what I'm trying to accomplish.

 

Thanks

[AmyJ]

You will have the option of formatting and partitioning the new drive while booted from the DR CD.

[curious123]

Thanks for the quick reply!!!

 

So does that mean I *could* decide to partition the new 40Gb drive into say 2 partitons, one of say 4 Gb that I'd use only for Win2000 system files (ie. I could nuke this partition if I ever had to reinstall W2K), and the balance of the drive for user data, and still have the 'restore' work ok?

 

Do I get to decide which data from the backup goes to which partition during the restore, or will the DR restore try to place all the files in the default partiton, or the one I chose?

 

TIA

 

ps. also posting another question under title " Why disk full error on USB drive?"

[AmyJ]

During Disaster Recovery, all files will go to the choosen destination. You will not have the option to selectively restore files from a snapshot to different drives.

 

You can setup more then one restore during Disaster Recovery. For example, if you originally backed up the C: and D: drive, you can set up Disaster Recovery to restore both sequentially using whichever snapshot(s) you choose.

[curious123]

If the backup (ie. the file Retrospect creates as part of the original DR creation process) of the original drive is bigger than 4Gb then it won't be accepted on a FAT32 volume (as I have found out).

 

So one (Possible??) solution is to tell RE to backup to a NTFS volume on the network that has enough space to accept a backup file of >4Gb.

 

But after doing the drive 'transplant' on the laptop and then booting with the DR cd, the laptop has to have knowledge of the network and be able to restore across the network.

 

 

So that raises 2 questions:

 

1) Does the DR cd that's created have any knowledge of my network when it installs the minimal o/s and Retrospect Express? ie. does the DR cd have enough smarts to make the minimal boot network 'aware'?

 

2) Will Retrospect Express create a backup set over the network in the first place (ie. from laptop to network drive), and then be able to restore from that network drive onto the new , larger laptop disk?

 

 

Thanks

 

[AmyJ]

If you boot from the Disaster Recovery CD and Retrospect or Windows is unable to see a backup device, hard disk or RAID configuration, it could be that the system is missing important drivers.

 

When booting from the Disaster Recovery CD, you will get a chance to add custom device drivers by pressing F6.

 

If you do miss this step when booting from the CD, reboot from the DR CD and add any additional drivers that are needed to access backup devices or RAID volumes.