Dumb Windows 2000 Questions....

[EchoWars]

A close friend of mine works for a local company that often recieves free software from M$. It so happens that he gave me a copy of Win2K. Just the CD..no book..no floppy...

SOOooo...I just finished a 'file storage' machine for the home network (Epox EP-MVP3C2, AMD K6-2+ 550, 128Mb Mushkin, G400DH, yada yada..) and...with a old 2Gb drive I have laying around, installed Win2K by fdisking the drive and removing the partition...so Win2K could start from there. Windows 2000 runs fantastic, and the Epox even supports ACPI just fine. Never had even a 'burp' out of this system, and by this point with a Win9x setup I would have expected at least a few lockups or blue screens. So far, Win2K rocks!

Now... the 2Gb drive is being replaced with a 30Gb 'very soon' and I want to Ghost the info from the old 2Gb to the new 30Gb. Thing is...I need to have the new 30Gig ready to go with NTFS. Is there a way to make a boot floppy for Win2K so I can fdisk (or whatever it is called with NT) a new drive, format it to NTFS, and have it ready to recieve the ghost image??

Forgive me, but NT is pretty new to me...but I think I like it

[EchoWars]

Lastly...I noticed a folder on the root of the CD called Bootdisk, with images and two files: Makeboot.exe and MakeBT32.exe. Am I getting warm? What is the difference between these two executeables?

[MultimediaMan]

Indeed you are. Makeboot.exe will make floppies in DOS mode: MakeBoot32 is the command in a Windows environment to use to make a bootable floppy. You'll need four floppies to make a complete set of startup disks.



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My (Current) Primary system:

Abit BE6 (QP BIOS)
P3 450
384MB PC-100 SDRAM (Non-ECC)
Matrox Marvel G200-TV AGP (NTSC) 16Mb w/ HW-DVD Module v2.7 BIOS
Quantum 3D Obsidian X-24 Voodoo2 card PCI66
Linksys LNE 10/100TX PCI NIC
SBlive (W/ OD I/O Card, Liveware 3.0 + Update) PCI
ADS Cadet Radio Data AM/FM Card (8 Bit ISA)
3x WD AC28400 EIDE HDDs (ATA66 Enabled)
Creative DVD5241E EIDE 5x DVD-ROM
WinME(English)
DirectX 8

My (Current) Secondary system

Data General-ALR2650(v.005 BIOS)
2x P2 266 (SMP)
128 MB PC-100 SDRAM (ECC)
2 x Number Nine Revolution 3D 8MB PCI Adapters
Adaptec 62011 10/100 PCI NIC
Onboard Adaptec AIC7890 Onboard Intel 82558 PCI NIC
Onboard Cirrus Logic SVGA PCI adapter (Disabled)
Adaptec 2930U SCSI adapter PCI
Creative ModemBlaster 5630 Data/Voice/Fax Modem (PCI)
Creative Labs SBLive Live! (Full Version)
2x WD 4.5 GB Enterprise SCSI3 HDD
Panasonic LK-MW602 CD-R
Nakamichi MBR 7.4
Windows 2000 Pro /w SP-1
DirectX 7a

Tertiary system:
P233MMX
Asus TX-97XE
128MB RAM
Creative Savage4 32MB PCI
2x Creative Voodoo2 2MB (SLI)
Intel Create&Share Video Capture PCI
Creative Labs AWE 64 Gold
Intel PRO100 10/100 ISA NIC
ADS Cadet AM/FM RDS receiver card (8 bit ISA)
Linux Mandrake 7.1/ Win98SE

Quaternary system:
P233MMX
64MB RAM
Asus TX-97X
Number Nine Imagine 128 4MB PCI
Linksys LNE-100 10/100 PCI NIC
Onboard Creative Labs SB Vibra16

Pentenary System:
Dell Inspiron 7100 Laptop
Xircom 56k-10/100 PCMCIA NIC/Modem

Lots and LOTS of CAT5 cable in my walls.

Even more spare parts...

one very angry wife.

[EchoWars]

Cool...hurdle 1 overcome....what about partitioning and formatting for NTFS??

[xortam]

Installation will take care of that (at least in did the beta version I last used almost two years ago).

[EchoWars]

But I don't WANT to reinstall...I want to ghost from my old drive to the new one...??

[xortam]

Oops, forgot that part. Check the installation diskettes for fdisk, format and convert. Otherwise, somebody with more recent experience will have to help you out.

[arbymo]

EchoWars : just connect the new HD, start win2k from the old disk as usual.
then run the disk adminstartor from the admin tools in win2k and partition and format ur new drive from within windows.
very simple.
also, if ur new HD happens to be a segate, they have a utility called disk wizard; which might come with your new HD, or you can download off their site.
it has a program : drive copy which lets u copy a complete drive to another one, but i'm not sure if it works with NTFS too.
most HD companies have similar utilites ..

[EchoWars]

Thanks for the replies ya'all. So I guess there is no bootable utility (like fdisk) in FAT systems to get the job done...but booting from the old drive sounds like it'll work..

Appreciated...

[LvR]

Dont know about you guys, but the 2 times I had to restore my W2K (NTFS) system from a stored ghost immage file, I was warned during the restoration process that "the disk will not be bootable and that this is a NTFS problem/charcteristic".

Solved that one by running fdisk,removing the partition on the new disk, loaded a virgin copy of W2K on the new disk, and then restoring the ghost immage on top of that.

Can somebody maybe suggest a more ellegant method?

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Lawrence

[This message has been edited by LvR (edited 20 November 2000).]

[Rick]

If the partition that W2k is current on is NTFS it'll just ghost over to the new drive. Otherwise ghost it over and once you're in Win2000 run the following from the command line "convert x: /FS:NTFS" where x is the drive letter. On the next reboot Windows will change the file system.

[Rick]

Originally posted by arbymo:
EchoWars : just connect the new HD, start win2k from the old disk as usual.
then run the disk adminstartor from the admin tools in win2k and partition and format ur new drive from within windows.

Trust me you don't want to the the above if you're going to swap drives. Win2k remembers drives and the letters that were assigned to it. I ghosted one drive to the other then swapped the IDE cables and booted off the newer drive. Since Windows remembered the primary drive was F,G,H and the secondary was C,D,E. It booted off F just fine but looked to D for all files. Had to hack the registry to fix it.

[EchoWars]

Damn! Beginning to look like I get to reinstall. Serious bummer. I'm going to try to install to the new drive, and ghost over from the old one. The old one will not remain in the system, so perhaps the multiple drive issue might not come into play...

[Jorden]

Why do the double work of installing first, EW, when you can just ghost your partition data over? Don't do a disk to disk ghost, but do a partition to partition ghost.

And because you don't need to be in Windows to use Ghost, Windows won't remember that you attached a new drive to the PC.

Just put ghost on the 2Gb drive, attach the 30Gb at the secondary IDE port, check if you need to set it in the BIOS, and start ghosting partition to partition. This will make a 2Gb partition on your 30Gb drive, leaving the rest unallocated.

Couldn't be any easier, right?

Then uninstall the 2Gb out of your system (BIOS as well...), set the 30Gb as master drive and boot from this drive.

If that doesn't work, we'll hear from you

Jord.

[Hunsow]

Would you have reinstalled immediatly you would have been finished by now. Just an observation.