Using Veritas to restore to a new hard drive
Here goes another really geeky post. I recently had problems with my 40 GB hard drive in my Dell D600 laptop. And by problems, I mean that it had the gall to go and get filled up and run out of space. How rude! So, I did what any normal person would do … NOT delete anything, but buy a bigger one. But how to get all my stuff from the old drive to the new one? And, more importantly, how to get all my applications, settings and data on the new drive without having to recreate everything from scratch?
As anyone who knows me would tell you, I am very particular about the setup of my computers. Well, more anally-retentive I suppose.
I do like things set up just so. For example, I like to organize my Start Menu in neat, logical groups. An organized Start Menu is the sign of an organized mind. Well, at least that’s what I tell myself. Applications that force you to have shortcuts in certain places, and recreate them if you delete them (*cough* … iTunes 7 … *cough*) should be destroyed. (I have a fix for that, but that is another post.)
Fortunately, we use Veritas for Windows Servers as a backup solution at the office, so I thought: Hey, just do a full backup of the current drive, pop in the new one and do a full restore and presto! Unfortunately it’s not quite that easy. For example, if you have a blank hard drive, how is Veritas going to talk to your computer to restore to it?
After a few false starts, a dozen blue screens and a complete redo, I think I have a pretty good system defined now.
Step 1: Perform a full back up the old hard drive and the system state. This only took 10 hours for my 32GB of data on my D600.
Step 2: Shut down, unplug the AC, remove the battery, pull out the old drive and pop in the new drive. I went with a 7200 RPM 100GB model from Seagate. Only $125 bucks.
Step 3: Boot up the PC using your Dell restore CD. Well, in my case it was actually just an XP installation CD. Just do a basic install. Make sure you get the drivers for your network card.
Step 4: During the XP install, name your computer the same thing it was named before and set up an identically named profile you used on the original computer. If you logged into your old computer as “Wing Commander X5”, then set up a “Wing Commander X5” account on the new one, and reset the password to the same password you used before. Don’t worry about doing all the Windows Updates, that will come in the restore.
Step 5: Install the Veritas Backup Exec RANT32 client, preferably with the OFO. Make sure, if you restored to XP sp 2 that you disable the firewall. Earlier versions of XP did not have the firewall enabled by default.
Step 6: Now, go to Veritas and do a full restore of the drive (not the system state yet). You want to make sure you don’t overwrite files that are newer than what you are restoring, so make sure your job is set to overwrite only if the target is older. If you don’t, you can expect to see blue screens. Restoring 32GB to my new, faster drive only took 57 minutes. You will need to reboot when this is finished.
Step 7: Restore the system state. This took a short time, only about 5 minutes. Reboot again, without logging in when it comes up.
Step 8: Back in Veritas, select a new restore job and this time select the C:\Documents and Settings\Username folder (where Username is your name) and this time, select the option to “overwrite all files.” This job will take a surprisingly lonnnnnnnnnnng time. In fact, you will start to think something went wrong. Just be patient. My 1.2GB profile took 45 minutes to restore. If you are patient and let the job finish (instead of forcing a cancel … can you say more blue screens?) you will need to reboot one more time. Now your computer should be good as new, except with a bigger hard drive in my case. Wahoo!
Hi. I have two 40GB Maxtor 34098H4 hard drives, one of which died completely three months ago. The BIOs will not recognize it and it will not spin when my computer is powered up. The dead drive does not make any noise. After doing some research, I found two seemingly possible methods of getting a dead drive to spin which each have supporters and detractors. The two methods are possible alternatives (To those who cannot afford it) to paying thousands of dollars to a professional firm with a sealed clean room to recover data. The first method involves finding the same model hard drive as the dead one with the exact PCB (Printed Circuit Board) and then swapping the PCB from the good drive into the dead one to make it spin. The second method involves putting the dead drive into a Ziplock storage bag and putting it into the freezer overnight and then taking the drive out and pray that the hard drive will spin. I wanted to try the first method but after examining my good hard drive, which is of the same size and model as the dead one, I found that the PCBs are slightly different. So, the first method will not work for me (I don’t have the time and resources to try to find an exact PCB for the dead drive). I was wondering, would the second method work? Many people have claimed that the second method works and others have claimed that it would end up damaging the drive heads or platters even further. In your experience, have you tried the second method and what is the success rate for making the hard drive spin again so that data can be recovered? I just want to recover some old pictures and music from my dead drive. Any assistance you can offer is greatly appreciated. Thanks!