I just finished a swapping the HD on my laptop. I didn't fancy the idea of loading the OS, drivers and applications from scratch and even then risk loosing some overlooked piece of work. So I figured the simplest method of achieving this would be with Norton Ghost.
The trouble is, I can't just dump the ghost image onto the HD itself as that is the drive I'm trying to make an image of. Since I can't write to the CD on the laptop, I reasoned that the only way to back up an image of the partition (which is 100% of a 4gig disk) was to get access to a network drive on the desktop.
First issue is to get a bootable floppy. Since I have windows 2000 installed this is not as simple as I would have hoped. Luckily I found an old hard disk that when put into my desktop machine booted up on windows 95. Pressing F8 I was releived to find I had left the option of booting up on the original DOS V 6.22, and was therefore able to make a bootable DOS floppy. (much less bloated than the V7 job that comes with 95)
Next I wanted a copy of the DOS Lanman client. Since I seem to have lost my old NT4 server disk in my recent move, I went through hours of searching the internet for a downloadable copy from Microsoft. Then having to get a copy of EXPAND.EXE from that trusty old Win95 HD. To extract all the required LanMan files.
Next I wanted the DOS drivers for the onboard network card in the laptop. These are not bundled with the drivers for the laptop, so more scouring the net.
Finally I put the whole lot together and with a bit of editing of the INI files I have finally got a floppy that I can boot up on, that gives me access to the network, from DOS.
Mapping a drive to a shared directory on my desktop, then allowed me to run GHOST.EXE to save an image of the partition on my laptop, as a file on my desktop machine.
Installing the new hard disk into my laptop, I then booted up on the same floppy, connected to the same shared drive, formatted the hard disk and loaded the image back on.
It worked but surely there must be an easier way?
The trouble is, I can't just dump the ghost image onto the HD itself as that is the drive I'm trying to make an image of. Since I can't write to the CD on the laptop, I reasoned that the only way to back up an image of the partition (which is 100% of a 4gig disk) was to get access to a network drive on the desktop.
First issue is to get a bootable floppy. Since I have windows 2000 installed this is not as simple as I would have hoped. Luckily I found an old hard disk that when put into my desktop machine booted up on windows 95. Pressing F8 I was releived to find I had left the option of booting up on the original DOS V 6.22, and was therefore able to make a bootable DOS floppy. (much less bloated than the V7 job that comes with 95)
Next I wanted a copy of the DOS Lanman client. Since I seem to have lost my old NT4 server disk in my recent move, I went through hours of searching the internet for a downloadable copy from Microsoft. Then having to get a copy of EXPAND.EXE from that trusty old Win95 HD. To extract all the required LanMan files.
Next I wanted the DOS drivers for the onboard network card in the laptop. These are not bundled with the drivers for the laptop, so more scouring the net.
Finally I put the whole lot together and with a bit of editing of the INI files I have finally got a floppy that I can boot up on, that gives me access to the network, from DOS.
Mapping a drive to a shared directory on my desktop, then allowed me to run GHOST.EXE to save an image of the partition on my laptop, as a file on my desktop machine.
Installing the new hard disk into my laptop, I then booted up on the same floppy, connected to the same shared drive, formatted the hard disk and loaded the image back on.
It worked but surely there must be an easier way?
