Cloning a damaged XP disk in Puppy

[jamien770]

Can anyone please help, I have a customers dying HDD with a special embedded version of XP for a kodak kiosk machine, windows wont even find the disk, low and behold Puppy hasnt let me down and its found it, all I need to do now is clone it so I can re-instate the machine. Any help would be appreciated.

Its an 80gb SATA drive and I have another 80gb for cloning, I have googled till my eyes are sore

[rcrsn51]

Gnost.

You might want to practice using Gnost on some other machines so you understand how it works before trying to clone the target machine.

Be aware that if the dying hard drive already has bad sectors, nothing will recover it fully.

[jamien770]

thanks will give it a try, will let you know how i get on with it

[jamien770]

ok gnost is on, both sata drives connected, problem is windows wasnt shut down properly on the kiosk due to a power cut and gnost wont copy partition as it is waiting for windows to close properly, how do I do the "force task"

[rcrsn51]

This is dangerous territory and I am reluctant to make suggestions that might kill your Windows machine.

Do you have an XP install disc? You first choice should be to boot off it and launch the Recovery Console. Run a chkdsk command.

If you don't have an XP CD, try this from Puppy.

1. Run Gparted. Right-click on the Windows partition.
2. Select Check.
3. Reboot to Windows. This may get you a clean start.
4. Then run Gnost.

As a last-ditch effort, you can force Gnost to do the clone.

1. Go to the gnocode folder and open gnoclone in a text editor.
2. Change Line 60 to "ntfsclone -f --overwrite ...."

[jamien770]

I have the HDD out of the Kodak Kiosk system up in my workshop, I have every version of Windows possible, the HDD wont run the windows files, major problems, only puppy has found the files. Problem is its a bastardised version of windows changed by kodak to run in their kiosk machines, and they are being anal about telling my customer they have to pay stupid money for a newer version of the software and the processor ( a levono desktop PC to me and you) which is running fine apart from this buggered drive. I will try and run the check disk through puppy. I appreciate the advice you are giving me.

[jamien770]

Tried the last ditch effort by re-writing the code and the clone was done, will go down and re-install it at the customers tomorrow and let you know how it went.

Again many thanks for your help, you have saved me hours of trawling and work.

[rcrsn51]

Be aware that you now have a new drive with exactly the same content and potential problems as the old one. So there is no guarantee that you are any farther ahead.

[jamien770]

Thanks, but I think it was the power cut that buggered the HDD in the first place, major clicking of the heads etc, so fingers crossed. And if it doesn't work the customer will just have to bite the bullet and get a copy of the OS from Kodak.

[Ted Dog]

Well if its a deaths door, wrap it in clean dish cloth inside a ziplock type bag and store it in the freezer, then google search for spinright recovery software http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm, its super old and It shows with its CGA graphics, simple website,etc. But the techniques it uses to low level rescue that still works today regardless of OS on dieing HD.
It uses techniques that gov and spys use to pull data off harddrives. I've got a inkling he may have been a gov/agent type employees before reusing the older ideas to recover dying disks.

[cthisbear]

Sounds crappy advice but I have done this for my local computer
shop...his cloning never worked on a Toshiba laptop.

I formatted his new drive with XP and allowed 1% of install.

Rebooted in Puppy.....

deleted all the Windows files....

copied the problematic Windows files with Puppy

after placing the old drive into a USB caddy..

voila! it booted.

He couldn't believe it.

""""""""""

Usually if I do this, I load into safe mode on first boot.

Other times I've loaded up up Hiren's and removed XP drivers
if it is really different hardware...that wouldn't boot.

Chris.

[rcrsn51]

@jamien770: No reply? I guess that we will never know how this episode turned out.