Guest foxdenvixen Posted February 25, 2012 Share Posted February 25, 2012 I was here a couple of days ago and I successfully created a bootable windowspe disk on my laptop to use on my PC that has a failing HDD. I am now trying to figure out how to accomplish my goal of imaging the problem HDD to a different external HDD for now, installing a new HDD and deploying that image to the new HDD without losing installed applications. I have been researching this for several hours yesterday and today and am completely lost and confused. I don't want to use sysprep as this is MY computer and it will remain MY computer. I am only creating an image of the current HDD to deploy on the new HDD. No putting it on several computers so I believe sysprep is useless to me. I found a site that states the following: 3. Boot the target system and take an image The following actions are performed on the target system (the one that you want to take a backup of): 1. Connect the USB drive to the target computer's USB port. 2. Switch on the target computer and press the appropriate key to enter the BIOS Setup menu. (eg F1, F2, DEL) 3. Check whether the Legacy USB support is enabled, and configure the Boot Order so that the USB drive will boot first. Ensure that the BIOS USB-ZIP mode setting is set to Fixed Disk and not Removable Disk (if available). 4. Save and Exit the BIOS menu. The target system should now boot to the Windows WinPE environment from the USB drive. 5. To find the USB drive and hard disk drive letters - type NotePad, then click on File, Open and click on the Computer icon. You can now see how your hard disk volumes are lettered in WinPE. Assume that your USB Flash drive has the letter F: and you wish to backup your C: drive in the instructions below. 6. Exit from Notepad. 7. At the command prompt, type F:\imagex /capture c: f:\mybackup.wim "my comments here" /norpfix /check /verify and press Enter. 8. When this is completed, a backup of the C: drive is available in the mybackup.wim file. 9. If, at a later date, you wish to take another backup, you can append this to the previous backup as follows: imagex /append c: f:\mybackup.wim "second backup" /norpfix I would be using the CD I created, E or F will be used for the optical drive letters....not sure which optical drive I will use...F in the f:\mybackup.wim will actually be S, which is an external drive just in case my problem is a faulty SATA controller instead of a failing HDD. 4. Restoring an image 1. Boot to WinPE from the USB drive - in my case DVD drive 2. Format the target drive volume first (otherwise the existing files will still remain). Eg Type format C: 3. Type imagex /apply f:\mybackup.wim 1 c: /check /verify Note: If you want to restore the second backup that you made, replace the 1 with 2 in the above command. If needed, you can use DISKPART to partition and format a blank hard disk first as follows. DISKPART /s dpart.txt where the file dpart.txt contains the lines: LIS DISK SEL DISK 0 CLEAN CRE PAR PRI SIZE=100000 ALIGN=16065 FORMAT FS=NTFS LABEL="MYDRIVE" quick ASSIGN LETTER=J ACTIVE CRE PAR PRI ALIGN=16065 FORMAT FS=NTFS LABEL="BACKUP" quick ASSIGN LETTER=K LIST VOL SEL DISK 0 SEL PAR 1 LIST DISK LIST PAR DETAIL PAR EXIT I am using a blank new HDD so I guess I need to use DISKPART? However I don't understand the ASSIGN LETTER=J OR ASSIGN LETTER=K. This whole thing has me confused and I would appreciate a detailed list of things I really need to do as a single user of a computer that I am replacing the HDD in. Could someone take pity in me and tell me how (in layman's terms please) to do this starting with booting up the computer with the windowspe DVD I created. I am not a complete idiot when it comes to computers, I am just better at understanding non tech terms and lingo....funny because I have my Bachelor's in IT and build and troubleshoot the computers at home but don't speak TECH very well! I prefer the ...For Dummies Series and visual learning. You can stop rolling your eyes now! Thank you for your EXTREME patience with me! Cori Foxworthy foxdenwebsolutions.com Continue reading... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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