Help!
lovelybug's hard drive is dying; the logs are full of errors and her applications are falling apart.
I've bought a larger replacement. My first thought was to make a bit-for-bit copy of the old drive onto the new, but that fell over trying to copy sectors that seem to have become entirely unreadable.
The machine runs Windows XP Pro. I could install Windows on the new hard drive and copy over the files; this would have the advantage that the applications could all be reinstalled and might start working again. But where do I get a copy of Windows to install (the machines did not come with Windows install disks) and how do I re-use our existing Windows license?
NB
lovelybug wants to continue using Windows XP, though of course I'm more than happy to use Linux based tools for the low-level stuff.
I've bought a larger replacement. My first thought was to make a bit-for-bit copy of the old drive onto the new, but that fell over trying to copy sectors that seem to have become entirely unreadable.
The machine runs Windows XP Pro. I could install Windows on the new hard drive and copy over the files; this would have the advantage that the applications could all be reinstalled and might start working again. But where do I get a copy of Windows to install (the machines did not come with Windows install disks) and how do I re-use our existing Windows license?
NB
Re: Additionally...
Date: 2008-12-30 07:12 pm (UTC)Although using different disc versions is supposed to trip WGA warnings - I just normally use an upto date Sp2 (now sp3) disk on all repair installs and haven't seen it cause them (over many attempts).
If you filecopy and/or rescue dd the disk you may not have to reinstall/repair install first anyway - depending on how badly damaged the fs is.