Moving WD to New PC

Folks,

I have an Intel NUC computer due in. It’s around 4" x 4" X 2" with 8GB RAM and 250GB SSD.

I’m going to move WD from my Windows 7 x64 desktop PC to the Windows 7 x64 NUC.

The FAQ for doing this is from 2005 and I have a few questions.

On the NUC do I do a full install of WD then copy all of WD over the installation, finishing by running the exported reg backup?

Or do I just copy over WD as is and run the exported reg backup?

The directory structure and placement will be identical.

Thanks,
Mort

I would:

Run WD’s own backup.

Backup the entire old WD.

Copy over the entire WD.

Do the .reg thing.

I assume the .ini in your entire WD backup will be the same as in your backup so there’s no need to copy that.

Do a full install - if you were running the old 81 then I suggest installing that, don’t mix a move with an update.

Thanks for that.

I forgot to mention that I’m running the latest beta. Which shouldn’t change anything file wise

I had a hard drive fail, so I basically did the same thing, to a new hard drive.

Using SpinRite diskdrive recovery software I was able to get a copy of the entire wdisplay/ file structure. I had a week old full backup, plus the backup WD runs daily to a network connected external drive, had this failed.

I copied the entire structure to the new drive after I installed the OS.
I then “installed” the same version (to knit it all into the windows register)
Started WD, which picked up where it was when the system crashed due to the HDD, and WD then downloaded missing data from the datalogger, and was back online.
WD was also still registered, as that I’m sure is one of the files from when I registered with Brian over 10 years ago.

PS. SpinRite (https://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm) has pulled my bacon out of the fire a number of times over the years by recovering data and repairing disk drives that won’t boot, or even be recognized by the operating system.

I remember SpinRite. I used it a couple of time a few jobs ago. Good software.

I was kind of thinking I should install a clean copy of WD then copy the original running version on top of it.

I’d think, probably in error, that doing it after I copied the files and data over, that doing the install on top of it would wipe out the good data.

Me too, but years ago. I would think it would run for a month with a modern multi gb drive.

I was kind of thinking I should install a clean copy of WD then copy the original running version on top of it.

I’d think, probably in error, that doing it after I copied the files and data over, that doing the install on top of it would wipe out the good data.

Think of it like doing an update to a new version, that doesn’t wipe out your data.

The longest I have had SpinRite has run on a modern drive for me is about 24 - 26 hours. It was a 650MB SATA, from a laptop with a bunch of errors. After SpinRite, I was able to recover all but a tiny bit of the data, which before appeared to be totally gone. Since it was the wife’s laptop with all her pictures, I got to put on my “hero” t-shirt that day

The fact I had “installed” over WD a number of times when installing upgrads was my thinking, and it worked just like an upgrade.

That’s not bad, it’s a great program. I see the website for 6.0 has “It runs MUCH faster than ever before” so I guess it has been updated since my old version

Like WD, SpinRite updates are free. I have used it since probably version 1, when a 5MB ST-506 MFM drive was top of the line.

Unless they have done an update to Spinrite to support drives which the BIOS does not have LBA mode for, it is pretty much useless since it needs hard drives which have LBA mode supported by the BIOS of the machine. Many newer machines don’t do that any more and hence Spinrite doesn’t work. All of my newer computers don’t work with it as the BIOS doesn’t have LBA mode.

I suspect it has not been updated since their website still lists version 6.0. The webpage itself is dated May 05, 2013.

And the response I got when I found it didn’t support BIOS’s without LBA mode…

Subject: Re: Support for BIOS's without LBA mode Date: Dec 26, 2013

There is no time line on the next version of SpinRite. Stay tuned!!

Thank you for your cooperation, time and patience.

Sincerely,

Greg McIntyre
Gibson Research
Technical Support

I got WD moved to my new Intel NUC PC. The little PC is quite impressive for what it is. It’s outfitted with a 250GB SSD drive that’s about the size of 2 sticks of gum. The two memory sticks for a total of 8GB RAM are each about the size of of 1 stick of gum. The 4" x 4" package has about the same power as my wife’s PC, uses minimal power and is ideal for WD running 24/7.

The move itself only had one glitch. It appears the full beta install was missing a DLL (and I forgot to notice which one). I then installed build 81, followed by the latest beta build and it fired up with no errors or missing data.

At the same time, Chris Maini helped me with getting the Saratoga template website going, doing most of the work. It’s about 90% done and everything is mostly working. I have some customization left to do in the next few weeks. Somewhat of a learning curve for sure.

Here’s the site: http://www.m82a1.us/index.php

Thanks for the help folks,

Mort

That’s great! Sorry we strayed a bit off topic there :oops:

Not a problem. I enjoyed the discussion. I remember back in the early days when I worked in IT for Ampex Magnetic Tape. The biggest hard drive for a PC was 10 MB! We thought it was a godsend when 20MB drives came on the market. The HP mainframe also had banks of 10MB hard drives, each the size of a washing machine. They actually shook like one when being accessed.

The (not so) good old days.