Re: Question: move disk from linux machine to windows machine

On Tuesday 22 September 2009 03:46, someone identifying as *1 12* wrote
in /comp.os.linux.hardware:/

I checked the mount, it is /dev/hdb1, so this means it is IDE hard
drive.

*/dev/hdb* will be the disk, and of the PATA/IDE type, yes. */dev/hdb1*
is not a disk but a partition - in this case, the first (and possibly
only) primary partition.

This drive is purely a data disk, I was told the linux boot up
has nothing to do with this disk.

That depends on whether the partition on that disk is automatically
available to you after boot or not. If it is mounted manually, then
indeed there wouldn't be any problem. If on the other hand it is
mounted automatically, then you need to modify */etc/fstab* on the UNIX
machine and comment out or remove the entry for that partition, or add
"noauto" to its mount options.

So it should be safe for me to remove the drive.

Only if you check what I wrote in the above paragraph. :p

But now it comes 2 other questions:

1. I can not edit /etc/fstab as it requires root status. I really do
not want to erase the whole disk and re-install Linux, that is too
much for me. How should I do now? I tried running fstab-sync, it says
command not found.

You mean that this is a machine that you own but you do not have the
root password to it?

2. My windows machine's current drive is SATA, am I hosed? I can not
have 2 types of hard drives on one machine, is that right?

No, it is quite possible to have drives of mixed type in a machine if
the machine has the connectors for it on the motherboard, or by means
of plugin adapter cards. Most modern machines come with multiple SATA
ports but will still have at least one IDE connector - to which you can
hook up two devices - as well. I know many people who, for instance,
have one or two SATA disks in their machine and an IDE/PATA DVD burner.

However, there is a catch. Some motherboards - or more correctly: some
BIOSes - will always treat the IDE/PATA drive as the bootable one if
both IDE/PATA and SATA drives are connected, so chances are that you'll
need to reinstall Windows on that machine, i.e. putting it on the
IDE/PATA drive instead of on the SATA drive.

Technically, if you know what you're doing, then it is quite possible to
have only the Windows bootloader reside on the IDE drive, in the event
that your machine has such a BIOS, and to have the actual Windows
installation on a partition on the SATA disk. Windows requires that
its bootloader resides in the bootsector of the active primary
partition on the hard disk seen by the BIOS as the boot device, but it
is quite possible to have (any NT-based version of) Windows on a
different partition on the same or a different hard disk.

Considering however how finicky the Windows Registry works, it would be
a hell of a job to manually do all of that from the set-up you
currently have on that machine, and as I'm not too well-versed on
Windows, my advice would be to reinstall Windows after the drive has
been transfered from the GNU/Linux machine to the Windows machine.

Either way, as others have already pointed out, unless the partition on
that hard disk you seek to transfer over between the two machines has a
Windows-readable/writeable filesystem on it - which would be a FAT or
NTFS filesystem - you will have to reformat this partition anyway.

Hope this was helpful. ;-)

--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Reverting from Vista to XP
    ... You will also need SP1 or SP2 for Windows XP to support drives larger than ... How to enable 48-bit Logical Block Addressing support for ATAPI disk drives ... The partition would only see it as a 130 GB drive. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)
  • Re: Dual Boot Instructions
    ... the PHYSICAL DISK number, ... Partition and Boot Volume as well as other things. ... You should, at any one time, see ONE System Partition and ONE Boot Volume - ... for the typical two floppy drives and assigning Drive C: ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.vista.hardware_devices)
  • Re: Boot Problem
    ... Right mouse click the dest disk> Advanced> Edit ... but it should eventually boot to Windows. ... I see a lot of posts in here about the ability of Acronis to clone drives. ... I have managed to successfully copy by DELETING partition, ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: Dual Boot Instructions
    ... OS on a separate partition. ... the PHYSICAL DISK number, ... You should, at any one time, see ONE System Partition and ONE Boot ... The name stuck when we added hard disk drives, ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.vista.hardware_devices)
  • Re: Cloning a disk using dd
    ... It seems to have cloned the MBR correctly and the partition layout ... to the boot the cloned 2K disk it started to boot and then failed ... The drives have to be almost identical to work, ... especially with Windows in the mix. ...
    (comp.os.linux.misc)