Hi!

I wanted to clone a WinXP NTFS from a 30GB HD to another machine with a bigger 40GB partition. The problem is I don't have an external USB CDrom drive and that the CPU's are still under warranty in which I can't open the CPU or else I will void it. Can dd do the job on this one? I am aware that dd could only copy identical drives or else it won't boot. How true is this? I've tried dd on my linux with identical HD and it worked fine. Don't know how it is possible on NTFS with different disk size.

I am also kinda thinking if there is a linux utility or tool where you will just insert the WinXP CD on another machine and do a network boot on the machine which you would like to install XP and have it directed to the machine which has the XP CD installed. Just for me to install the OS.

I don't get the connection between cloning a drive and having an external CDROM.....

You can clone from any drive to any equal or larger drive. The result is that the larger drive appears to be only as big as the smaller one--but this is fixable.

To use dd, you need Linux running on the same machine where the source and target drives are.

Basically, I don't have an external CDROM drive to make it bootup the installer of WinXP. That is the reason that I wanted to just clone the image of a smaller HD into a bigger HD. I just want to know if it's possible in dd. And if it is can it successfully copy the MBR and have it booted the same way the cloned HD was? And how do I fix the partition to maximize the remaining space on the larger disk?

Windows isn't designed to be deployed this way.

If the two computers in question have different hardware, it may not even boot.

Try using Norton Ghost or Ghost for Linux.

Is there a utility in linux wherein clients will network boot and will be able to connect to a PC with XP CDROM...Just like booting Windows XP on your PC but instead of booting it into your CDROM (since you don't have one), just network boot and have it connected on a Remote CDROM. Hope you get what I mean..