[Gllug] copying a hard drive.

[Tethys]

john gennard writes:

>When I got the machine, it had XP Pro and the Pro
>office suite installed. I wanted to keep these, as I
>have an overseas correspondent with whom I was swapping
>a lot of data, and she uses Excel which I could then
>use without the hassle of converting her files. Of
>course, I have no CDs for the expensive Win software.

1. Unless she's using some of Excel's more obscure features
   (and 99% of people don't), then gnumeric will read the
   files just fine. No conversion necessary.

2. You don't have a licence to use the Windows software
   anyway (MS licences are non-transferable), so your only
   legal option is to go out and buy a copy of MS Office
   et al. [1]

>a. Should I use an external IDE drive on the Laptop, and
>	if so how can I do this (what interface etc)?. OR,

Yep, that would work. Get an external USB disk, plug it
in and away you do.

>b. Could I put the IDE drive in one of my three normal
>	boxes and try to copy to it from the laptop
>	after adding it to my small home network, using
>	say Knoppix and dd?.

Yep, that'd work too.

>c. Am I correct in accepting that I can get a complete and
>	bootable copy of my laptop hard drive provided the
>	partition on the drive I want to use is greater in
>	size than 12Gig?

Should be able to, yes. I can't see any problems with
doing that off the top of my head.

Tet

[1] I've heard claims that this isn't enforcable. However,
    at my last company, our lawyers said it was, so when we
    bought another company, it came with the hidden extra
    cost of a gazillion licences that couldn't be novated.
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