I looked in the UTV FAQ for this info and both links are dead. I wanted to read up on this to see if this could be done. I want to transfer files to a drive and put the drive in another RCA UTV box. Tried googling but there is so much junk to filter through. Any good info out there to read?

Can't be done.

Transfer files from what?

You can clone an entire UTV drive to a like-sized blank drive using Winhex.

The destination drive should be the same capacity as the source drive, and it's even better if it is the same model.

To do this, you do the IDE cable hot-swap trick after the the source UTV has unlocked the source drive. Then clone the unlocked drive to the blank drive using Winhex. The first UTV you put the newly cloned drive into will lock the drive to that UTV. Don't put the newly cloned drive into the UTV where the source drive came from, or else you will not be able to unlock the source drive again, as it will now be married to the newly cloned drive.

If you are asking about transferring files from a source other than another UTV drive (in it's entirety), then no, that can't be done.

You also can't clone a smaller UTV drive to a new drive of higher capacity, and expect to get any extra capacity. A clone will work to a higher capacity drive, but it will have the same usable capacity as the source UTV drive.

I have a 120 gb drive in a UTV and I am getting a second UTV receiver. I want to clone the the drive I have to another 120 gb drive and put the clone in the new box. So, from what you say it can be done. I will have to find the details on how to do this.
Just googled winhex utv and found a thread here on "drive imaging with winhex"

If your going from a 120 to a 120 just clone the whole drive to the other it should work fine. (note, cloning the entire drive takes several hours)

If you don't know how to do the hot swap method to read the locked UTV source drive with your PC, search the archive link below.

For cloning an entire drive using a non-evaluation copy of winhex, it goes something like this:

1. Select Tools, then Disk Tools and Clone Disk
2. Select your source file or disk
3. Select your destination disk
4. Check Copy Entire Source
5. Enter '0' (no quotes) in Start Sector (destination)
6. (optional) Check Log procedure silently to keep a record
6. Press OK and ignore the warnings about corrupting the destination disk.

There a lot of old threads about this topic in the avsforum archive. To search the archive, start here:

http://archive.avsforum.com/avs-vb/search.php

Sorry, thought you were talking about extraction, not cloning the whole image.

Thanks for the info. After seeing what that would take I think I'll drop that plan and just put the drive in and let it call home. I've done that once before and it is still working fine but that was with a new WD drive. I bought a used WD1600BB that should work OK. I have read that installing a used drive works if it is run through an NTSF reformat. Is there any thing else used to zero out the drive or does reformating usually work?

The best thing to do is no partition and no format at all. Western Digital has a utility you can get from their website that will write all zeros to the drive. It take a loooong time on a 120 gig drive. :)


kazak