My objection was to "will" in your statement:
"when you reboot the computer if the parent drive is still in place there
will be a conflict with assigned drive letters..."
That may happen sometimes, but I have never seen that to happen,
so "there will be a conflict" was too determinate in my opinion.
Even Symantec says:
"The problem happens because Windows sometimes reassigns the
drive letters..."
They are correct in saying "sometimes" because I have never seen it
happen! What I have seen is that the clone gets screwed up in various
and sometimes very subtle ways that may not become apparent until
much later. It's also quite possible that sometimes, or even most times,
it doesn't get screwed up at all. That's the insidious nature of this problem.
BTW, this problem probably happens with all clones of the NT/2K/XP
family of OSes. If you want to be conspiratorial, Microsoft designed
this "feature" into those OSes to thwart software pirating. I would really
like to hear if cloners of Vista have found the same difficulty.
*TimDaniels*
"John John" wrote:
> You misunderstood what I said, Tim. I fully understand that each disk can
> have it's own C: drive and that each can be booted from its own System
> partition and keep its system and boot volume drive letters, and that it will
> cause no problems.
>
> The problem I am referring to is when a drive is cloned, if the user tries to
> boot the cloned drive while the parent drive is still attached there may be
> drive letter problems on the first boot. This is a well known issue with
> Ghost and cloned drives, there may be problems on the first boot if the parent
> drive is still attached, the computer may not boot or there may be
> "Pagefile.sys is too small or does not exist" errors. After the first boot
> the parent drive may be brought back online and both operating systems will
> keep their independent system drives and boot volume drive letters. The
> problem is documented on the Symantec site:
>
> http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT...99012611140625
>
> Regards;
>
> John
>
> Timothy Daniels wrote:
>
>> A clone will call its own partition by the same letter name as its
>> "parent" OS did. That is, if the "parent" OS called its own
>> partition "C:", the clone will also refer to its own partition as "C:".
>> In other words, each OS, WHEN IT IS RUNNING, will call its
>> own partition "C:", and it will call other partitions by other letter
>> names. This NOT a PROBLEM, as long as there are no
>> shortcuts in either OS that refer to other partitions. Specfically,
>> the running OS, if it calls its own partition "C:", might call the
>> other OS's partition "D:", but so what? It doesn't matter. When
>> the other OS runs, it will call its own partition "C:" again.
>>
>> *TimDaniels*
>>
>> "John John" wrote:
>>
>>>Install the SATA drivers on the installation that you have now (on the IDE
>>>disk) *before* you clone it.
>>>
>>>*Very Important!* Do not boot the cloned drive with the old IDE drive in
>>>place! Disconnect the parent drive before you attempt to boot the clone!
>>>This is true with all cloning of boot drives, when you reboot the computer if
>>>the parent drive is still in place there will be a conflict with assigned
>>>drive letters and the cloned drive may adopt a different drive letter, thus
>>>preventing the cloned Windows installation from booting successfully. The
>>>letter assignment can be changed by way of remote registry editing but it is
>>>usually easier to disconnect the parent drive than it is to do the registry
>>>edit. Furthermore, if things really blow up you can just put the parent
>>>drive back in its place and reboot to the old installation as if nothing had
>>>ever happened. Once you are satisfied that the cloned installation is
>>>running properly you can bring the old disk back online, it will adopt a
>>>different drive letter.
>>>
>>>Also, there may be a relatively easy to fix problem with the rdisk assignment
>>>in the boot.ini ARC path. There is a possibility that ntldr thinks of the
>>>new SATA as being a different rdisk ordinal than the old IDE drive, this will
>>>prevent Windows from booting successfully. An
>>>easy way around this is to add lines to the boot.ini file so that you have
>>>different rdisk options when the computer boots. If you don't know
>>>how to change the boot.ini file or if you are unsure as to what the rdisk
>>>values the different lines should contain, post again and someone will be
>>>able to suggest which lines and rdisk values to add to the boot.ini file.
>>>You should change the boot.ini file *before* you clone the disk, or if you
>>>have a floppy drive you should make a boot floppy and put
>>>an all purpose boot.ini file on the floppy.
>>>
>>>John
>>>
>>>RJK wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Could some kind soul review my half finished procedure to see if I'm missing
>>>>something.
>>>>
>>>>I currently have 2 ide hd's 80gb/160gb, master & slave on IDE port 1
>>>>XP home ed. boot drive is currently on master hd - C:\
>>>>
>>>>...have just fitted two SATA hd's to motherboard SATA ports 1 and 2
>>>>...all so far is lovely, new 80gb and 160gb SATA hd's detected.
>>>>
>>>>If I use Norton Ghost to copy(mirror image) my XP C:\ (ide0) drive onto hd
>>>>SATA 1, and let Ghost set the new SATA/xp partition active, (...reboot and
>>>>set PC to boot from that SATA hd (1), ...will anything go "bang" because
>>>>XP can see an active partion left behind on IDE0 ?,
>>>>...or will Ghost mark the IDE0 had partition inactive for me ?
>>>>
>>>>I sort of went best part of the way to doing it, and could see the check box
>>>>to set the copied partition "active," but, there didn't seem to be any check
>>>>box to set the "left behind" partion inactive, if you see what I mean :-)
>>>>
>>>>TIA
>>>>
>>>>regards, Richard
>>>
>>
>>
>