Bootable D: Drive

[Dave C.]

The C: drive is my master and my D: is slave on the same cable. The D:
drive is a clone of C: (XXClone) and have previously check it out by
removing the original C: and booting from the clone.

My question is with both the C: drive (master) and the D: clone drive
(slave) in place, can I safely boot on the D: drive via bios select while
leaving the C: drive in the master position and the D: in the slave
position? I have not tried this yet....concerned about maybe messing things
up.

The only reason to do this is to periodically check the bootability of the
D: drive without having to disconnect cables, open the case, removing the C:
drive, rebooting, then putting everything back to the way it was.

--
Dave C.

(e-mail address removed)9et

Remove the five 9's (leave the 4) for email.

 

[Rod Speed]

The C: drive is my master and my D: is slave on the same cable. The D: drive
is a clone of C: (XXClone) and have previously check it out by removing the
original C: and booting from the clone.

My question is with both the C: drive (master) and the D: clone drive (slave)
in place, can I safely boot on the D: drive via bios select while leaving the
C: drive in the master position and the D: in the slave position?

Should be fine.

I have not tried this yet....concerned about maybe messing things up.

Safest to image the C drive first, but it should work fine.

The only reason to do this is to periodically check the bootability of the D:
drive without having to disconnect cables, open the case, removing the C:
drive, rebooting, then putting everything back to the way it was.

Sure.

 

[Dave C.]

Should be fine.


Safest to image the C drive first, but it should work fine.


Sure.

Thanks Rod, will give it a try shortly. By the way, the XXClone made a
flawless copy of my C: drive on to my second hard drive.

Regards, Dave

 

[Rod Speed]

Thanks Rod, will give it a try shortly. By the way, the XXClone made a
flawless copy of my C: drive on to my second hard drive.

What was the speed like ? That was the main downside I found with xxcopy,
it worked fine, but was quite slow compared with True Image etc.

Pretty crude user interface too.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

You can use the BIOS to select the drive to boot by putting
that drive at the head of the BIOS's HD boot order, or you
can make the system a multi-boot by simply adding an
entry to the boot.ini file of what is now at the head of the
HD boot order by default - the Master drive.

Your boot.ini file (at C:\boot.ini) currently looks something
like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=0
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="this is your
name for the system on the Master drive" /fastdetect

Now, using Notepad, simply change the timeout to some
reasonable no. of seconds to give yourself time to put down
your coffee and select the OS:

timeout=15

Then, assuming that the clone is on the 1st partition on the 2nd
HD, by default the Slave on the channel 0 cable, add this entry
after the last entry:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="this is your name
for the clone system on the Slave drive" /fastdetect

Here, "rdisk(1)" designates the 2nd HD in the BIOS's HD boot
order, and "partition(1)" designates the 1st partition on that HD.

Your new boot.ini file will look like:

[boot loader]
timeout=15
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="this is your name for the system on the Master drive" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="this is your name for clone system on the Slave drive" /fastdetect

At boot time, ntldr, will display your two choices, and by
positioning highlighted selection with the Up and Down arrows,
you can hit Enter to select which OS boots. When the clone
boots, it will call itself C: and the other drive D:. Both will be
visible in My Computer, and you can drag 'n drop files between
the 2 partitions, called "Local Disks" by My Computer.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Dave C.]

Thanks Rod, will give it a try shortly. By the way, the XXClone made a

What was the speed like ? That was the main downside I found with xxcopy,
it worked fine, but was quite slow compared with True Image etc.

Pretty crude user interface too.

Using XXClone, process of cloning my C: drive to the D: drive took about a
couple of hours. Just for my information, I'll look at True Image too.

My C: drive is a 80GB drive with about 50GB of programs, files, and the OS,
WinXP Pro.
The D: drive is a 120GB drive with only one partition.
Computer is 1 1/2 year old Dell, P4, both drives are 7200 rpm.

The only reason for doing this is that if the C: drive crashes, I'll have
this as a backup rather that installing everything on a replacement drive
from scratch.

The 'opening' and the 'advanced setting' screens of XXClone are:

http://www.c4.net/davec/01XXCloneOpeningScreen.jpg

http://www.c4.net/davec/02XXCloneAdvSetupScreen.jpg

On the 'Advanced Setup' screen, the only thing I needed to do is to check
the three boxes as shown.

This was my first and only try on cloning. Any personal experiences, good
or bad with XXCLone would be appreciated.

Dave

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Using XXClone, process of cloning my C: drive to the D: drive
took about a couple of hours. Just for my information, I'll look
at True Image too.

My C: drive is a 80GB drive with about 50GB of programs,
files, and the OS, WinXP Pro. The D: drive is a 120GB drive
with only one partition. Computer is 1 1/2 year old Dell, P4,
both drives are 7200 rpm.

The only reason for doing this is that if the C: drive crashes,
I'll have this as a backup rather that installing everything on
a replacement drive from scratch.

Try Casper XP - it's focuses more on cloning, and you can
download a free 30-day trial copy from Future Systems
Solutions' website at:
http://www.fssdev.com/products/casperxp/ .

With Casper XP you can clone single partitions from among
several on a source drive to a single partition among several
on the destination drive. True Image can't do that without
going thru the kludge of making an image file of the source
partition and then "restoring" that image file to a destination
partition. With your setup, you can put two clones of the
source drive on the destination drive because Casper XP
will see if the amount of data on the source partition will fit into
the destination partition, not just compare the partition sizes.
If your OS and data will fit into 60GB, you can put 2 clones in
your 120GB drive.

By simply adding an entry to the boot.ini file of both clones,
you can make either of them boot itself OR the other, or you
could add 2 entries to the boot.ini files of all 2 OSes and have
any one of them able to boot itself or any of the other two.
You can select the drive via the BIOS's HD boot order, and
you can select the partition that runs its boot.ini by setting
its "active" flag with Disk Management. Then you can select
which OS to startup when ntldr displays the options listed in
the boot.ini file.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Rod Speed]

Using XXClone, process of cloning my C: drive to the D: drive took about a
couple of hours.

Urk, that's a hell of a lot longer than TI takes.

TI allows you to adjust the partition sizes too. When replacing a drive
with a bigger one, you dont necessarily want the partitions the same size
on the clone, and dont necessarily want a percentage increase either.

Just for my information, I'll look at True Image too.

Its a lot more than just a cloner too.

My C: drive is a 80GB drive with about 50GB of programs, files, and the OS,
WinXP Pro.
The D: drive is a 120GB drive with only one partition.
Computer is 1 1/2 year old Dell, P4, both drives are 7200 rpm.

The only reason for doing this is that if the C: drive crashes, I'll have this
as a backup rather that installing everything on a replacement drive from
scratch.

There's a lot to be said for using images instead of clones in that situation.

 

[Dave C.]

You can use the BIOS to select the drive to boot by putting
that drive at the head of the BIOS's HD boot order, or you
can make the system a multi-boot by simply adding an
entry to the boot.ini file of what is now at the head of the
HD boot order by default - the Master drive.

Your boot.ini file (at C:\boot.ini) currently looks something
like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=0
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="this is your
name for the system on the Master drive" /fastdetect

Now, using Notepad, simply change the timeout to some
reasonable no. of seconds to give yourself time to put down
your coffee and select the OS:

timeout=15

Then, assuming that the clone is on the 1st partition on the 2nd
HD, by default the Slave on the channel 0 cable, add this entry
after the last entry:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="this is your name
for the clone system on the Slave drive" /fastdetect

Here, "rdisk(1)" designates the 2nd HD in the BIOS's HD boot
order, and "partition(1)" designates the 1st partition on that HD.

Your new boot.ini file will look like:

[boot loader]
timeout=15
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="this is your name for the
system on the Master drive" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="this is your name for clone
system on the Slave drive" /fastdetect

At boot time, ntldr, will display your two choices, and by
positioning highlighted selection with the Up and Down arrows,
you can hit Enter to select which OS boots. When the clone
boots, it will call itself C: and the other drive D:. Both will be
visible in My Computer, and you can drag 'n drop files between
the 2 partitions, called "Local Disks" by My Computer.

*TimDaniels*

Thanks, Tim, that was going to be my next question as to how to set up the
boot.ini for a dual boot.

Regards, Dave

 

[Dave C.]

I appreciate all the helpful posts. Thanks.

Regards,

--
Dave C.

(e-mail address removed)9et

Remove the five 9's (leave the 4) for email.

 

[Dave C.]

What was the speed like ? That was the main downside I found with
xxcopy, it worked fine, but was quite slow compared with True Image etc.

Rod, thinking back, I am sure that the cloning process took probably 4
hours, not a couple as I first reported. I didn't track the time
specifically, but I did it one day in the afternoon.

The freeware version I used does not have the differential copy feature as
does the purchased version. I plan to buy the full version for $40.

Dave

 

[Rod Speed]

Rod, thinking back, I am sure that the cloning process took probably 4 hours,
not a couple as I first reported.

Yeah, sounds plausible, I know xxcopy took ages and
that was with much smaller drives than I clone today.

I didn't track the time specifically, but I did it one day in the afternoon.

The freeware version I used does not have the differential copy feature as
does the purchased version.

That differential copy feature certainly has some real advantages.

The time to do a full clone may not matter much, you dont do it that often.

I plan to buy the full version for $40.

I'd use TI myself, similar price and it does a lot more.

 

[Antoine Leca]

En news:[email protected], Timothy Daniels va escriure:

Your new boot.ini file will look like:

[boot loader]
timeout=15
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="this is your name for
the system on the Master drive" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="this is your name for
clone system on the Slave drive" /fastdetect

At boot time, ntldr, will display your two choices, and by
positioning highlighted selection with the Up and Down arrows,
you can hit Enter to select which OS boots. When the clone
boots, it will call itself C: and the other drive D:.

Did you tried it successfully?

Last time I tried (with a slightly different letter scheme), the registry in
the 120GB disk (loaded along with NTLDR) had C: pointing at the 80GB disk
(because of the signatures in the MBRs), so I end up with C: being the old
disk exactly as if I booted from it, the only difference was that I loaded
the OS from a different place.

Then I gave it another try, booting the same way just after doing a complete
clone (including the MBR and the signatures) to the 120GB disk. This time
the kernel from the 120GB booted using itself (with the "shared" signature),
recognized the two disks had the same signatures so it silently changed the
signature on the 80 GB to a brand new random one.
Next time I attempted to boot on the normal 80GB, the normal registry get
the hand, recognized the signature for C: as being the one of the 120GB
(hope you are following me), so was using the 120GB as C: disk!
The worst problem is that I did not notice it immediately, but only when I
unplugged the 120GB disk... nothing worked at all (since the 80GB were given
the D: letter upon the second reboot; I wouldn't have done it, it would have
worked ;-)).


Antoine

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Timothy Daniels va escriure:

Your new boot.ini file will look like:

[boot loader]
timeout=15
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="this is your name for
the system on the Master drive" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="this is your name for
clone system on the Slave drive" /fastdetect

At boot time, ntldr, will display your two choices, and by
positioning highlighted selection with the Up and Down arrows,
you can hit Enter to select which OS boots. When the clone
boots, it will call itself C: and the other drive D:.

Did you tried it successfully?

Yes, I do it at each backup. I typically even do it with more than
4 or more clones plus the booting OS all visible to each other and
bootable according to the entries that I place in the boot.ini file of
each one.

Your description is confusing. Remember that when you have a
clone, everything in it looks exactly like the "parent" OS. I suspect
that when the clone was running, you thought it was the "parent" OS.
And you also mention nothing about possible other partitions and
whether you paid any attention to which one was marked "active".

Last time I tried (with a slightly different letter scheme), the registry in
the 120GB disk (loaded along with NTLDR) had C: pointing at the 80GB disk
(because of the signatures in the MBRs), so I end up with C: being the old
disk exactly as if I booted from it, the only difference was that I loaded
the OS from a different place.

Then I gave it another try, booting the same way just after doing a complete
clone (including the MBR and the signatures) to the 120GB disk. This time
the kernel from the 120GB booted using itself (with the "shared" signature),
recognized the two disks had the same signatures so it silently changed the
signature on the 80 GB to a brand new random one.
Next time I attempted to boot on the normal 80GB, the normal registry get
the hand, recognized the signature for C: as being the one of the 120GB
(hope you are following me), so was using the 120GB as C: disk!
The worst problem is that I did not notice it immediately, but only when I
unplugged the 120GB disk... nothing worked at all (since the 80GB were given
the D: letter upon the second reboot; I wouldn't have done it, it would have
worked ;-)).


Antoine

*TimDaniels*

 

[Antoine Leca]

En news:[email protected], Timothy Daniels va escriure:

Yes, I do it at each backup. I typically even do it with more
than 4 or more clones plus the booting OS all visible to each other
and bootable according to the entries that I place in the boot.ini
file of each one.

Your description is confusing.

Sorry if I confused you.

I was reading "cloning a disk" as doing a sector-by-sector copy of the whole
disk surface, from LBA 0 (the MBR) to the last one.

Since you are talking about "more than 4 clones", you obviously are not
talking about cloning disks but rather "volumes" (or "partitions" or "file
systems" or "letters"; hope you get the idea.)

Remember that when you have a clone, everything in it looks exactly
like the "parent" OS.

Yes. Particularly (in Windows NT) a pointer in the registry (HKLM\System,
\DISK or \MountedDevices) which contains the mapping of the "letters"; this
mapping is done by the signature of the physical disk (bytes 1B8 to 1BB in
the MBR) along with the starting offset for the mounted file system
(starting at byte 0 in LBA 0).

So every different clone will assign C: to the same physical file system on
disk,
_unless_ the said file system has been made invisible to Windows before
booting (which is the case if you disconnect the original disk and install
the newly cloned one in place),
_or_ either if the cloning utility has slightly edited the registry (the
same way it already changes the HiddenSectors count in the boot record.)


The funny part is that Windows does not seem to check whether the indication
in BOOT.INI of the kernel to boot (the ARCpath, multi() etc.) actually
matches its view of the kernel once booted (i.e.
%SystemRoot%\system32\ntoskrnl.exe): it only complains (loudly, STOP 0x7B,
BSoD) if it is not able to _find_ the latter while booted.

Behaviours might evolve between versions at this level, my tests were with
W2K, YMMV with XP.

I suspect
that when the clone was running, you thought it was the "parent" OS.
And you also mention nothing about possible other partitions and
whether you paid any attention to which one was marked "active".

I do not believe that Windows NT pays any attention to the "active" markup
of the partitions, _except_ when it enumerates the volumes on a 'newly'
discovered (physical) disk (i.e., when using Mountmgr.sys.)

Of course, things are (were) widely different for DOS and Windows 9x, and
also for the standard code in the MBR.


Antoine

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Timothy Daniels va escriure:

Sorry if I confused you.

I was reading "cloning a disk" as doing a sector-by-sector copy of the whole
disk surface, from LBA 0 (the MBR) to the last one.

Since you are talking about "more than 4 clones", you obviously are not
talking about cloning disks but rather "volumes" (or "partitions" or "file
systems" or "letters"; hope you get the idea.)

Terminology can be inconsistent in fast-moving technologies.
For me, "cloning a disk" means cloning a Local Disk, i.e. a
partition. "Cloning a hard drive" would mean the entire platter
contents, but I may be in the minority. In the utilities that I've
used, the boot sector and the MBR are included either by
default or as options in the cloning.

Yes. Particularly (in Windows NT) a pointer in the registry (HKLM\System,
\DISK or \MountedDevices) which contains the mapping of the "letters"; this
mapping is done by the signature of the physical disk (bytes 1B8 to 1BB in
the MBR) along with the starting offset for the mounted file system
(starting at byte 0 in LBA 0).

So every different clone will assign C: to the same physical file system on
disk, _unless_ the said file system has been made invisible to Windows
before booting (which is the case if you disconnect the original disk and
install the newly cloned one in place), _or_ either if the cloning utility has
slightly edited the registry (the same way it already changes the
HiddenSectors count in the boot record.)


The funny part is that Windows does not seem to check whether the
indication in BOOT.INI of the kernel to boot (the ARCpath, multi() etc.)
actually matches its view of the kernel once booted (i.e.
%SystemRoot%\system32\ntoskrnl.exe): it only complains (loudly,
STOP 0x7B, BSoD) if it is not able to _find_ the latter while booted.

Behaviours might evolve between versions at this level, my tests were
with W2K, YMMV with XP.



I do not believe that Windows NT pays any attention to the "active"
markup of the partitions, _except_ when it enumerates the volumes
on a 'newly' discovered (physical) disk (i.e., when using Mountmgr.sys.)

Correct. My comment pertained to the difficulty in easily knowing
which partition had been the system partition, i.e. the partition with
boot.ini, ntldr, and ntdetect.com . That partition is designated by
the "active" flag - which is recognized by the MBR and it marks which
partition the MBR should pass control to. If all partitions had those
boot files which could load an OS from a partition designated in their
bootlini files, the "active" flag would play a big part in determining
which clone got loaded. So the user has to know the HD boot order,
which partition is "active", and the contents of the boot.ini file to know
which clone gets started up. Sometimes you can think a particular
clone is running when, in fact, a different one is running. For that
reason, I put a folder on the desktop of each clone having a folder
name which uniquely identifies it. I use the creation date and time
for that. I also put partition nos. in the text string associated with
each entry in the boot.ini file so that I can see on the screen which
partition I'll be booting. This can involve editing the boot.ini file in
each new clone, and it can easily be overlooked.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Woodmon]

Terminology can be inconsistent in fast-moving technologies.
For me, "cloning a disk" means cloning a Local Disk, i.e. a
partition. "Cloning a hard drive" would mean the entire platter
contents, but I may be in the minority. In the utilities that
I've used, the boot sector and the MBR are included either by
default or as options in the cloning.

{stuff deleted}

Correct. My comment pertained to the difficulty in easily knowing
which partition had been the system partition, i.e. the partition
with boot.ini, ntldr, and ntdetect.com . That partition is
designated by the "active" flag - which is recognized by the MBR
and it marks which partition the MBR should pass control to. If
all partitions had those boot files which could load an OS from a
partition designated in their bootlini files, the "active" flag
would play a big part in determining which clone got loaded. So
the user has to know the HD boot order, which partition is
"active", and the contents of the boot.ini file to know which
clone gets started up. Sometimes you can think a particular
clone is running when, in fact, a different one is running. For
that reason, I put a folder on the desktop of each clone having a
folder name which uniquely identifies it. I use the creation date
and time for that. I also put partition nos. in the text string
associated with each entry in the boot.ini file so that I can see
on the screen which partition I'll be booting. This can involve
editing the boot.ini file in each new clone, and it can easily be
overlooked.

*TimDaniels*

Tim,

Do your boot.ini recommends apply when a disk unkowingly contains two
"partitions" or "volumes"? For example when the first is a system/boot
partitions/volumes and the other is a hidden "recovery" partition/volume
(i.e. factory hard drive setup on HP Pavilion PC's).

The HP hidden partition includes the Windows XP setup CD image, system
recovery tools, device drivers and all the install archives for the
applications bundled with the system.

I could be wrong here but I'm concerned that end-users will mistakenly
forget about this hidden 'recovery' partitions while imaging/cloning a
"disk", when following your method.

Yes cloning a "partition" is best used term. Not the same as cloning a
"disk" or a "hard disk", which the majority would refer to as the same as
cloning a hard drive.

Now if we can get everyone to agree on use of "partition" and "volume". A
partition can exist over more than one volume.

Woody

 

[Gerhard Fiedler]

Sometimes you can think a particular clone is running when, in fact, a
different one is running. For that reason, I put a folder on the
desktop of each clone having a folder name which uniquely identifies it.

AFAIK, the disk management applet shows which partition is the boot
partition (i.e. the one where ntldr processed the boot.ini file) and which
partition is the system partition (i.e. the one that contains the currently
running Windows installation).

Gerhard

 

[Antoine Leca]

In Woodmon va escriure:

Now if we can get everyone to agree on use of "partition" and
"volume". A partition can exist over more than one volume.

Can you elaborate what you mean here please?

For example, considering things like Linux LVM, I thought "volume" was a
rather different thing than "partition" is, with no direct one-to-many (or
many-to-one) correspondance.


Here I consider the /classical/ sense of "partition" meaning a slice of the
PC disk, as in "partitionning."
I know the mathematical meaning of this word differs.


Antoine

 

[Timothy Daniels]

AFAIK, the disk management applet shows which partition
is the boot partition (i.e. the one where ntldr processed the
boot.ini file) and which partition is the system partition (i.e.
the one that contains the currently running Windows installation).

The Disk Management utility in WinXP does specify
the boot and system partitions. But....

1) Disk Management takes longer to run than to
glance at the desktop of the running OS,
2) Disk Management doesn't tell you when the clone
was created or last had an update applied to it, and
3) Thanks to Microsoft's bizarre and perverse terminology,
you got "boot partition" and "system partition" reversed -
In MS-talk, the "boot partition" is the partition that has
the OS that was booted; the "system partition" is the
partition with the boot files that booted the system.
Yes, that's right - the "boot partition" contains the system,
and the "system partition" contains the boot files, and
this is all reflected in the way the partitions are labelled
by Disk Management.

*TimDaniels*