Cloning a System Partition

[Guest]

Hi, I cloned my system partition using software from my HDD manufacturer,
Maxtor, which seemed to be fine but a number of programs had problems. The
main ones being "Windows Installer" & "Microsoft Office 2003".

To get to the point while investigating I founed that the cloned copy had a
third-party Kernal and would not upgrade.

If everything had gone well and then in the future my system had failed and
I would be left using a system which did not have the "correct" kernal, what
are the implications? Do all cloning software have the same results?

I think I'll stick with an ASR recovery to get me out of trouble, I woud be
interested in an opinion from more experience minds.

Sorry it's a long post. Thanks.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I have never used any cloning tools offered by hard disk
manufacturers but I have used commercial tools extensively,
with a 100% success rate. There is even a way to clone
a disk with xcopy.exe if you know your way around
the WinXP boot environment.

Here are a few products that I have used for cloning:
- Acronis Partition Expert
- PQMagic, DriveImage
- Snapshot.exe

Snapshot is a recent arrival on the scene. The program
does not require any installation and it will run while
Windows is active. Restoration on to a blank hard
disk requires a Win98 boot disk and is not for the
faint-hearted.

 

[Kerry Brown]

I have used the Maxtor program to clone hard disks with XP installed. The
interface leaves a lot to be desired but if you pick the right options it
works. It may not work if your original hard drive has a hidden restore or
diagnostic partition. You also need a fairly recent version to clone NTFS
partitions. Your post is a little confusing but ti sounds like for some
reason you let it install the disk overlay software for older computers that
don't support large hard drives. This is not needed with XP. Personally I
use Acronis True Image. It is easier, faster, and less error prone.

 

[Jim Lewandowski]

I had the SAME problem with Seagate's cloning (HD copy) software.

It did NOT copy the installer folder (which is why MSWord and EXCEL docs went through a
popup install window every time I opened one of them).

JL

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Hi, I cloned my system partition using software from my
HDD manufacturer, Maxtor, which seemed to be fine
but a number of programs had problems.

I gave up on Maxtor's "MaxBlast" copier long ago.
I've tried Drive Image 7.0 (now Ghost 9.0/10.0),
but I prefer Casper XP. It stays in Windows, so
no re-boot is necessary after the cloning, it doesn't
require .NET Framework to be installed, and it can
clone just a single partition from among several
partitions and put it among other existing partitions -
which Acronis' True Image cannot do directly.

You can download a free 30-day trial copy of
Casper XP from www.FSSdev.com/products/casperxp/ .

BTW, in Microsoft terminology, "system partition"
is the partition with the boot files - ntldr, boot.ini, and
ntdetect.com - and "boot partition" is the partition
that contains the operating system. Yeah, it's backwards.

*TimDaniels*