How: dual-boot with exact partition-clone

[John John]

This is where our experiences diverge, albeit the great bulk
of my experience is with putting the clone on a separate HD.
In such a case, the clone continues to call its own partition
"C:" (if that is what the "parent" OS called its own partition),
and it calls the "parent" OS's partition by some other letter
designation. I typically clone a single partition and put it
among other archival clones on another HD. What I see
when each of the clones is run, is that the clone calls its
partition "C:", and the letter designations of all the other
partitions are given other letter assignments. Perhaps that is
due to the "parent" OS being invsible to the clone by my
disconnecting the "parent" OS's hard drive before the clone's
1st run. It would be interesting to see if that scenario plays
out with a single HD if the "parent" OS's partition is hidden
before the clone is booted. It could be that the simple method
of hiding the "parent" OS's partition would remove the need
for diddling in the registry in the case of a single HD.

*TimDaniels*

That is exactly why they always tell you to remove the parent drive for
the first boot. The clone's MountedDevices database contains the
*exact* information that is on the parent. If you boot the clone with
the parent still in place when the I/O Manager gets the drive letters
for HAL, mountmgr.sys will see a disk with an identical signature as
what is held in the MountedDevices key and it will tell the I/O Manager
to assign the previously assigned drive letters to the parent, hence the
drive letters used for the parent will not be available for the clone
and the clone will be given different drive letters. The
IoAssignDriveLetters function will *always* respect the drive letters
assigned in the MountedDevices key, that is why you can change drive
letters in the Disk Manager and have the change stick for successive
reboots. With the clone removed from the picture the information in the
clone's MountedDevices key is invalid and the I/O Manager reassigns
drive letters based on the set of predetermined rules. If you keep the
parent drive in the picture and delete the entries in the clone's
MountedDevices key when the clone is booted the drive letters will be
assigned based on the preset rules and the first active partition will
be given the drive letter C:

John

 

[Timothy Daniels]

"John John" replied:

That is exactly why they always tell you to remove the parent drive for the
first boot. The clone's MountedDevices database contains the *exact*
information that is on the parent. If you boot the clone with the parent
still in place when the I/O Manager gets the drive letters for HAL,
mountmgr.sys will see a disk with an identical signature as what is held in
the MountedDevices key and it will tell the I/O Manager to assign the
previously assigned drive letters to the parent, hence the drive letters used
for the parent will not be available for the clone and the clone will be given
different drive letters. The IoAssignDriveLetters function will *always*
respect the drive letters assigned in the MountedDevices key, that is why you
can change drive letters in the Disk Manager and have the change stick for
successive reboots. With the clone removed from the picture the information
in the clone's MountedDevices key is invalid and the I/O Manager reassigns
drive letters based on the set of predetermined rules. If you keep the
parent drive in the picture and delete the entries in the clone's
MountedDevices key when the clone is booted the drive letters will be assigned
based on the preset rules and the first active partition will be given the
drive letter C:

John

Without editing the registry to make the clone assign "C:" to its own
partition, have you used any utilities to hide the "parent's" partition from
view by a clone on the same HD when the clone is started for the first time?
Does that approach work? If so, which utility is the simplest to use? Does
it (or they) reside on a boot floppy or boot CD, or does it (or they) have
to be installed and run on an installed OS? Since I usually have 3 or more
clones residing on one of the HDs in the system, using a utility that is
installed on an OS is not a problem, but needing another bootable OS to
run can be clumsy, and at times, unavailable. Is there such a basic
"hide partition" utility that is downloadable for free, or are they all of the
Partition Magic or BootItNG ilk and price?

*TimDaniels*

 

[John John]

"John John" replied:



Without editing the registry to make the clone assign "C:" to its own
partition, have you used any utilities to hide the "parent's" partition from
view by a clone on the same HD when the clone is started for the first time?
Does that approach work? If so, which utility is the simplest to use? Does
it (or they) reside on a boot floppy or boot CD, or does it (or they) have
to be installed and run on an installed OS? Since I usually have 3 or more
clones residing on one of the HDs in the system, using a utility that is
installed on an OS is not a problem, but needing another bootable OS to
run can be clumsy, and at times, unavailable. Is there such a basic
"hide partition" utility that is downloadable for free, or are they all of the
Partition Magic or BootItNG ilk and price?

*TimDaniels*

I have never bothered with such utilities to hide disks after cloning.
Disconnecting the parent drive or disabling it in the BIOS is a simple
and easy way to overcome the problem. If the drive is cloned from an up
and running Windows installation editing the registry on the clone takes
about 10 seconds!

John

 

[michelratipho]

Why would you remove or hide the parent drive if it works just fine
with presetting the MountedDevices to point to the correct partition

 

[michelratipho]

Why bother with hiding or disconnecting parent drives if all you need
to do is presetting the MountedDevices on the clone before you boot
from it from the parent BOOT.INI ?
Just swap the drive-letters in the registery key's under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices. So swap the clone's entry
with the original parent partition (\DosDevices\C. Now boot from the
clone with an entery in the BOOT.INI on the original parent partition
and everything works like a sharm. Atleast with me it does ;-)

I rename the MountedDevices-key's before I clone the running partition
with SelfImage. Then I restore the key's before I reboot. This way the
cloned-partition is ready to boot.....

 

[Timothy Daniels]

If the two OSes are on the same hard drive, you can't
"disconnect the drive" and still have the clone start up.
That is the point of this thread - they're both on the same
hard drive. Again, does anyone know of a cheap or free
utility to hide a single partition? Forget for the moment
about how easy you find it to be to edit the registry. I'm
looking for a method that a newbie would be comfortable
with and which wouldn't get him into trouble.

*TimDaniels*

 

[John John]

To hide a partition you have to edit the partition identifier (Type) in
the Partition Table. There are several free tools available for this
purpose, to name a few: Ptedit or Ptedit32, MBR Wizard, BootItNg. I
would not describe *any* MBR or PT editing tools as "newbie" friendly,
improperly using these tools may completely wreck the whole disk and
cause users to lose all their data!

So that leaves us with two "easier" methods:

1- Install a third party boot manager. Depending on the boot manager
and on the file system in use this may require the user to resize
partitions to allow for the creation of a dedicated partition for the
boot manager. Depending on the user's disk setup it could be easy or
complicated to setup a boot manager "after the fact".

2- Use the remote (Load Hive) registry edit method.

If this is going to be a one time thing, just for the first reboot and
to permit for proper drive letter assignment, then, in my opinion,
editing the registry is the easier method. If the user wants to always
boot to one of the operating systems while hiding the other then he
should use a boot manager.

John

 

[Timothy Daniels]

I recall that I once used Partition Magic (I think) to hide a partition.
It only involved clicking on a check box. But I had to have another
OS available on which to run Partition Magic and I had to be careful
to mark another partitions as "active" before I hid the "parent" OS's
partition so as to have a System Partition available whose boot files
could be used to boot the clone. (This other partition could be the
new clone's partition or some other Primary partition that contained
boot files.) That is why I asked if there were a partition-hiding utility
that could be booted from floppy or CD. Such a utility wouldn't need
an "active" partition with boot files and it wouldn't need a running OS.
Do you (or others) know of any?

*TimDaniels*

 

[Terry R.]

On 10/30/2007 10:22 AM On a whim, Timothy Daniels pounded out on the
keyboard

I recall that I once used Partition Magic (I think) to hide a partition.
It only involved clicking on a check box. But I had to have another
OS available on which to run Partition Magic and I had to be careful
to mark another partitions as "active" before I hid the "parent" OS's
partition so as to have a System Partition available whose boot files
could be used to boot the clone. (This other partition could be the
new clone's partition or some other Primary partition that contained
boot files.) That is why I asked if there were a partition-hiding utility
that could be booted from floppy or CD. Such a utility wouldn't need
an "active" partition with boot files and it wouldn't need a running OS.
Do you (or others) know of any?

*TimDaniels*

Hi Tim,

I use PM to backup partitions, as there are 5 OS's on the main
workstation. After copying them to another drive, you can set them
hidden with a couple clicks. You can use PM within Windows or using a
disk or CD. I have a DOS partition with PM and other utilities on it
that I boot into to make my backup copies, since a reboot is required in
Windows anyway. But any utility will require some OS to run.


--
Terry R.

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[John John]

Ptedit has two versions, the plain Ptedit and the Ptedit32 version. The
plain Ptedit is the 16-bit DOS version, it will work when you boot with
a DOS or W9x floppy boot diskette. MBRwizard is also available for DOS,
and of course, you can boot with a BootItNg floppy and do partition work
without installing the utility.

John

 

[Timothy Daniels]

It sounds like Partition Magic on a DOS-bootable floppy or CD
might do the trick. I wish it were free or cheap, though.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Given the price of BootItNG ($50), Ptedit or MBRwizard sound like
the way to go. I'll take a look at them. Thanks.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Terry R.]

On 10/30/2007 3:03 PM On a whim, Timothy Daniels pounded out on the keyboard

It sounds like Partition Magic on a DOS-bootable floppy or CD
might do the trick. I wish it were free or cheap, though.

*TimDaniels*

Hi Tim,

BootIT has a 30 day trial I believe. PM for $30 here:
http://www.used.cheapdown.com/product_info.php/products_id/418

The DOS version can do everything the Windows version can except for
copying files/folders from one partition to another (hidden or not).
Note PM also includes Boot Magic (boot manager), and the utilities JJ
mentioned (ptedit32, etc).

--
Terry R.

***Reply Note***
Anti-spam measures are included in my email address.
Delete NOSPAM from the email address after clicking Reply.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

BootIT has a 30 day trial I believe. PM for $30 here:
http://www.used.cheapdown.com/product_info.php/products_id/418

The DOS version can do everything the Windows version can except for copying
files/folders from one partition to another (hidden or not). Note PM also
includes Boot Magic (boot manager), and the utilities JJ mentioned (ptedit32,
etc).

Thanks for the info. It looks like I have some experimenting ahead
of me.

*TimDaniels*

 

[michelratipho]

I must be missing something !
Why do you all keep on trying to find some partition hiding and
booting?

Does my explication on cloning and dual-booting not work for you?!
Just altering the HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices, cloning with the
freeware "SelfImage" and using the XP BOOT.INI does the trick whith
me....

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Speaking for myself - I hate to recommend to a newbie (or even
myself) that one should "go into the registry" to do anything. I
already have Casper XP, which I find thoroughly satisfactory
for cloning single partitions or entire HDs, and considering
John John's experience and Pegasus's comment about it, I don't
intend to be a beta tester for SelfImage. As for "using XP boot.ini"
I don't know why people keep recommending 3rd-party boot
managers. Perhaps it's because the boot managers can handle
the partition hiding or because they don't want to explain to
newbies the syntax of boot.ini, which means explaining the
meaning of "rdisk()" and how it varies with the Hard Drive
Boot Order.

*TimDaniels*