Bootable copy of XP partition.

B

Bob Taylor

dadiOH said:
The simplest thing is to just install another (minimal) XP to the partition.
Doing so will create a boot menu from which you can boot should the
need/desire arise. To avoid confusion, you could rename the new XP install
to something like "XP - Basic" in the boot menu.

Alterntively, you can copy the existing XP and make a bootable CD.

You might also want to check out Paragon Hard Drive Manager, it will clone
one HD or partition to another. The same is true of the programs
distributed along with HDs by manufacturers.
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/hdm-personal/features.html

I have been looking at their web page and it seems one of their
products may do the job. They also claim to boot from external usb
drives and to be able to boot on different hardware, which could be
extremely handy.

Can you recommend this vendor?

Regards,
Bob Taylor
philologos at mindspring dot com
 
D

dadiOH

Bob said:
I have been looking at their web page and it seems one of their
products may do the job. They also claim to boot from external usb
drives and to be able to boot on different hardware, which could be
extremely handy.

Can you recommend this vendor?

Well, I can. That's why I mentioned them. Long ago I had Partition Magic
AND TrueImage...needed both because neither did everything (at the time). I
dumped both and went with Paragon. It did everything and I saved a bunch of
HD space.

No comment re the USB and different hardware, never had the need for either.



--

dadiOH
____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.06...
....a help file of info about MP3s, recording from
LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that.
Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico
 
K

Ken Blake, MVP

Well I know far less than any of you, but I got the impression that an
array of two SATA drives, set to keep one identical to the other, is
done in order to have an always present backup.

A friend gave me a mobo and two SATA drives, but I havent' yet
assembled a computer around it.

If I eventually do, won't I have my HD backup, like the OP wants?


What you are planning on doing is the weakest form of backup there is.
I don't recommend backup to a second non-removable hard drive because
it leaves you susceptible to simultaneous loss of the original and
backup to many of the most common dangers: severe power glitches,
nearby lightning strikes, virus attacks, even theft of the computer.

In my view, secure backup needs to be on removable media, and not kept
in the computer. For really secure backup (needed, for example, if the
life of your business depends on your data) you should have multiple
generations of backup, and at least one of those generations should be
stored off-site.
 
M

mm

Yes, you will have the major elements to have a "hot spare" backup by having
the 2 SATA drives installed in internal HD positions 1 and 2. Drive 2 must
be at least as large as drive 1 and be properly formatted. Then all you
have to do is clone your position 1 "C" drive to your position 2 drive using
a good clone app of which there are several - some even freeware.

I also thought that if I set it up as an "array", whatever that is, it
would automatically write the same things to each drive at the same
time, within a second or two.

I appreciate Ken's warning, and I would continue to have an external
backup, but I liked this idea SATA array idea, because I thought it
would be automatic.
I know
that this results in a bootable hot spare because I have been using this
configuration for about 2 years, as well as an externally SATA drive mounted
in a VanTec enclosure which is also bootable. I have also tried connecting
this externally mounted HD via a USB2 connection and it was bootable also.

I don't understand this. I assumed the USB port couldn't do anything
until after the OS booted, and by then it was already booted and
couldn't boot from the USB device.
 
B

bobster

Ken,

An internal second drive backup does have some of the potential
disadvantages that you mention. My personal belief and experience is that
those occurrences are very rare (Except for a virus attack, I've never had
one of those things happen). Much more likely for the average home user is
non-recoverable "C" drive crash, a virus infestation, a drive physical
failure or a self induced screw up by visiting a "bad" site or opening an
infected email attachment. Reversion to an internal second drive would
allow recovery from any or all of those. Thus I don't consider it the
weakest of all backup forms, in fact I have found it to be a very good
approach and have used it to "recover" many times.

That being said, I agree with you that there are better forms of backup. My
personal "best choice" --- a belt, suspenders and thumb-tack approach, and
the one I use myself is:

1) A second internal HD, physically identical to the "C" drive.

2) A third, physically identical HD mounted in an external eSATA enclosure

3) A fourth HD stored in my bank safe deposit box. (protects against
computer theft or home fire)

Using a good clone app (I use Casper 6.0), I clone my "C" drive to the
second internal and external drives about once a week. About every 6
months, I insert my fourth HD into the external enclosure and clone my "C"
drive to it, then return it to my safe deposit box.

All HDs are WD 320gig drives, about $50 each, and the external enclosure is
a VanTec eSATA unit $35-40.

Sounds complicated but in fact is really quite simple. The cost of the
extra hardware is not trivial, but for me, the peace of mind is well worth
it. As I said in a previous post, a very valuable side benefit is that I
can do all the experimenting, fooling around, etc. I want with my "C" drive
with the knowledge that recovery is just a click or two away.

As an aside, thanks for all of your past posts and good advice. Hope they
will continue in the future regardless of what MS does with their forums.




Well I know far less than any of you, but I got the impression that an
array of two SATA drives, set to keep one identical to the other, is
done in order to have an always present backup.

A friend gave me a mobo and two SATA drives, but I havent' yet
assembled a computer around it.

If I eventually do, won't I have my HD backup, like the OP wants?


What you are planning on doing is the weakest form of backup there is.
I don't recommend backup to a second non-removable hard drive because
it leaves you susceptible to simultaneous loss of the original and
backup to many of the most common dangers: severe power glitches,
nearby lightning strikes, virus attacks, even theft of the computer.

In my view, secure backup needs to be on removable media, and not kept
in the computer. For really secure backup (needed, for example, if the
life of your business depends on your data) you should have multiple
generations of backup, and at least one of those generations should be
stored off-site.
 
B

bobster

Daave,

You said,

"If you plug a usb hard drive
in and reboot, it does not see the drive until XP has loaded. Too
late to boot it.

Love to know how to get around that.
"

I only used the USB2 approach once to clone my "C" drive to a second drive
located in an external enclosure. As I recall, I then physically removed
the HD from the enclosure and installed it into the second internal slot and
it booted just fine. Thus, the only use of the USB2 link was to make the
clone, not to subsequently boot from the enclosure via the USB2 link. The
point being that one can make an HD clone using a USB2 link but that to use
that clone as a boot device, it must be connected either via an eSATA link
or physically installed in an internal HD slot. I subsequently discovered
the eSATA cable that came with the enclosure and used it from that point on.

I have heard that some clone apps now have the ability to make bootable
clones via USB2 links using an external enclosure and also to boot directly
via the USB2 link. Don't know how they do it.



Inline.


bobster, often this is not the case!!!
What you are missing is that I was told this and have actually tried
it, but perhaps you know a way around. If you plug a usb hard drive
in and reboot, it does not see the drive until XP has loaded. Too
late to boot it.

Love to know how to get around that.

Bob:

People have had mixed success with making ordinary USB external hard
drives bootable (it's rarely recommended). The motherboard and BIOS must
support the method and you would need to configure the BIOS correctly.

The easiest way to do this is to use an eSATA hard drive (of course the
motherboard must support eSATA).

How about telling us about your hardware?
 
K

Ken Blake, MVP

Ken,

An internal second drive backup does have some of the potential
disadvantages that you mention. My personal belief and experience is that
those occurrences are very rare (Except for a virus attack, I've never had
one of those things happen). Much more likely for the average home user is
non-recoverable "C" drive crash, a virus infestation, a drive physical
failure or a self induced screw up by visiting a "bad" site or opening an
infected email attachment. Reversion to an internal second drive would
allow recovery from any or all of those. Thus I don't consider it the
weakest of all backup forms, in fact I have found it to be a very good
approach and have used it to "recover" many times.


Then we disagree there. But considering what you say below, we don't
seem to disagree all that much.

That being said, I agree with you that there are better forms of backup. My
personal "best choice" --- a belt, suspenders and thumb-tack approach, and
the one I use myself is:

1) A second internal HD, physically identical to the "C" drive.

2) A third, physically identical HD mounted in an external eSATA enclosure

3) A fourth HD stored in my bank safe deposit box. (protects against
computer theft or home fire)


Since you do 2 and 3 as well as 1, we're actually pretty close in our
opinions.

As an aside, thanks for all of your past posts and good advice.


You're welcome, and thanks very much for the kind words.

Hope they will continue in the future regardless of what MS does with their forums.


We'll see what happens with the newsgroups. I'm spending more time now
in the web-based Microsoft forums (using the NNTP Bridges), and I'm
afraid that these newsgroups may gradually peter out.
 
M

mm

And I've wondered about some of these things tooo. If no drive fails
but I screw up my data on the first drive, how long before the second
drive is just as screwed up? If the duplicating is automatic, it
sounds like it will happen in a few seconds, and for sure, before I
have time to stop it. So a second drive in an array would only be
protection against the physical failure of the first drive, right?
Since you do 2 and 3 as well as 1, we're actually pretty close in our
opinions.




You're welcome, and thanks very much for the kind words.



We'll see what happens with the newsgroups. I'm spending more time now
in the web-based Microsoft forums (using the NNTP Bridges), and I'm
afraid that these newsgroups may gradually peter out.

I sure hope not. Newsgroups are far more efficient that web forums,
allow easy saving of replies on one's own computers for future
referecne, and work for people with dial-up, just as well as with
highspeed.

A lot of people I think don't know about newgroups and we shoudl tell
people.
 
B

bobster

mm,

You said,

"And I've wondered about some of these things too. If no drive fails
but I screw up my data on the first drive, how long before the second
drive is just as screwed up? If the duplicating is automatic, it
sounds like it will happen in a few seconds, and for sure, before I
have time to stop it. So a second drive in an array would only be
protection against the physical failure of the first drive, right?


Good points and the very reason why I don't do automatic "duplicating", to
use your term. As I said in a previous post, I manually update (re-clone)
my "C" drive to my second internal HD and the external HD weekly as long as
the "C" drive is exhibiting no problems. This puts a known good
configuration on those drives. However, before I do this weekly re-clone
operation, I run full Malwarebytes and SUPERAntiSpyware scans to ensure
that I do in fact have a "clean" "C" drive configuration. I also run
Microsoft Security Essentials and the MS Firewall full time.

In the event of a non-correctable "C" drive problem, I boot up to one of the
other HD drives, then manually clone it back to the "C" drive. Unless there
has been a hardware failure of the "C" drive, this action puts me back in
business with a "clean" "C" drive configuration. The clone app I use
(Casper 6.0) typically takes 5-7 minutes to do a clone operation after a
one-time "learning" run.

Word of caution. It is essential that one has a "clean" "C" drive
configuration before cloning it to the other HDs or else a bad configuration
can be perpetuated in the those drives. That's why I run MSE+Windows
firewall full time, and updated Malwarebytes and SUPERAntiSpyware before
each cloning operation.

============================================================.

And I've wondered about some of these things tooo. If no drive fails
but I screw up my data on the first drive, how long before the second
drive is just as screwed up? If the duplicating is automatic, it
sounds like it will happen in a few seconds, and for sure, before I
have time to stop it. So a second drive in an array would only be
protection against the physical failure of the first drive, right?
Since you do 2 and 3 as well as 1, we're actually pretty close in our
opinions.




You're welcome, and thanks very much for the kind words.



We'll see what happens with the newsgroups. I'm spending more time now
in the web-based Microsoft forums (using the NNTP Bridges), and I'm
afraid that these newsgroups may gradually peter out.

I sure hope not. Newsgroups are far more efficient that web forums,
allow easy saving of replies on one's own computers for future
referecne, and work for people with dial-up, just as well as with
highspeed.

A lot of people I think don't know about newgroups and we shoudl tell
people.
 
M

mm

mm,

You said,

"And I've wondered about some of these things too. If no drive fails
but I screw up my data on the first drive, how long before the second
drive is just as screwed up? If the duplicating is automatic, it
sounds like it will happen in a few seconds, and for sure, before I
have time to stop it. So a second drive in an array would only be
protection against the physical failure of the first drive, right?


Good points and the very reason why I don't do automatic "duplicating", to
use your term. As I said in a previous post, I manually update (re-clone)

Okay. I thought that was a flaw, but yet some things pushed this
automatic simultaneous updates as if it were very valuable, without
mentioning the flaws.

Thanks for this and the rest.
 
D

Daave

bobster said:
Daave,

You said,

No, I didn't say that. I said this:

People have had mixed success with making ordinary USB external hard
drives bootable (it's rarely recommended). The motherboard and BIOS must
support the method and you would need to configure the BIOS correctly.

The easiest way to do this is to use an eSATA hard drive (of course the
motherboard must support eSATA).

How about telling us about your hardware?
 
B

bobster

Sorry, Dave, that quote was from a post by Paul Taylor.

My hardware configuration is described in another post on this topic. It is
an all SATA3 setup including an eSATA external enclosure for a third drive.

=================================================
bobster said:
Daave,

You said,

No, I didn't say that. I said this:

People have had mixed success with making ordinary USB external hard
drives bootable (it's rarely recommended). The motherboard and BIOS must
support the method and you would need to configure the BIOS correctly.

The easiest way to do this is to use an eSATA hard drive (of course the
motherboard must support eSATA).

How about telling us about your hardware?
 
B

bobster

OOPS,

Previous post should have read, That quote was from a post by "Paul", not
Paul Taylor

Sorry, Dave, that quote was from a post by Paul Taylor.

My hardware configuration is described in another post on this topic. It is
an all SATA3 setup including an eSATA external enclosure for a third drive.

=================================================
bobster said:
Daave,

You said,

No, I didn't say that. I said this:

People have had mixed success with making ordinary USB external hard
drives bootable (it's rarely recommended). The motherboard and BIOS must
support the method and you would need to configure the BIOS correctly.

The easiest way to do this is to use an eSATA hard drive (of course the
motherboard must support eSATA).

How about telling us about your hardware?
 
D

Daave

It would be helpful to know the make and model of your motherboard and
your BIOS version.(If this information is in another post, I didn't see
it.)

Cloning a drive and making it a bootable choice in real time is
ordinarily an easy task. But if your external eSATA enclosure is hooked
up via USB rather than via the SATA connection (which would be the case
if your motherboard does not support eSATA), you have a very different
situation.

Or is your goal disaster recovery without the need for an *instant* boot
(this method is preferred by people like day traders who can't afford a
wasted second)? If so, creating an image of the drive would serve that
purpose because once the image is restored, you will wind up with a
bootable drive anyway.
 
B

bobster

Daave,

My external enclosure is connected via an eSATA cable to the third SATA port
of the motherboard in my Dell Inspiron 530 computer (circa (2007). Thus I
am able to easily boot from the "C" clone HD in this enclosure.

When I first installed this enclosure, I connected it via a USB2 port and
was able to clone my "C" drive to it. But in order to use this as a
bootable HD, I had to physically remove it and install it into the second
internal HD slot. Worked fine but was inconvenient. I finally RTFM and
discovered that the extra cable that came with the enclosure was an eSATA
cable. After using it to connect to the extra SATA port on my MOBO, I was
able to boot directly from the HD in the enclosure -- just like having a
third internal HD slot but located externally.

In my previous posts I described how I have used this setup for the last 2
years. While it doesn't support an "instant" re- boot, I can re-boot into
the external HD or the second internal slot HD in the time it takes for my
computer to do a re-boot -- generally under one minute.

======================================================.
It would be helpful to know the make and model of your motherboard and
your BIOS version.(If this information is in another post, I didn't see
it.)

Cloning a drive and making it a bootable choice in real time is
ordinarily an easy task. But if your external eSATA enclosure is hooked
up via USB rather than via the SATA connection (which would be the case
if your motherboard does not support eSATA), you have a very different
situation.

Or is your goal disaster recovery without the need for an *instant* boot
(this method is preferred by people like day traders who can't afford a
wasted second)? If so, creating an image of the drive would serve that
purpose because once the image is restored, you will wind up with a
bootable drive anyway.
 
B

bobster

Daave,

Update on my previous post:

Just for kicks I temporarily reconnected my external HD enclosure via a USB2
cable rather than the eSATA cable. The enclosure contained a HD that had
previously been cloned from my "C" drive. I started the boot sequence,
pressed F12 to get to the boot order in the BIOS and lo and behold, the USB2
connected drive showed up as a bootable option. I selected it, and
continued the boot sequence and my computer successfully booted to it. It
took a bit longer (~20 additional seconds) to boot when compared to the
eSATA connected one, but the point is that it did boot directly from a USB2
connected HD. Surprised me.

======================================================
Daave,

My external enclosure is connected via an eSATA cable to the third SATA port
of the motherboard in my Dell Inspiron 530 computer (circa (2007). Thus I
am able to easily boot from the "C" clone HD in this enclosure.

When I first installed this enclosure, I connected it via a USB2 port and
was able to clone my "C" drive to it. But in order to use this as a
bootable HD, I had to physically remove it and install it into the second
internal HD slot. Worked fine but was inconvenient. I finally RTFM and
discovered that the extra cable that came with the enclosure was an eSATA
cable. After using it to connect to the extra SATA port on my MOBO, I was
able to boot directly from the HD in the enclosure -- just like having a
third internal HD slot but located externally.

In my previous posts I described how I have used this setup for the last 2
years. While it doesn't support an "instant" re- boot, I can re-boot into
the external HD or the second internal slot HD in the time it takes for my
computer to do a re-boot -- generally under one minute.

======================================================.
It would be helpful to know the make and model of your motherboard and
your BIOS version.(If this information is in another post, I didn't see
it.)

Cloning a drive and making it a bootable choice in real time is
ordinarily an easy task. But if your external eSATA enclosure is hooked
up via USB rather than via the SATA connection (which would be the case
if your motherboard does not support eSATA), you have a very different
situation.

Or is your goal disaster recovery without the need for an *instant* boot
(this method is preferred by people like day traders who can't afford a
wasted second)? If so, creating an image of the drive would serve that
purpose because once the image is restored, you will wind up with a
bootable drive anyway.
 
K

Ken Blake, MVP

I sure hope not. Newsgroups are far more efficient that web forums,
allow easy saving of replies on one's own computers for future
referecne, and work for people with dial-up, just as well as with
highspeed.


I'm with you entirely, but I'm still pessimistic.

And don't forget that you can use your newsreader with the Microsoft
web-based forums and the NNTP bridges. That gets back at least some of
the advantages of newsgroups.
 
D

Daave

Thanks for the clarification, bobster. Apparntly, I misread your initial
post.

Did you find an answer to your original question? I've never use it, but
I believe Casper can do the type of cloning you are looking to do. And
the added bonus is that it also does incremental cloning (another thing
Acronis can't do).
 
B

bobster

Daave,

You said,


"Did you find an answer to your original question?"

I forgot what the question was ;-)

Actually, the original question was asked by Bob Taylor in the first post of
many on this topic. It had to do with how to get a bootable partition for
backup (I think).

You suggested Casper might be a good clone app. I agree -- been using it
for several years.


Thanks for the clarification, bobster. Apparntly, I misread your initial
post.

I've never use it, but
I believe Casper can do the type of cloning you are looking to do. And
the added bonus is that it also does incremental cloning (another thing
Acronis can't do).
 

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