Bootable D: Drive

[Timothy Daniels]

{stuff deleted}



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.

My comments are not meant to include any procedures
for preserving the hidden partitions that manufacturers
include for restoring an image of the "as shipped" partition
that contained the installed OS. The reason is that I don't
know how such "hidden" partitions are hidden and whether
a cloning utility would spot them in a cloning of the entire disk
surface.

By the time that an average user gets around to cloning his
hard drive, though, enough files have been added or
modified and enough parameters have been set that a
restoration of the "as shipped" system would be disasterous
because all that work would be lost. As explained to me by
the Dell telephone tech rep when I first got my PC, those
hidden images are just to get a new owner through the 1st
few days of ownership when he's most likely to generate
an "Oh, $hit!" event than to restore anything of value later on.

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.

I never figured that one out, but I've been fortunate so far
in not having had to do so. Maybe a partition has logical
extent, and a volume has only physical extent? Or is it the
other way around?

*TimDaniels*

 

[Antoine Leca]

In Timothy Daniels va escriure:

3) Thanks to Microsoft's bizarre and perverse terminology,
you got "boot partition" and "system partition" reversed -

It's really just a by-product of the birth of Windows NT (on MIPS): system
partition was the first, and came in even before NT, since that how the
firmware names where are the first "programs" it gives control to; for the
NT starting process it is NTLDR and related.

Then comes the process designed for Windows NT, where this very program,
usually named the "boot loader", launches the OS kernel, and its environment
(particularly the SYSTEM hive which controls many things). The folder where
this environment lies, which is pointed to by BOOT.INI, is known as the root
folder; and the volume (letter, drive, file system) where this lies is
called the "boot partition."

No question it is unfortunate terminology nowadays (what was the last build
number for NTforMIPS? or NTonAnythingNotIntel?)


What makes it _really_ confusing is that, if you want to know which is the
"root folder", one way to learn it is to query the (Win 3.x inherited)
function GetSystemDirectory, or to look at the SystemRoot environemnt
variable; and in general, the Microsoft technical documentation about this
names this root folder "the system directory"...


Antoine

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Timothy Daniels va escriure:

It's really just a by-product of the birth of Windows NT (on MIPS):
system partition was the first, and came in even before NT,
since that how the firmware names where are the first
"programs" it gives control to; for the NT starting process it is
NTLDR and related.

Then comes the process designed for Windows NT, where
this very program, usually named the "boot loader", launches
the OS kernel, and its environment (particularly the SYSTEM
hive which controls many things). The folder where this
environment lies, which is pointed to by BOOT.INI, is known
as the root folder; and the volume (letter, drive, file system)
where this lies is called the "boot partition."

No question it is unfortunate terminology nowadays (what was
the last build number for NTforMIPS? or NTonAnythingNotIntel?)


What makes it _really_ confusing is that, if you want to know
which is the "root folder", one way to learn it is to query the
(Win 3.x inherited) function GetSystemDirectory, or to look
at the SystemRoot environemnt variable; and in general, the
Microsoft technical documentation about this names this
root folder "the system directory"...

Thanks for the history of how those terms evolved.
Just as in nature, IT evolution sometimes leads to
nonsense and dead ends.

*TimDaniels*