Can I copy my XP partition to another drive, and run there?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Peabody
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Peabody

I want to copy my current XP C: drive contents to the first
partition of a larger drive which also has other partitions I don't
want to disturb. So it would need to be a partition-to-partition
clone. Then I would remove the old drive, make the big drive the
master, and boot from it.

Will Windows notice that it is booting from a different drive than
it last shut down on? Will it refuse to run?

It seems to me this might run afoul of the anti-piracy provisions.
Something about a volume identifier?

If it matters, this is a pre-installed system which authenticates
from the bios.
 
Peabody said:
I want to copy my current XP C: drive contents to the first
partition of a larger drive which also has other partitions I don't
want to disturb. So it would need to be a partition-to-partition
clone. Then I would remove the old drive, make the big drive the
master, and boot from it.

Will Windows notice that it is booting from a different drive than
it last shut down on? Will it refuse to run?

It seems to me this might run afoul of the anti-piracy provisions.
Something about a volume identifier?

If it matters, this is a pre-installed system which authenticates
from the bios.
Click to expand...

The answer depends on a couple of things. First, what is the
status of the second hard drive --- an extended partition with
several logical drives? In this case, the answer is going to
be no because a primary partition is required from which to
boot. Or is it a HD with an inactive primary partition and
an extended partition set configured as a slave? Then it may
be possible, with the cloned image of Drive C replacing the
contents of the first (or primary) partition of this HD and
it will become the new Drive C when configured as the Master.

But is this really what is intended? Think it out. It just
might be better to replace the original, small Drive C with
a larger one, leaving the larger drive alone.
 
Mike Hall (MS-MVP) said:
Peabody

Use Acronis TrueImage to do this.. you can download a trial version that
will work for 15 days.. it works excellently..

http://www.acronis.com
Click to expand...


Peabody (& Mike):
You can use Symantec's Norton Ghost (we use the 2003 version) to clone one
partition to another partition. It's a relatively simple & straightforward
process to do so with the Ghost 2003 version.

To the best of my knowledge, you cannot *directly* clone the contents of one
partition to another partition using the ATI program - at least using their
version 8 - I do not know whether their newly-released version 9 has this
capability (perhaps someone can comment on that). With ATI it's an
"all-or-nothing" process, i.e, you can *directly* clone the ENTIRE contents
of one disk to another disk. Using the ATI program, I believe you can copy
the contents of one partition to removable media, e.g., a DVD, and then use
that media to perform the copying to the partition on another drive. But I
find that an awkward process and much prefer the direct
partition-to-partition cloning process.

Assuming you do use a disk imaging program such as Symantec's Norton Ghost
2003 to perform the cloning operation, make sure that immediately following
the cloning process you disconnect your source disk and make the initial
boot with your newly-cloned disk. Do not make that initial boot with both
drives connected.
Anna
 
Anna

The trial version of ATI 9 allows for a few permutations on the partition
theme..
 
Mike Hall (MS-MVP) said:
Anna

The trial version of ATI 9 allows for a few permutations on the partition
theme..
Click to expand...


Mike:
Thanks. And does one of those "permutations" allow for the *direct* cloning
of one drive's partition to another drive's partition, a la Ghost 2003?
Anna
 
Mistoffolees says...
Peabody wrote:
Click to expand...
The answer depends on a couple of things. First, what is
the status of the second hard drive --- an extended
partition with several logical drives? In this case, the
answer is going to be no because a primary partition is
required from which to boot. Or is it a HD with an
inactive primary partition and an extended partition set
configured as a slave? Then it may be possible, with the
cloned image of Drive C replacing the contents of the
first (or primary) partition of this HD and it will
become the new Drive C when configured as the Master.
Click to expand...
But is this really what is intended? Think it out. It
just might be better to replace the original, small
Drive C with a larger one, leaving the larger drive
alone.
Click to expand...

The big drive has two primary partitions, one is FAT-32 and
the other is NTFS. The little drive contents go to the NTFS
partition.

I actually tried this, and XP noticed that it was a new
drive. It seemed not to balk, but did say that things might
not operate properly until I rebooted. Which I did, and
everything appears normal, except that the drive letters are
a bit strange - it retained the lettering of the optical
drives (D & E), which made the extra HD partition show up as
F:. I don't see what problem that would cause.
 
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