Clone hard drive

[William B. Lurie]

Michael and Sharon, since you spent so much time and
effort helping me get my drive cloning debugged, I
thought you might be interested in some follow-up.
It's in the interest of learning as much as possible,
to be able to help people, which is why you work in
this group....not for fun or profit.

I have practiced cloning my main drive a good number
of times, because I intend to do it every month, and
it would be nice to be able to do it seamlessly. I
can't say that my technique is 100% refined, or gives
identical results every time. We've learned a lot, but
not everything; some mystery remains.

The process that worked best, but not every time, seems
to be this:
1. On Master Drive, use msconfig, choose Selective Start-up,
disable ccapp.exe, and Restart.
2. Prepare a Slave Drive newly formatted; only a main
partition, Active and Primary. Make sure that it
is empty, and has nothing ahead of it on the drive,
when examined by Partition Magic.
3. Use Drive Image 7, in Copy a Drive mode, and set as
parameters that it is to copy MBR, and make bootable.
4. Copy the drive.

What I have found so far is that the Clone is bootable,
and fully functional, when in Slave position on the cable,
jumpered as Slave, and my BIOS set to HDD-1. This seems
to be reproducible.

When I take the Clone over to Master position, and boot
to HDD-0, drive alone on the cable and jumpered as Single
or Master Drive, I've had cases where it boots all the
way, just fine, but sometimes I get a drive which boots
past the black Windows screen, only as far as the light
blue Logo screen, without the "Loading your personal
settings", and that means it has hung there again. I had
hoped that not allowing ccapp.exe to be in the Start-Up
would eliminate that "hang" every time, but it does not.

I'm relating this saga partly because I think you're
interested enough so that you might find these happenings
useful in diagnosing other peoples' problems, and partly
because I know that there are a few other people who have
shown interest, in this group.

As I said......the solution for me each month will be to
make a clone and test it, and keep it if it works, or keep
trying until I get one that does work. That's until we
pin down what it takes to make it work every time.

 

[Guest]

Sounds like a headache package to me....Why not use a simple techniqu
w/o all that noncense.Set youre new drive as slave,formatted with a primar
partition,Then simply type:XCOPY C:\*.* D:\ /c/h/e/k/r click ok,agree to al
in the DOS window.Youre all set when its thru,for more info,open cmd,type
XCOPY /?

 

[William B. Lurie]

Sounds like a headache package to me....Why not use a simple technique
w/o all that noncense.Set youre new drive as slave,formatted with a primary
partition,Then simply type:XCOPY C:\*.* D:\ /c/h/e/k/r click ok,agree to all
in the DOS window.Youre all set when its thru,for more info,open cmd,type:
XCOPY /?

Andrew, I would be astonished or amazed or both, if
that technique would work. I'll admit that I'm
ignorant of the XCOPY command. In general, things
in the DOS-link "cmd" mode of XP are very limited
in what they'll do. I'll defer to some of the
MVPs here....what do you say, Michael and Sharon?
Will that scheme play?

William B. Lurie

 

[Michael Solomon \(MS-MVP Windows Shell/User\)]

William, I've not used it for this purpose so I can't speak to whether or
not it will work for you as desired.

 

[Rick Hanson]

Have you tried using a hard drive cloning utility from the manufacturer of your hard drive(s)? I have used
Maxtor's Max Blaster 3 in Windows and in DOS and I've also used Samsung's Disk Manager in DOS. Both programs
are very easy and user friendly and free downloads. The Maxtor program requires that one of your drives be a
Maxtor for it to run and Samsung needs your drive model and serial number before you can download their
utility. I have been using Drive Image 7 for six months with mixed results for cloning and backup images.
However to date I have had no problems at all with the manufacturer's hard drive utilities.

Rick

 

[=?iso-8859-1?B?uyBtcnRlZSCr?=]

Here is a link to TrueImage7 (free trial) from Acronis: http://www.acronis.com/download/. Will you please try it! With it I create an image file (or to CD or DVD if desired) on a 2nd HDD. The image can be restored to any HDD. No disabling of any files required!

--
Just my 2¢ worth
Jeff
__________in response to__________
| Michael and Sharon, since you spent so much time and
| effort helping me get my drive cloning debugged, I
| thought you might be interested in some follow-up.
| It's in the interest of learning as much as possible,
| to be able to help people, which is why you work in
| this group....not for fun or profit.
|
| I have practiced cloning my main drive a good number
| of times, because I intend to do it every month, and
| it would be nice to be able to do it seamlessly. I
| can't say that my technique is 100% refined, or gives
| identical results every time. We've learned a lot, but
| not everything; some mystery remains.
|
| The process that worked best, but not every time, seems
| to be this:
| 1. On Master Drive, use msconfig, choose Selective Start-up,
| disable ccapp.exe, and Restart.
| 2. Prepare a Slave Drive newly formatted; only a main
| partition, Active and Primary. Make sure that it
| is empty, and has nothing ahead of it on the drive,
| when examined by Partition Magic.
| 3. Use Drive Image 7, in Copy a Drive mode, and set as
| parameters that it is to copy MBR, and make bootable.
| 4. Copy the drive.
|
| What I have found so far is that the Clone is bootable,
| and fully functional, when in Slave position on the cable,
| jumpered as Slave, and my BIOS set to HDD-1. This seems
| to be reproducible.
|
| When I take the Clone over to Master position, and boot
| to HDD-0, drive alone on the cable and jumpered as Single
| or Master Drive, I've had cases where it boots all the
| way, just fine, but sometimes I get a drive which boots
| past the black Windows screen, only as far as the light
| blue Logo screen, without the "Loading your personal
| settings", and that means it has hung there again. I had
| hoped that not allowing ccapp.exe to be in the Start-Up
| would eliminate that "hang" every time, but it does not.
|
| I'm relating this saga partly because I think you're
| interested enough so that you might find these happenings
| useful in diagnosing other peoples' problems, and partly
| because I know that there are a few other people who have
| shown interest, in this group.
|
| As I said......the solution for me each month will be to
| make a clone and test it, and keep it if it works, or keep
| trying until I get one that does work. That's until we
| pin down what it takes to make it work every time.
| --
| William B. Lurie

 

[Richard Rudek]

Michael and Sharon, since you spent so much time and
effort helping me get my drive cloning debugged, I
thought you might be interested in some follow-up.
It's in the interest of learning as much as possible,
to be able to help people, which is why you work in
this group....not for fun or profit.

I have practiced cloning my main drive a good number
of times, because I intend to do it every month, and
it would be nice to be able to do it seamlessly. I
can't say that my technique is 100% refined, or gives
identical results every time. We've learned a lot, but
not everything; some mystery remains.

The process that worked best, but not every time, seems
to be this:
1. On Master Drive, use msconfig, choose Selective Start-up,
disable ccapp.exe, and Restart.
2. Prepare a Slave Drive newly formatted; only a main
partition, Active and Primary. Make sure that it
is empty, and has nothing ahead of it on the drive,
when examined by Partition Magic.
3. Use Drive Image 7, in Copy a Drive mode, and set as
parameters that it is to copy MBR, and make bootable.
4. Copy the drive.

What I have found so far is that the Clone is bootable,
and fully functional, when in Slave position on the cable,
jumpered as Slave, and my BIOS set to HDD-1. This seems
to be reproducible.

When I take the Clone over to Master position, and boot
to HDD-0, drive alone on the cable and jumpered as Single
or Master Drive, I've had cases where it boots all the
way, just fine, but sometimes I get a drive which boots
past the black Windows screen, only as far as the light
blue Logo screen, without the "Loading your personal
settings", and that means it has hung there again. I had
hoped that not allowing ccapp.exe to be in the Start-Up
would eliminate that "hang" every time, but it does not.

I'm relating this saga partly because I think you're
interested enough so that you might find these happenings
useful in diagnosing other peoples' problems, and partly
because I know that there are a few other people who have
shown interest, in this group.

As I said......the solution for me each month will be to
make a clone and test it, and keep it if it works, or keep
trying until I get one that does work. That's until we
pin down what it takes to make it work every time.

William, did you see my reply to your previous thread (FIXMBR redux)?

Perhaps it was too criptic for you. Let's see if I can explain it, and
the proper operation of "Copy Drives" better. But a bit of background,
first.

Windows, through the use of the Disk Management console, allows you to
assign/reassign the drive letters or mount points that volumes
(partitions) use. It keeps track of where things should be mounted in
the registry, of the CURRENTLY ACTIVE system volume, under the registry
key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

In short, if a device has an entry in this Registry key, then it will be
mounted where it has been told to, unless there is a conflict (something
else is already there). If you examine this key, you should see a number
of keynames that begin with "DosDevices", for example "\DosDevices\C:".
The binary data it contains is an identifier that often includes the
disk signature of the volume.

The Disk signature is a unique number stored within a portion of the
MBR. The MBR, in turn, uses a portion of the first sector on the disk,
sector zero, with the remainder of sector zero (not used by the MBR)
containing the primary partition table. So obvioulsy, sector zero is a
very important, and critical sector. Just to add to the confusion,
modern hard drives manufacturers usually prefer to use the term "block"
instead of "sector", but the terms are frequently used interchangably.

So what does this have to do with you ?

Well, I was able to reproduce the symptoms you described, where you
said:

...but sometimes I get a drive which boots past the black Windows
screen, only as far as the light blue Logo screen, without the
"Loading your personal settings"...

The way I did this was by changing where a Boot\System volume is being
mounted, by manually changed the appropriate "MountedDevices" registry
key. That is, normally, this "light blue Logo" is called the Welcome
screen, however when I changed the mount point, I don't see the word
"Welcome" in large white letters anymore, just a White Windows logo.

If this is what your seeing, then I will bet that you are in some way
running foul of this "MountedDevices" setting.

Given the amount of stuffing around you've been doing, you've probably
acumulated a large number of entries in the "MountedDevices" registry
key, and these ,along with the disk signatures either being copied or
not is what is causing the variable behaviours.

 

[Richard]

William, did you see my reply to your previous thread (FIXMBR redux)?

Perhaps it was too criptic for you. Let's see if I can explain it, and
the proper operation of "Copy Drives" better. But a bit of background,
first.

Windows, through the use of the Disk Management console, allows you to
assign/reassign the drive letters or mount points that volumes
(partitions) use. It keeps track of where things should be mounted in
the registry, of the CURRENTLY ACTIVE system volume, under the registry
key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

In short, if a device has an entry in this Registry key, then it will be
mounted where it has been told to, unless there is a conflict (something
else is already there). If you examine this key, you should see a number
of keynames that begin with "DosDevices", for example "\DosDevices\C:".
The binary data it contains is an identifier that often includes the
disk signature of the volume.

The Disk signature is a unique number stored within a portion of the
MBR. The MBR, in turn, uses a portion of the first sector on the disk,
sector zero, with the remainder of sector zero (not used by the MBR)
containing the primary partition table. So obvioulsy, sector zero is a
very important, and critical sector. Just to add to the confusion,
modern hard drives manufacturers usually prefer to use the term "block"
instead of "sector", but the terms are frequently used interchangably.

So what does this have to do with you ?

Well, I was able to reproduce the symptoms you described, where you
said:

...but sometimes I get a drive which boots past the black Windows
screen, only as far as the light blue Logo screen, without the
"Loading your personal settings"...

The way I did this was by changing where a Boot\System volume is being
mounted, by manually changed the appropriate "MountedDevices" registry
key. That is, normally, this "light blue Logo" is called the Welcome
screen, however when I changed the mount point, I don't see the word
"Welcome" in large white letters anymore, just a White Windows logo.

If this is what your seeing, then I will bet that you are in some way
running foul of this "MountedDevices" setting.

Given the amount of stuffing around you've been doing, you've probably
acumulated a large number of entries in the "MountedDevices" registry
key, and these ,along with the disk signatures either being copied or
not is what is causing the variable behaviours.

Well William if the foregoing does not persuade you that there is not
something fundementally wrong with your backup methodology I despair for
your eventual continued sucess.

Just consider these facts. You are not using Drive image in the way it was
intended. You are using a small subset of the package, Drive Copy, in a way
it was not intended to be used. You are entirely ignoring the advantages
that the PQ recovery environment offers in terms of convenience, security,
stability and repeatability which your present method does not have. Just
one example. When going through your method you have to switch off some
process or processes before you can prepare a successful backup. If you were
to add a third party firewall or undertake some background processing for
some organisation's research there would be another set of items that would
probably have to be disabled. PQRE takes care of all this without you having
to give it another thought.

You purchased a good drive image system, so why do you not use it to create
and where necessary restore individual files,folders, partitions or
even,complete physical drives in the worst case scenarios. That is what I do
and all the backups are scheduled to take place with no intervention apart
form switching on an external HDD from time to time and checking the logs
that there are no problems.

Richard.

 

[Sharon F]

Michael and Sharon, since you spent so much time and
effort helping me get my drive cloning debugged, I
thought you might be interested in some follow-up.

Hi, William. Thanks for the recap. Just wanted to apologize for dropping
out of sight. Had my daughter in town for a week, am in the middle of house
hunting and lost internet connectivity for 4 days. Will continue to keep an
eye on your threads when I can and offer comments if they're useful.

 

[Wislu Plethora]

-----Original Message-----



Well William if the foregoing does not persuade you that there is not
something fundementally wrong with your backup methodology I despair for
your eventual continued sucess.

Just consider these facts. You are not using Drive image in the way it was
intended. You are using a small subset of the package, Drive Copy, in a way
it was not intended to be used. You are entirely ignoring the advantages
that the PQ recovery environment offers in terms of convenience, security,
stability and repeatability which your present method does not have. Just
one example. When going through your method you have to switch off some
process or processes before you can prepare a successful backup. If you were
to add a third party firewall or undertake some background processing for
some organisation's research there would be another set of items that would
probably have to be disabled. PQRE takes care of all this without you having
to give it another thought.

You purchased a good drive image system, so why do you not use it to create
and where necessary restore individual files,folders, partitions or
even,complete physical drives in the worst case scenarios. That is what I do
and all the backups are scheduled to take place with no intervention apart
form switching on an external HDD from time to time and checking the logs
that there are no problems.

Richard.

If you read any of Mr. Lurie's cries for help and the
ensuing followups you will realize that he takes great
delight in doing everything the hard way. This particular
thread has been continuing for weeks and still isn't over.
Cast ye not pearls before swine. (And before Mr. Lurie, in
his obdurate obtuseness cries out that I'm calling him a
pig, let it be known that the foregoing quotation simply
means that we shouldn't give useful advice to people who
are too dumb to follow it.)

 

[Harry Ohrn]

Sounds like a headache package to me....Why not use a simple technique
w/o all that noncense.Set youre new drive as slave,formatted with a primary
partition,Then simply type:XCOPY C:\*.* D:\ /c/h/e/k/r click ok,agree to all
in the DOS window.Youre all set when its thru,for more info,open cmd,type:
XCOPY /?

How does this work with an NTFS formatted partition?

 

[William B. Lurie]

How does this work with an NTFS formatted partition?

Harry, I was very surprised. I had never heard of XCOPY, but
it worked rather speedily and smoothly. That's the good
news.
The bad news is that the new drive wouldn't boot. I'm
waiting for somebody to tell me that it's because the MBR
isn't copiable, so it won't boot, or else what the
error messahe means or was caused by:

"Windows couldn't start because the following file is
missing or corrupted:
\Windows\System32\Config\system"
Bill Lurie

 

[William B. Lurie]

How does this work with an NTFS formatted partition?

My last message, Harry, should have included the fact
that all my work using XP is with NTFS-formatted drives
and partitions.
WBL

 

[William B. Lurie]

Friends, I want to thank everybody who shared their
experiences on this subject, offering alternate
methods and software. I'm going to study it all...I have
all the messages in a saved file.

I've found out that every time I make a clone one way
or another, and try it out, it is monitored by
Symantec as part of their anti-piracy fetish. The
result is that a few times, my Norton Anti-Virus
monitoring has been disabled by them, and then I
have to telephone them to get my codes "activated"
again.

Meanwhile I think I have a foolproof clone on a
hard drive that I've put away, and I won't be
trying any of the good suggestions again for
several weeks..like July 1. But if anybody wants
to answer any of the questions that have been left
hanging.........that would be nice.