Lars-Erik Østerud said:
Yep, my cloned HDD is up and running. A FDISK /MBR
from Win98 diskette changed the serial number of the disk
and XP then reassigned all the drive letters (and then I
could log in, before that it strill tried t boot from the original
disk - now beeing in an external case).
Also som Microsoft programs (like Media Player), had
used "PROGRA~1" like notations on all paths in the
registry, and some of them changed to "PROGRA~2" etc
during cloning. So I had to change in registry
(why MS still uses 8-letter filename in XP I don't know
I admire your skills and tenacity. I would merely have
cloned the partition using Ghost or Casper XP. (Acronis
True Image will only clone an entire HD, not just a single
partition - although it CAN make an IMAGE file of a single
partition). If it was the entire HD that you wanted to clone,
just about any cloning utitlity would have worked, even the
free ones offerred by the various hard drive manufacturers.
Casper XP is available for a free 30-day trial, but the trial
version will make the clone partition the same size as the
original (I don't know if that would be a problem for you).
The clone will, of course, act exactly like the original
OS, even in its naming of its own and other partitions.
If the clone's partition is a Primary partition and if it
contains the boot files (i.e. boot.ini, ntldr, and ntdetect.com)
and it's marked "active", it will boot itself if the original
partition had booted itself. Otherwise, the MBR of the
hard drive which is at the top of the Hard Drive Boot Order
will get control, and it will hand off control to the boot
sector of its "active" Primary partition by loading and starting
ntldr - which it expects to find just below the root of that
partition. Ntldr then consults boot.ini to get the location
of the partition and folder which contains the OS, then it
goes there and loads the OS from that folder. If just the
clone-containing hard drive is connected, its clone OS will
automatically get booted - just as the original OS had been.
But if the clone-containing hard drive is only one of 2 hard
drives, or it it's the 2nd hard drive in a HD boot order that
contains 3 or 4 hard drives, the clone will boot automatically
boot if its partition is marked "active" by virtue of the absence
of the original hard drive (which previously been at the top
of the HD boot order). If you know the boot.ini syntax and
you know how to adjust the HD boot order in the BIOS,
you can put the clone anywhere in any partition of any type
(Primary or Extended) on any hard drive in the system, and
you can put the boot files in any Primary partition on any
hard drive in the system. But the simplest way to launch a
clone is to just have 2 HDs and to disconnect or remove the
original HD to boot the clone (remembering, of course, to
verify that the partition containing the boot files - usually the
OS's partition - is marked "active").
Ghost, as I recall, will give you the options of copying
the MBR from the original HD, and of marking the clone
partition "active". Casper XP will mark the clone partition
"active" automatically, but I don't know if it will copy the
original MBR or just update the clone HD's MBR
according to the new partition(s) that it makes. In any event,
no diddling with DiskIDs is necessary to make the clone
OS name partitions the same way the original OS had.
*TimDaniels*
