disk cloning, volume serial numbers, and machine sid

[rookieroo]

Hello,

I am thinking of using one of the volume serials above for identifying
the OS installations.

When an W2K/XP installation is cloned and then the resulting image is
copied on other machines,
1. Is the volume serial number (format xxxx-xxxx) cloned also?
2. Is the unique volume name (format \\?
\Volume{e3ac3b44-9c25-11db-88a6-806d6172696f}\) cloned also?

MS requires that machine sid be unique after cloning. Is machine sid a
better alternative to the volume serials listed above?

Thanks.

PS: If these volume serials are indeed cloned, is there any problem?

 

[Larry(LJL269)]

Whether you go hard drive or image to hard drive the first thing that
happens is a new partition is made from unallocated space on the desk.
Therefore information that is unique to a partition is unique to the
partition that the clone is written into. In other words , the
information about the partition is generated by the file system and
not copied from the clone. I think this would mean that both 1 and 2
in your question would not be the same as the original partition.

I cloned my entire system to a bigger hard drive & had to
re-authenticate Photoshop 8 and also change the partition IDs in my
imaging software running in batch.

HTH-Larry

Hello,

I am thinking of using one of the volume serials above for identifying
the OS installations.

When an W2K/XP installation is cloned and then the resulting image is
copied on other machines,
1. Is the volume serial number (format xxxx-xxxx) cloned also?
2. Is the unique volume name (format \\?
\Volume{e3ac3b44-9c25-11db-88a6-806d6172696f}\) cloned also?

MS requires that machine sid be unique after cloning. Is machine sid a
better alternative to the volume serials listed above?

Thanks.

PS: If these volume serials are indeed cloned, is there any problem?

Any advice is my attempt to contribute more than I have received but I can only assure you that it works on my PC. GOOD LUCK.

 

[rookieroo]

Do you mean to say that MBR of the hard-disk and 1st sector of all
partitions is
not copied when cloning is performed?

Thanks.

 

[Larry(LJL269)]

Whether I cloned by hard drive or image to hard drive , the new
partition was NEVER Active(bootable). That had to be set in PMagic or
boot manager.

I cant recall whats in 1st sector of a partition so I cant comment.

BTW the error rate in cloning was 0 for both hard drive or image to
hard drive which I've done at least 25 times. I use
http://www.bootitng.com/imagew.html which has free plugin for BartPE
(XP on CD = ultimate recovery tool)

ImageW uses disk#(0) concatenated to partition id(0x0218) to uniquely
identify source partition ( 00x0218 ) Their KB has some very good
explanations of partition operations.

HTH-Larry

Do you mean to say that MBR of the hard-disk and 1st sector of all
partitions is
not copied when cloning is performed?

Thanks.

Any advice is my attempt to contribute more than I have received but I can only assure you that it works on my PC. GOOD LUCK.

 

[rookieroo]

The volume serial number is stored in the first sector of a partition.
refer below:
http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.php
"The VSN is part of the data in the partition's first sector, so it is
changed when you reformat the drive.
...... Before you reformat, run VOL from a Command Prompt, note the VSN
(e.g., 1F2E-3C4B) in the second line."


I downloaded another software called Acronis Workstation. I created an
image of a (non-bootable) partition
and restored the partition from the image.
1. volume serial number did not change.
2. unique volume name changed.


The next thing to try would be to create an image of a hard-disk,
restore the image on
another hard-disk, and then, compare the above numbers. I will have to
buy a hard-disk
just for this purpose :-(


Thanks.

 

[Larry(LJL269)]

I have 3 XP's on 2 HD's(2 r HIDDEN) all clones of same OS & all 3 have
different VSN.

Running experiments with imaging/restore is time well spent IMHO.
Wierd things like not generating 8.3 filenames in XP means you wont
see images in DOS! So my images were useless if I lost XP.

Let me know how u do.
HTH-Larry

The volume serial number is stored in the first sector of a partition.
refer below:
http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.php
"The VSN is part of the data in the partition's first sector, so it is
changed when you reformat the drive.
..... Before you reformat, run VOL from a Command Prompt, note the VSN
(e.g., 1F2E-3C4B) in the second line."


I downloaded another software called Acronis Workstation. I created an
image of a (non-bootable) partition
and restored the partition from the image.
1. volume serial number did not change.
2. unique volume name changed.


The next thing to try would be to create an image of a hard-disk,
restore the image on
another hard-disk, and then, compare the above numbers. I will have to
buy a hard-disk
just for this purpose :-(


Thanks.

Any advice is my attempt to contribute more than I have received but I can only assure you that it works on my PC. GOOD LUCK.