Hard Drive Copying

[Fred Marshall]

No answers to my post of 3/21 entitled:
"Strategy for Disk Cloning/Upgrade"

The questions remain. I hope someone can shed some light on this. Here is
the information again:

I'm working to upgrade a system to a larger HD using DiskImage 7.03 - with
the objective of keeping the XP system intact. The HD now has:
Two CD drives
One HD with:
C: active bootable primary partition with DOS on it. This partition has
boot.ini and ntldr
D: was one a CDROM drive
E: a logical bootable drive with the primary XP system on it
F: a writable DVD/CD drive
G: a primary bootable drive with a small XP install (I had to add this
because DiskImage7 was damaged and unfixable otherwise on the primary XP
system).
etc. This was added recently.

With the earlier attempts of doing the copy, the CDs now show up as F:
(writable) and J: (CDROM) and there is no D:. Probably not important.

Here is my plan which seems to have flaws:

A) The existing drive is master on an IDE controller. Add the new drive as
slave.
1) Copy C: onto the new drive as primary, active, bootable and copy the MBR.
2) Copy E: onto the new drive as logical, bootable, don't copy the MBR.
3) Copy G: onto the new drive as primary bootable, don't copy the MBR.
[the selection of primary and logical only because that's what's on the old
HD]
B) Remove the old hard drive and connect the new one as master on the same
controller.

Some tries I could get one of the XPs to boot but not both - and, I think
never the main XP on E:

Of course I want the the partition drive letters to be the same as in the
beginning. I can use Disk Manager in XP assuming things get that far.

A curious thing: in boot.ini, the os partitions show up as E: being the 3rd
and G: being the 2nd. Is this because the primary partitions are enumerated
first, followed by the logical partitions? That's all I can think of.

Thanks,

Fred

 

[Guest]

The entry's in the boot ini are always going to show up as the last xp install beig first, but the drive letter will be opposite obviosly. You can edit the boot ini and change it around.

 

[Fred Marshall]

The entry's in the boot ini are always going to show up as the last xp

install beig first, but the drive letter will be opposite obviosly. You can
edit the boot ini and change it around.

Terry,

Thanks for the reply.

Well, OK with that...

However, the partition numbers seemed reversed. That's what I was asking
about:

[Primary1 | Logical 3?] [Primary2]
The first install was in the Logical - it showed being in the 3rd partition.
The second install was in Primary2 which was created much later - it showed
being in the 2nd partition.

Thus my question about partition enumeration. I would have thought the
partition numbers would have been reversed.

Fred

 

[Peter Hutchison]

No answers to my post of 3/21 entitled:
"Strategy for Disk Cloning/Upgrade"

The questions remain. I hope someone can shed some light on this. Here is
the information again:

I'm working to upgrade a system to a larger HD using DiskImage 7.03 - with
the objective of keeping the XP system intact. The HD now has:
Two CD drives
One HD with:
C: active bootable primary partition with DOS on it. This partition has
boot.ini and ntldr
D: was one a CDROM drive
E: a logical bootable drive with the primary XP system on it
F: a writable DVD/CD drive
G: a primary bootable drive with a small XP install (I had to add this
because DiskImage7 was damaged and unfixable otherwise on the primary XP
system).
etc. This was added recently.
Fine.

With the earlier attempts of doing the copy, the CDs now show up as F:
(writable) and J: (CDROM) and there is no D:. Probably not important.

Here is my plan which seems to have flaws:

A) The existing drive is master on an IDE controller. Add the new drive as
slave.
1) Copy C: onto the new drive as primary, active, bootable and copy the MBR.
2) Copy E: onto the new drive as logical, bootable, don't copy the MBR.
3) Copy G: onto the new drive as primary bootable, don't copy the MBR.
[the selection of primary and logical only because that's what's on the old
HD]
B) Remove the old hard drive and connect the new one as master on the same
controller.

Some tries I could get one of the XPs to boot but not both - and, I think
never the main XP on E:

Of course I want the the partition drive letters to be the same as in the
beginning. I can use Disk Manager in XP assuming things get that far.

A curious thing: in boot.ini, the os partitions show up as E: being the 3rd
and G: being the 2nd. Is this because the primary partitions are enumerated
first, followed by the logical partitions? That's all I can think of.

Yes, Windows will try to make Primary Partitions first in the drive
letter sequence followed by logical partitions and then removable
drives. the boot/system partition drive cannot be changed but all the
other drive letters can be changed to whatever you require. Some
jiggery pockery is required to get them in the correct sequence but
its do able.
Partition Magic is a bit more flexible than the built in Disk Manager
but its possible to make this work.
If you cannot change drive letters then its possible to modify
registry or other settings to point to the correct place.

Peter Hutchison
Windows FAQ
http://www.pcguru.plus.com/

 

[Fred Marshall]

No answers to my post of 3/21 entitled:
"Strategy for Disk Cloning/Upgrade"

The questions remain. I hope someone can shed some light on this. Here is
the information again:

I'm working to upgrade a system to a larger HD using DiskImage 7.03 - with
the objective of keeping the XP system intact. The HD now has:
Two CD drives
One HD with:
C: active bootable primary partition with DOS on it. This partition has
boot.ini and ntldr
D: was one a CDROM drive
E: a logical bootable drive with the primary XP system on it
F: a writable DVD/CD drive
G: a primary bootable drive with a small XP install (I had to add this
because DiskImage7 was damaged and unfixable otherwise on the primary XP
system).
etc. This was added recently.
Fine.

With the earlier attempts of doing the copy, the CDs now show up as F:
(writable) and J: (CDROM) and there is no D:. Probably not important.

Here is my plan which seems to have flaws:

A) The existing drive is master on an IDE controller. Add the new drive as
slave.
1) Copy C: onto the new drive as primary, active, bootable and copy the MBR.
2) Copy E: onto the new drive as logical, bootable, don't copy the MBR.
3) Copy G: onto the new drive as primary bootable, don't copy the MBR.
[the selection of primary and logical only because that's what's on the old
HD]
B) Remove the old hard drive and connect the new one as master on the same
controller.

Some tries I could get one of the XPs to boot but not both - and, I think
never the main XP on E:

Of course I want the the partition drive letters to be the same as in the
beginning. I can use Disk Manager in XP assuming things get that far.

A curious thing: in boot.ini, the os partitions show up as E: being the 3rd
and G: being the 2nd. Is this because the primary partitions are enumerated
first, followed by the logical partitions? That's all I can think of.

Yes, Windows will try to make Primary Partitions first in the drive
letter sequence followed by logical partitions and then removable
drives. the boot/system partition drive cannot be changed but all the
other drive letters can be changed to whatever you require. Some
jiggery pockery is required to get them in the correct sequence but
its do able.
Partition Magic is a bit more flexible than the built in Disk Manager
but its possible to make this work.
If you cannot change drive letters then its possible to modify
registry or other settings to point to the correct place.

Peter,

OK - thank you.
I finally succeeded by abandoning DiskImage7 altogether and using DiskImage
2002. That did the trick although the 2nd "mini" instance of XP didn't move
over such that it would boot. Partition Magic wouldn't deal with the drive
letters but Disk Manager did it. All in all a very mysterious and error
prone process. I remain more and more convinced that multibooting is a bad
idea. I've spent more time dealing with such systems than the occasional
use would justify.

Fred