Second disk not "enabled"

[Timothy Daniels]

"Bob" reiterated:

As mentioned earlier in another post, I left out a crucial step which
at the time I did not think was important. The clone was made from an
intermediary disk that is different. In this case the intermediary
disk is a 30 GB WD disk.

Yeah, I read that. I'm asking if a 80GB->80GB clone works
if you remember to disconnect the "parent" HD's power and/or
data cable, e.g. remove it, before booting up the clone for
the 1st time.

*TimDaniels*

 

[VWWall]

Here is an explanation of what is going on:

+++
As you have found out, Windows NT, 2K and XP will throw a wobbly if it
finds two drives with the same DiskID, which is usually the case when
you make a drive to drive clone.

Have a read of this Dan Goodell article on general rules for
successful cloning of NT-family OS's

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm

Zero out the offending 4 bytes via Method #3 ("Kawecki's Trick").
+++

Be careful using fdisk /mbr! In addition to zeroing out the "DiskID",
it will overwrite other parts of the original mbr. If you have
dual-boot schemes, (Linux's LILO), this will prevent them from working.

For a good look at how this all works, see the "Starman's" site.

http://www.geocities.com/thestarman3/

You can also get a copy of PTS Disk Editor, which will let you examine
and edit the MBR directly.

As you probably know from your assembly language experience, it's easy
to write a little program to zero these bytes. Can be done with debug.

 

[Bob]

Yeah, I read that. I'm asking if a 80GB->80GB clone works
if you remember to disconnect the "parent" HD's power and/or
data cable, e.g. remove it, before booting up the clone for
the 1st time.

I have removeable drive bays so all I have to do is turn off the
switch at the front.

If I first run the 80GB -> 80Gb clone by itself and then boot the
original with the clone as a second disk does no good.

I now have the solution. Boot a Win98 Startup disk and then run fdisk
/mbr. By a quirk in Win98's fdisk, the signature will be altered so
when you run Windows there is no clash between the original disk
signature and the clone disk signature.

But it has to be Win98 fdisk.

 

[Bob]

Be careful using fdisk /mbr! In addition to zeroing out the "DiskID",
it will overwrite other parts of the original mbr. If you have
dual-boot schemes, (Linux's LILO), this will prevent them from working.

Thanks for the heads up, but one flaky operating system is enough for
me.

For a good look at how this all works, see the "Starman's" site.

http://www.geocities.com/thestarman3/

I will have a look.

You can also get a copy of PTS Disk Editor, which will let you examine
and edit the MBR directly.

Where?

The sitemap page is broken.

As you probably know from your assembly language experience, it's easy
to write a little program to zero these bytes. Can be done with debug.

How did you know I can write in Assembly?

There was a time when all I wrote was Assembly but I got spoiled when
C Language became available from Microsoft and dropped Assembly except
when absolutely needed - which is not very often. I usually employ
_emit statements - embedded Assembly in C.

 

[VWWall]

Where?

The sitemap page is broken.

Try here: (Down at the bottom--PTSDE104.ZIP)

http://thestarman.dan123.com/tool/FreeTools.html

With WinNT/XP must be used from DOS.

Dan has been having trouble finding a free host site.

How did you know I can write in Assembly?

There was a time when all I wrote was Assembly but I got spoiled when
C Language became available from Microsoft and dropped Assembly except
when absolutely needed - which is not very often. I usually employ
_emit statements - embedded Assembly in C.

One of the things I liked about TurboC, was the ease in which ASM
routines could be included. For anything connected to a file they were
much better than the C libraries. get_date, get_time, etc.

 

[Bob]

Try here: (Down at the bottom--PTSDE104.ZIP)

With WinNT/XP must be used from DOS.

I will get it. Thanks.

Dan has been having trouble finding a free host site.

Try http://members.freewebs.com/

I have used it and it seems to work. But then I have not published
anything elaborate.

 

[Mike Walsh]

What exactly do you mean by "disk administrator"? Is it the same as
"Disk Management" in "Computer Management" located either in Control
Panel or My Computer ("Manage").

Disk Administrator is a WinNT utility. It is one of the things that was changed in newer versions of windows for reasons that only Bill Gates knows. Most of what is in Disk Administrator is in Disk Management, but I don't remember where everything is because I don't run WinXP on my home computers.

I get a prompt sometimes but not necessarily in Disk Management and it
says nothing about any "signature". It says that Windows has installed
a new device and you have to reboot.

You won't get the prompt if there is already a signature on the drive. I am not sure if you will get the prompt at all in WinXP; it might write the signature automatically without prompting you.

How do you make this "disk administrator" force a new signature?

I don't think you can force a new signature. It is supposed to be a unique ID so there is normally no reason to change it.

If you mean "Disk Management" in "Computer Management" then when I try
to assign a drive letter to a clone drive I get an error message
telling me that the volume/partition is not enabled and to reboot to
enable it. When I reboot I get the same thing over again.

I don't know about this. It could be an anomaly because of the problem with the signature.

OK, then what do I do to change the signature on the clone before I
run Windows. Is there a CD utility available that allows me to change
the signature outside Windows proper. That's really what I need.

Maybe you could use the DOS debug utility. It can be used to edit the disk using low level sector addressing and can be used to edit boot records, etc. I was never proficient in the use of debug and can't help you with it because I long ago forgot what little I new about it. You might be able to get help from a DOS newsgroup. This is not something you should do if you aren't sure; you can make the drive inaccessible by changing a single byte.

 

[Bob]

Disk Administrator is a WinNT utility. It is one of the things that was changed in newer versions of windows for reasons that only Bill Gates knows. Most of what is in Disk Administrator is in Disk Management, but I don't remember where everything is because I don't run WinXP on my home computers.

I don't run XP anywhere. I run Win2K. No wonder I didn't know what you
were talking about.

I don't think you can force a new signature. It is supposed to be a unique ID so there is normally no reason to change it.

As posted earlier, this is a known problem caused by MS trying to
thwart disk cloners. And as always with MS boondoggles, there is a
workaround. In this case you can force a new signature by writing
zeros in part of it. Thanks to a bug, Win98 FDISK /MBR will do just
that. Now cloned volumes on same-model disks will mount properly in
Windows.

Typical MS - two screwups end up being complementary.

 

[Grinder]

I don't run XP anywhere. I run Win2K. No wonder I didn't know what you
were talking about.

As a Win2K user, I can witness to the appearance of a disk signature
wizard whenever you attach a new drive to the system.

 

[Bob]

As a Win2K user, I can witness to the appearance of a disk signature
wizard whenever you attach a new drive to the system.

I was referring to the terminology which has apparently changed from
Win@k to XP.

I only see a dialog box advising me to reboot now or later. I do not
know what you mean by "disk signature wizard". Please elaborate.

Maybe I need to mount a drive that has been formatted outside Windows
to see what happens.