Trouble cloning XP with Ghost 2003

[Kevin]

The boot disk for my XP system has been having a number of bad sector
problems lately, so I decided to try to clone it to a new drive. I
installed a 2nd drive, formatted it, and used Norton Ghost 2003 to do a
clone of the boot (C drive to it.

When the clone is complete, I power off, swap the cable and set the jumpers,
but get a "boot failure from previous device" error on startup (after BIOS
screen but before Windows).

I can verify that the clone worked by booting off the original drive with
the clone as a slave-- all the files seem to be there.

What might I be doing wrong?

Thanks,
Kevin

 

[Peter]

Did you boot XP after you have installed a 2nd drive, before using Ghost
2003 (booted from DOS/floppy)?

 

[Kevin]

Yes, I drive was installed prior to installing ghost.

I followed the directions in Ghost's readme, and have tried using both -FDSZ
and -FDSP.

- Kevin

 

[Rod Speed]

The boot disk for my XP system has been having a number of bad sector problems
lately, so I decided to try to clone it to a new drive. I installed a 2nd
drive, formatted it, and used Norton Ghost 2003 to do a clone of the boot (C
drive to it.

When the clone is complete, I power off, swap the cable and set the jumpers,
but get a "boot failure from previous device" error on startup (after BIOS
screen but before Windows).

I can verify that the clone worked by booting off the original drive with the
clone as a slave-- all the files seem to be there.

What might I be doing wrong?

You basically have to unplug the original drive for the first
boot after the drive has been cloned and boot off the copy.

XP will claim to have detected new hardware and ask to
be allowed to reboot. Once you have allowed that, you
can put the original drive back in the system if you want,
if you say want to use it for video capture etc.

If XP can see both the original and the copy during
the first boot after the original has been cloned, it
gets seriously confused, even if you boot off the
copy and it uses files off the original for the boot.

 

[puss]

Yes, I drive was installed prior to installing ghost.

I followed the directions in Ghost's readme, and have tried using both -FDSZ
and -FDSP.

- Kevin

The Boot Sectors are not copied with Ghost..

 

[Kevin]

I don't give XP a chance to see the clone-- I've been powering off and
removing the original drive as soon as Ghost completes.

 

[Kevin]

Really? I've read messages about people using Ghost to successfully clone
their aging XP drive.

How do I copy the boot sectors?

- Kevin

 

[Rod Speed]

I don't give XP a chance to see the clone-- I've been powering off and
removing the original drive as soon as Ghost completes.

Then presumably the clone isnt successful because
of the state of the original drive, partially failed.

 

[Kevin]

But the original drive can boot. If the clone is a bitwise copy of the
original, shouldn't it be able to boot?

 

[Kevin]

Got it working-- not exactly sure what the problem was. It was either a) I
needed to run Ghost from floppy, or b) I needed to bring up the boot menu in
BIOS and explicitly tell it to boot from the IDE drive (even though that was
the only option).

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions & ideas.

- Kevin

 

[Rod Speed]

But the original drive can boot. If the clone is a bitwise copy of the
original, shouldn't it be able to boot?

In theory, yes. In practice the different detail on sector access may
see the sector contents not copied properly when the clone is made,
but be good enough on retrys to allow it to boot in the original.

You did say you got an error message that complained
about a boot failure before the win screens show up.

You could also try repairing the bad clone. I wouldnt
personally because you dont know what else didnt clone
properly apart from the boot stuff, and that can bit late,
but its less work that a completely clean reinstall.

 

[Rod Speed]

Got it working-- not exactly sure what the problem was. It was either a) I
needed to run Ghost from floppy, or b) I needed to bring up the boot menu in
BIOS and explicitly tell it to boot from the IDE drive (even though that was
the only option).

A few bios do get a bit confused when the drive they
are configured to boot from goes away, is missing. You
basically just need to specify the drive to boot from again.

 

[Bob Davis]

You basically have to unplug the original drive for the first
boot after the drive has been cloned and boot off the copy.

XP will claim to have detected new hardware and ask to
be allowed to reboot. Once you have allowed that, you
can put the original drive back in the system if you want,
if you say want to use it for video capture etc.

If XP can see both the original and the copy during
the first boot after the original has been cloned, it
gets seriously confused, even if you boot off the
copy and it uses files off the original for the boot.

This is very interesting. For years I've heard that you can't/shouldn't
have a clone of XP running together with the normal boot drive housing the
OS, although I've booted many times with a clone attached with no adverse
effects.

What you've said hear makes it more clear that if booted with a new clone
with the original boot drive attached, as described above, the OS may think
the old drive is the boot device since the ID matches. However, after the
new drive is booted, new hardware installed, and the drive's ID established
as the proper boot device, all is well. Thus, once this first boot with a
new copy is accomplished without the original attached, this original can be
subsequently run in the system with no ill effects.

With my old Win98SE machine I cloned C: to D: once per week and left D: in
the system at all times. It would then seem that you could still do this
with XP since the hardware configuration will not have changed. Does this
make sense?

 

[Timothy Daniels]

:

This is very interesting. For years I've heard that you
can't/shouldn't have a clone of XP running together with
the normal boot drive housing the OS, although I've booted
many times with a clone attached with no adverse effects.

What you've said hear makes it more clear that if booted
with a new clone with the original boot drive attached, as
described above, the OS may think the old drive is the
boot device since the ID matches. However, after the new
drive is booted, new hardware installed, and the drive's ID
established as the proper boot device, all is well. Thus,
once this first boot with a new copy is accomplished without
the original attached, this original can be subsequently run
in the system with no ill effects.

It's more complicated than that. The "proper boot device"
is established by the BIOS's boot sequence and the
"active" partition on the 1st HD in that boot sequence, not
by having successfully booted for the 1st time in isolation.
A clone booted for the 1st time with the "parent" in view
continues to function (in my experience), but it needs the
continued presence of its "parent" to do so. This seems
to be a feature added my Microsoft to thwart copying of
it OSes, starting with the WinNT/Win2K/WinXP family of
OSes.

With my old Win98SE machine I cloned C: to D: once per week
and left D: in the system at all times. It would then seem that you
could still do this with XP since the hardware configuration will
not have changed. Does this make sense?

No. Under WinXP, you can do this with no problem as long
as the new OS (the one in drive D hasn't been loaded and
started. You can start up the old OS all you want, and it can
see the files in drive D: with no problem. The problem appears
when the new clone OS in drive D: is started up with the old
OS in drive C: visible to it. Somehow the new clone recognizes
its "parent" and that it's a "child" in this world. But if it starts up
in isolation for the 1st time that it's started, it decides it's a
different beast and becomes an "adult".

Microsoft doesn't document this behavior and it offers no
method (such as initial isolation) to get around it, and the
MS Professional Volunteers in the MS newsgroups don't
know much if anything about it. At least they seem to avoid
writing about it. The MVPs even get quite abusive and hostile
if you so much as say that running two installations of one OS
CD in *the same machine* is legal. Obviously, MS has them
toeing the company line when it comes to gray areas in its
EULA. I expect that cloning Longhorn will be even more
difficult.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Bob Davis]

It's more complicated than that. The "proper boot device"
is established by the BIOS's boot sequence and the
"active" partition on the 1st HD in that boot sequence, not
by having successfully booted for the 1st time in isolation.
A clone booted for the 1st time with the "parent" in view
continues to function (in my experience), but it needs the
continued presence of its "parent" to do so. This seems
to be a feature added my Microsoft to thwart copying of
it OSes, starting with the WinNT/Win2K/WinXP family of
OSes.

I've booted XP successfully with a clone in the mobile rack, marked by XP as
drive G:, both with SATA and PATA drives as the main boot device. The
reason I'm apparently avoiding trouble is that I always boot with C:
(system) as the drive that made the clone (G. The actual cloned drive
(G is never used to boot from.

I assume, therefore, that the crux of the issue is to make sure the new
clone isn't the new C: and the "parent" (source of the clone) isn't in the
system when booted.

No. Under WinXP, you can do this with no problem as long
as the new OS (the one in drive D hasn't been loaded and
started. You can start up the old OS all you want, and it can
see the files in drive D: with no problem. The problem appears
when the new clone OS in drive D: is started up with the old
OS in drive C: visible to it. Somehow the new clone recognizes
its "parent" and that it's a "child" in this world. But if it
starts up
in isolation for the 1st time that it's started, it decides it's a
different beast and becomes an "adult".

This is a bit confusing. By this description, my situation should be
problematic (see above), but I've never had a problem. If the drive in the
mobile rack (clone) is in the system, it will boot as any other drive
attached to the system unless it is the first time the OS has seen that
particular device, in which case XP sees it as new hardware and "installs"
it. From then on, even after a new cloning, XP sees that drive as G: and
the system boots normally.

I only boot with the clone in the system if I need to retreive specific
files, as when I delete something accidentally from C: and have no backup
elsewhere, which I usually do. Now that I've installed a USB mobile rack I
can insert the cloned drive (G and it is instantly recognized, something I
couldn't do before with the old IDE-type interface, which needed to be
inserted when powered down and rebooted. I assume the USB type of
arrangement would never be a problem since it isn't in the system when
booted.

Microsoft doesn't document this behavior and it offers no
method (such as initial isolation) to get around it, and the
MS Professional Volunteers in the MS newsgroups don't
know much if anything about it. At least they seem to avoid
writing about it. The MVPs even get quite abusive and hostile
if you so much as say that running two installations of one OS
CD in *the same machine* is legal. Obviously, MS has them
toeing the company line when it comes to gray areas in its
EULA. I expect that cloning Longhorn will be even more
difficult.

I do clones for backup purposes only, and I see no more ethical problem
approaching backups in this manner than using MS's own backup program. The
fact that I have four or five clones with the OS in each that I rotate for
cloning shouldn't violate the spirit of the EULA, if perhaps the letter
thereof. All cloning activity is performed on one machine, which is the one
for which the OS is licensed, and none are ever run on any other computers.
So what could possibly be wrong with that practice?

 

[Timothy Daniels]

I've booted XP successfully with a clone in the mobile rack,
marked by XP as drive G:, both with SATA and PATA drives
as the main boot device. The reason I'm apparently avoiding
trouble is that I always boot with C: (system) as the drive that
made the clone (G. The actual cloned drive (G is never used
to boot from.

Yes.


I assume, therefore, that the crux of the issue is to make sure
the new clone isn't the new C: and the "parent" (source of the clone)
isn't in the system when booted.

I'm not sure what "the issue" is, but the crux of cloning a
system and assuring that the clone will be bootable in the
future alone (such as when it is used as a replacement for
a failed hard disk) is to boot it alone when it is booted for
the 1st time. Note that "booted" does not mean "recognized
and included in part of the system as a file structure". "Booted"
here means having a Master Boot Record that takes control
from the BIOS and which then passes control on to the boot
sector of the "active" partition where the ntldr program loads
the system that resides there. If the old system was drive C:,
the clone system will also call itself C: if it is loaded. As drive
C: it will find and name other drives in the system with other
letters. The old Local Disk C: may become Local Disk D:,
but as long as no shortcuts in the loaded system refer drive
letters other than C:, it doesn't matter.

This is a bit confusing. By this description, my situation should be
problematic (see above), but I've never had a problem.

No. In your system, you start up the cloned system, not the clone
system. The clone system does not "boot" - it merely sits there
and becomes part of the old cloned system as an added file structure
in the form of another "Local Disk".

If the drive in the mobile rack (clone) is in the system, it will boot
as any other drive attached to the system unless it is the first time
the OS has seen that particular device, in which case XP sees it
as new hardware and "installs" it. From then on, even after a new
cloning, XP sees that drive as G: and the system boots normally.

You misunderstand the term "boot". "Boot" does not mean
being included in a loaded system as another Local Disk having
an accessible file structure (e.g. D: drive). "Boot" means to "load
itself in stages, starting from practically nothing". A "booted"
system is a system which has loaded itself, starting with the exe-
cution of its own partition's boot sector. A "booted" hard drive is
a hard drive which has had control passed to its Master Boot
Record by the BIOS and which in turn passes control to the boot
sector of the its "active" partition. Since this "active" partition's
boot.ini file might designate that its ntldr program load a system
on some other partition on any hard drive in the system, the loading
of that system is not "booting" per se, but its loading is part of the
process which began with "booting", so sloppy terminology includes
that loading as part of the "boot" process - which began with the
CPU passing control to the BIOS when the CPU felt the power
come on. Since the clone system (e.g. D: drive) does not get
loaded nor partiticipate in the boot process in your scenario, it is
not "booted" nor is it "loaded". It just become accessible as a
file structure that contains data.

I only boot with the clone in the system if I need to retreive specific
files, as when I delete something accidentally from C: and have no
backup elsewhere, which I usually do. Now that I've installed a
USB mobile rack I can insert the cloned drive (G and it is instantly
recognized, something I couldn't do before with the old IDE-type
interface, which needed to be inserted when powered down and
rebooted.

Be careful with your terminology. "Booted" does not mean
"accessible". You have only booted the old (i.e. cloned) system,
not the (new) clone system.

I assume the USB type of arrangement would never be a problem
since it isn't in the system when booted.

The external USB drive does not contain a bootable system,
i.e. it cannot be booted, it cannot be used as the system drive.
It can only act as another Local Disk with a file structure. If you
have been using an IDE drive in a mobile rack in the same way,
you have not ever booted from the drive containing the clone.

I do clones for backup purposes only, and I see no more ethical
problem approaching backups in this manner than using MS's
own backup program.

It is not the cloning of a system as an archive that MS seems
to object to. It's the cloning of a system with a Master Boot Record
and boot sector and its boot files (e.g. ntldr, boot.ini, NTDETECT.com,
etc.) on an IDE hard drive so that it is bootable as a system drive
that MS doesn't like.

The fact that I have four or five clones with the OS in each that
I rotate for cloning shouldn't violate the spirit of the EULA, if perhaps
the letter thereof.

In public, MS argues that the letter of the EULA is the spirit
of the EULA. Privately, I doubt that it cares about multiple
installations derived from a single installation CD existing on
a single PC. After all, WinXP won't work on another PC unless
that PC is identical in hardware, and only one copy can work at
any one time, anyway.

All cloning activity is performed on one machine, which is the one
for which the OS is licensed, and none are ever run on any other
computers. So what could possibly be wrong with that practice?

Don't ask that question in a microsoft.* newsgroup unless
you're prepared to argue with half a dozen Microsoft MVPs
and their shills for a week.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Rod Speed]

This is very interesting. For years I've heard that you can't/shouldn't have
a clone of XP running together with the normal boot drive housing the OS,
although I've booted many times with a clone attached with no adverse effects.

What you've said hear makes it more clear that if booted with a new clone with
the original boot drive attached, as described above, the OS may think the old
drive is the boot device since the ID matches. However, after the new drive
is booted, new hardware installed, and the drive's ID established as the
proper boot device, all is well. Thus, once this first boot with a new copy
is accomplished without the original attached, this original can be
subsequently run in the system with no ill effects.

With my old Win98SE machine I cloned C: to D: once per week and left D: in the
system at all times. It would then seem that you could still do this with XP
since the hardware configuration will not have changed. Does this make sense?

Yes.

 

[Rod Speed]

It's more complicated than that.

Nope, he's right on the reason it gets its tiny little 'brain' scambled.

The "proper boot device" is established by the BIOS's boot sequence and the
"active" partition on the 1st HD in that boot sequence, not by having
successfully booted for the 1st time in isolation.

Thats just plain wrong with the boot after XP has got involved in the boot.

If your story was correct, you wouldnt be able to boot the clone
by ensuring that the original wasnt visible on the first boot after
the clone, and be able to plug the original back in again after
XP has claimed to detect new hardware and been allowed to
reboot, and have it still boot off the clone entirely in the sense
that you can unplug the original again and have it still boot fine.

A clone booted for the 1st time with the "parent" in view continues to
function (in my experience), but it needs the continued presence of its
"parent" to do so.

Not if the original isnt visible on the first boot of the clone.

This seems to be a feature added my Microsoft to thwart copying of it OSes,
starting with the WinNT/Win2K/WinXP family of OSes.

Nope, its just a quirk of the way that family keeps track of
drives, so you can still boot from a particular physical drive
after you have moved it around on the controllers etc.

Thats essentially what the drive's ID is for and that process has
a problem with a clone of the drive when the ID is also cloned
and so there are now two physical drives with the same ID.

It can sort that out if it cant see the original on the first boot
after the clone has been done, and so it cant be a deliberate
attempt at preventing cloning, because it wouldnt be hard to
keep track of the physical drive detail like the hardware
serial number as well so it would be obvious that the XP
drive ID is on a different physical drive because the drive
hardware serial number has changed etc.

No. Under WinXP, you can do this with no problem as long
as the new OS (the one in drive D hasn't been loaded and
started. You can start up the old OS all you want, and it can
see the files in drive D: with no problem. The problem appears
when the new clone OS in drive D: is started up with the old
OS in drive C: visible to it. Somehow the new clone recognizes
its "parent" and that it's a "child" in this world. But if it starts
up
in isolation for the 1st time that it's started, it decides it's a
different beast and becomes an "adult".

Microsoft doesn't document this behavior and it offers no
method (such as initial isolation) to get around it, and the
MS Professional Volunteers in the MS newsgroups don't
know much if anything about it. At least they seem to avoid
writing about it. The MVPs even get quite abusive and hostile
if you so much as say that running two installations of one OS
CD in *the same machine* is legal. Obviously, MS has them
toeing the company line when it comes to gray areas in its EULA.

Mindless conspiracy theory.

I expect that cloning Longhorn will be even more difficult.

Wanna bet ? It hasnt changed over the NT/2K/XP sequence
while MS did introduce the validation system with XP.

 

[Rod Speed]

I'm not sure what "the issue" is, but the crux of cloning a
system and assuring that the clone will be bootable in the
future alone (such as when it is used as a replacement for
a failed hard disk) is to boot it alone when it is booted for
the 1st time. Note that "booted" does not mean "recognized
and included in part of the system as a file structure". "Booted"
here means having a Master Boot Record that takes control
from the BIOS and which then passes control on to the boot
sector of the "active" partition where the ntldr program loads
the system that resides there. If the old system was drive C:,
the clone system will also call itself C: if it is loaded. As drive
C: it will find and name other drives in the system with other
letters. The old Local Disk C: may become Local Disk D:,
but as long as no shortcuts in the loaded system refer drive
letters other than C:, it doesn't matter.




No. In your system, you start up the cloned system, not the clone
system. The clone system does not "boot" - it merely sits there
and becomes part of the old cloned system as an added file structure
in the form of another "Local Disk".




You misunderstand the term "boot". "Boot" does not mean
being included in a loaded system as another Local Disk having
an accessible file structure (e.g. D: drive). "Boot" means to "load
itself in stages, starting from practically nothing". A "booted"
system is a system which has loaded itself, starting with the exe-
cution of its own partition's boot sector. A "booted" hard drive is
a hard drive which has had control passed to its Master Boot
Record by the BIOS and which in turn passes control to the boot
sector of the its "active" partition. Since this "active" partition's
boot.ini file might designate that its ntldr program load a system
on some other partition on any hard drive in the system, the loading
of that system is not "booting" per se, but its loading is part of the
process which began with "booting", so sloppy terminology includes
that loading as part of the "boot" process - which began with the
CPU passing control to the BIOS when the CPU felt the power
come on. Since the clone system (e.g. D: drive) does not get
loaded nor partiticipate in the boot process in your scenario, it is
not "booted" nor is it "loaded". It just become accessible as a
file structure that contains data.




Be careful with your terminology. "Booted" does not mean
"accessible". You have only booted the old (i.e. cloned) system,
not the (new) clone system.




The external USB drive does not contain a bootable system,
i.e. it cannot be booted, it cannot be used as the system drive.
It can only act as another Local Disk with a file structure. If you
have been using an IDE drive in a mobile rack in the same way,
you have not ever booted from the drive containing the clone.





It is not the cloning of a system as an archive that MS seems
to object to. It's the cloning of a system with a Master Boot Record
and boot sector and its boot files (e.g. ntldr, boot.ini, NTDETECT.com,
etc.) on an IDE hard drive so that it is bootable as a system drive
that MS doesn't like.

In public, MS argues that the letter of the EULA is the spirit
of the EULA. Privately, I doubt that it cares about multiple
installations derived from a single installation CD existing on
a single PC. After all, WinXP won't work on another PC unless
that PC is identical in hardware,

Thats not true of the versions of XP that dont require validation.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Nope, he's right on the reason it gets its tiny little 'brain'
scambled.

Bob Davis said:
"you can't/shouldn't have a clone of XP running together with
the normal boot drive housing the OS, although I've booted
many times with a clone attached with no adverse effects."

One can certainly continue to boot the old OS with the new OS
in the system and visible to the old OS - and do it indefinitely -
with no advers effects. The problem arises when the new OS
(the clone) is booted for the 1st time and the old OS (the "parent")
is visible to it during that 1st boot. IOW, it's when the clone
is loaded and started for the 1st time that is critical, not just
being visible as a file structure (as it would be if the "parent"
were always the OS that was booted). This you and I know,
but it was not what the OP wrote.

Thats just plain wrong with the boot after XP has got involved
in the boot.

This was a comment on the term "proper boot device".
The "boot device" is, indeed, established by the boot
order in the BIOS and the 1st device in that order that
is capable of booting. In the case of hard drives, the
"active" partition on the selected HD is expected to have
a boot sector and the files boot.ini, ntldr, ntdetect.com,
and perhaps others. The boot.ini contains the menu of
partitions from which ntldr is to load the OS from. In a
clone, the boot.ini will be exactly as it was in the "parent",
and when booted in isolation, the clone will behave exactly
like the parent did because its boot.ini is exactly like its
"parent's" boot.ini . Presumably, the "parent's" boot.ini
had as a default an instruction like "boot from the 1st HD
in the boot order, and look in its 1st partition for the OS".
This boot.ini would be coded something like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=0
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP" /fastdetect

This says that the only optional OS is the same as the default,
and both are to be found on the 1st HD in the HD boot order
(i.e. at relative position 0), and the OS is in the 1st partition of
that HD. Since the timeout is set to 0, no menu will appear
on the screen and ntldr will attempt to load the default OS.

Now if you have multiple clones in multiple HDs, such as I
have, you can have the boot.ini file in partition 2 of HD 1
specify the OS in partition 4 of HD 3 to load. IOW, the boot.ini
doesn't have to be in the partition that contains the OS. It can
specify *any* partition on *any* HD in the system.

If your story was correct, you wouldnt be able to boot the clone
by ensuring that the original wasnt visible on the first boot after
the clone, and be able to plug the original back in again after
XP has claimed to detect new hardware and been allowed to
reboot, and have it still boot off the clone entirely in the sense
that you can unplug the original again and have it still boot fine.


Not if the original isnt visible on the first boot of the clone.

Of course! That's the point of the entire discussion.

*TimDaniels*