Re: Ghost 10 sucks for drive cloning....

"Brian K" wrote:
Tim, when I was copying the partition with Partition Magic,
this second line was added automatically by PM.
I thought how clever. I did put a text document on the desktop
of the OS on the first HD so I could identify that OS.


Yes, PM's cleverness can be confusing if you assume that
it's producing an exact clone for you. I once tried PM for cloning
(since I got it along with PowerQuest's Drive Image for free), but
it seemed a bit clumsy to me, so I adopted Casper XP.


From the PM boot CD I could juggle the second HD partition to
Active or Hidden (I know it needs to be Active to boot) but I
couldn't make the OS partition on the first HD become Hidden.
This is how pqboot works (by hiding OS partitions that you don't
want to boot) but I received an "error in building the partition list
on disk #2" when I tried pqboot32.exe.

In summary, both OS were referenced in the boot.ini but the OS
on the second HD wouldn't boot.


There's a quick fix for that - stop using PQBoot! The boot manager
in Windows XP is quite sufficient to multi-boot WinNT, Win2K, and
WinXP, and it's used by a larger user group.


We tell people

" do not let new-XP see the old-XP partition the first time it boots.
If new-XP sees old-XP, it won't reuse the original drive letter when it assigns a drive letter to itself. (Once XP-2 has booted and reallocated new drive letters, the old-XP partition can be reintroduced into the system, if desired.)"

Well, how do beginners seem to do this so easily.


Well, that advice is scrambled. The first line applies to making clones
as far as I know. As for drive letter assignment for actual installations
of an OS, letting the installer see only one un-named partition (or
unallocated space on a HD) will assure that the installed OS calls
its own partition "C:" when it runs. The reason beginners make a clone
so easily is that they usually remove the original HD after they've made
the clone because they're under the mistaken impression that the
clone's HD has to be put on the same cable position and have the same
jumpering as the original HD. Later, they re-format the "parent's" partition
and use it for data storage. If the connection of the original HD for the
re-format step occurs when the clone is booted for the 1st time, there *may*
be the "1st boot-up problem" generated, but I've never checked for it.

*TimDaniels*

.

Relevant Pages

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