Re: Question about cloning

"Bob Davis" wrote:
Please tell me in more detail about your procedures.
Do you clone to an image file on the drive in the
mobile rack, or is it a disk-to-disk clone? How do you handle updates? What program are you using?

My needs are simple as I don't have a business that
needs daily backup. I have a couple large capacity HDs,
each mounted in a removable tray. My operational OS
and my working files are on a 20GB partition, so I can
store many clones of it on the removable archive HD.
The removable rack/tray assembly is one made by
Kingwin. The tray has a horizontal fan in the base, and
it works very well to keep the HD cool - it's *never* warmer
than body temperature:
http://www.kingwin.com/pdut_detail.asp?LineID=&CateID=25&ID=136 .
Kingwin makes other models (with varying numbers of
cooling fans) for both PATA and SATA hard drives:
http://www.kingwin.com/pdut_Cat.asp?CateID=25
http://www.kingwin.com/pdut_Cat.asp?CateID=47
Extra trays can be bought separately for about half
the price of the complete set, and prices for
the set run between $23 and $30 on the Web.

On each archival HD, I have 4 Primary partitions or
3 Primary partitions and 1 Extended partition. I can
put one clone in each of the Primary partitions which
can be booted from the ntldr/boot.ini/ntdetect.com
boot files in the same partition, or I can use an Extended
partitions to contain a bunch of clones which can be
booted from the boot files in one of the Primary partitions.
The Primary to supply the boot files are determined by
which Primary partition is marked "active" - which can
be done with WinXP's Disk Management - and the HD
to supply the partition is designated by putting it at the
head of the BIOS's hard drive boot order. It really doesn't
matter much which Primary partition in the system is
chosen, as each one has a boot.ini file with generic
entries to most of the partitions on all 3 of the drives in
the system. Each entry has in its comment field what its
rdisk()/partition() values are, so I just have to know where
the desired clone resides, and then choose the appropriate
entry from the resulting boot menu that ntldr displays.

This system requires that a cloning utility be able to
copy a single selected partition and put the copy into an
existing partition on another HD or into unallocated space
on another HD which may already have several other
partitions on it. That's why I use Casper XP. It will do
single partition cloning, and it's a dedicated cloner without
all of Ghost's bells and whistles. And it doesn't require
..NET Framework like Ghost 9.0 and 10.0 do, and it doesn't
need to reboot after the cloning is complete.

As for procedures, when Casper XP completes a cloning,
I immediately change the name of a marker file that I have
on the Desktop to reflect the current date and a file to list
any unusual software settings or installations. That way I
can immediately identify a clone by looking at the Desktop
before or after it boots. I then shut down the PC and toggle
the power switches for the other 2 HDs to OFF, then I restart
the PC. The archival HD automatically becomes the boot
HD since its the only remaining HD in the HD boot order,
and it boots right up for its first view of the world. Then I shut
down and reconnect the other HDs and switch off the power
to the archival HD, then boot back up again. (The mobile
rack has its own power switch, and I've installed power switches
for the other 2 internal HDs.)

This will all be much clearer if you read the Microsoft
description of WinXP's boot process. That will give you a
better idea of how a partition is selected as the source of
an operating system to boot. Here is a synopsis:

The Master Boot Record (MBR) of the HD which is at the
head of the BIOS's HD boot order gets control. The MBR
finds the "active" partition on its HD, and it passes control
to the Boot Sector on that partition. The Boot Sector finds
ntldr on its own partition and passes control to ntldr. Ntldr
accesses the boot.ini file in the same partition. If boot.ini
has a single ARC pathname entry, ntldr goes there to find
the OS. If boot.ini has 2 or more ARC pathname entries,
ntldr displays them and waits for the user to select one. If
the user selects one before it times out, ntldr uses the
selected entry to find the OS to boot. ntldr will only display
10 entries, so I can have up to 10 clones to choose from for
booting. I normally have more clones archived, so I might
have to modify a boot.ini file to access a clone "way in
the back" of the archive.

This simple procedure backs up *everything*. I don't
have to set differing frequencies for differing priorities or
even to know what I want to back up. *Everything*, including
configuration settings, dialup connectoids (of which I have
more than 60), recent email, favorites, recent documents -
*everything* gets backed up once a week and remains
archived on hard disk for several months before the
underlying disk space gets recycled. I find it a no-brainer
convenience, and Usenet poster "Anna" finds that her
small business customers like it, too.

If you choose to install several HDs as I have, give a
thought to using "round" cables - they save a lot of room
inside the case and they allow for easier cable routing
and better case ventilation. These cables have a ground
wire twisted together with each of the 40 signal wires to
emmulate the 40 ground wires in 80-wire ribbon cable,
and I haven't experienced any problems with round cables
in 3 years of use. I use the ones with the aluminum braid
for extra shielding, and I've found SVCompucycle to have
a good combination of selection and price:
http://www.svc.com/cables-ata-100-133-round-cables.html .

*TimDaniels*

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Trouble copying partition in Windows XP
    ... my primary boot partition to a much larger hard drive. ... Using the Disk Clone tool I get a perfect copy except for ... When I boot on the cloned drive, ... remove the "parent" before the FIRST bootup of the clone. ...
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  • Re: installing os to 2nd hard drive
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