Strategy for Disk Cloning / Upgrade

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Fred Marshall - 21 Mar 2004 20:38 GMT

I'm working to upgrade a system to a larger HD - 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

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Fred Marshall - 08 Apr 2004 13:02 GMT

I hope there's someone who understands this topic. I've had no responses.
I'm tempted to write a book (eventually) if I can't find one!

Is there no guidance that is available?

Thanks,

Fred

> I'm working to upgrade a system to a larger HD - with the objective of
> keeping the XP system intact. The HD now has:
[quoted text clipped - 38 lines]
>
> Fred

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midnight - 08 Apr 2004 14:32 GMT

I found it very hard to understand what you actually want. Why don't you
clean your system up. If I'm reading your post correctly you have one hard
drive with 3 partitions at the moment. If you only want a partition with dos
on and a partition with XP on why not set your hard drive up with dos on the
C primary active partition and XP on the D partition. and have your CD\DVD
drives as E, F and so on. Then do a clean install of XP just to make
everything stable.

If I completely misunderstand what you want please repost or someone else
please reply if you understand what Fred is after.

Midnight

> I hope there's someone who understands this topic. I've had no responses.
> I'm tempted to write a book (eventually) if I can't find one!
[quoted text clipped - 52 lines]
> >
> > Fred

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Jim Macklin - 08 Apr 2004 14:55 GMT

There lots of advice available, there are papers from
Microsoft, Techtv's Leo LaPorte, MVPs, books on subjects
such as the A+ certification to those written by the hard
drive mfg'r.

These boxes sitting on our desks are called Personal
Computers (PCs) for the simple reason that you can configure
them many different ways to suite your personal wishes.

I will tell you my personal answers, not the only possible
answers.

I would prefer to have two large and fast hard drives, each
with several partitions. I would do a clean install of my
operating system on one drive partition. I would not dual
boot because for my use, one OS (XP Pro) will do what I need
to do. I would have the recovery console install and this
is a dual boot of sorts.

I would install my application software in the same
partitions as the OS because I believe that if the OS
crashes and must be reinstall clean that the applications
would also need to be reinstalled so keeping them isolated
from the OS doesn't provide any particular security or
convenience.

I would have my working data on a second partition, I would
have a partition for downloaded files including program
files and updates. I would have a partition for multimedia
files.

The second hard drive would be used for multimedia and to
mirror or back-up only the data files, etc. I would not
bother to back-up any files that were on commercial CDs.

I would do this after planning the install and the tree
structure of the drives and partitions before I began
installing applications and back-up files. My feeling is
that attempts to carry forward a operating system of
multiple disks with partitions that just grew, is foolish.

| I hope there's someone who understands this topic. I've had no responses.
| I'm tempted to write a book (eventually) if I can't find one!
[quoted text clipped - 52 lines]
| >
| > Fred

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Fred Marshall - 08 Apr 2004 23:50 GMT

Jim,

I agree. Yet, some things just have to be dealt with as they are.
Sometimes starting over is a really good idea - when you can afford it.
I know this is the preferred approach by glass house IT folks and I
understand why.

My problem is that I have to deal with lots of computers in small settings
that I didn't set up to begin with. Preserving data and getting back to a
working OS is a very typical task. So, having the guidance is important.

Having a bootable DOS partition used to be a pretty good idea if one needed
to do certain things. I believe this is more and more a thing of the past
is it not? Otherwise I'd not ever dual boot (again) because of the
headaches it causes when doing system upgrades, etc.

I have plenty of books and more on the way. Aside from your recommendations
from 30,000 feet, of all the sources you mention, can you recommend some
URLs please? I'm good with Google but haven't had lots of luck with it so
far .... and I do have to deal with the nitty gritty methods.

Isn't this newsgroup the place for MVPs?

Thanks,

Fred

> There lots of advice available, there are papers from
> Microsoft, Techtv's Leo LaPorte, MVPs, books on subjects
[quoted text clipped - 117 lines]
> | >
> | > Fred

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