FDISK, HDD #s, don't know how to install two HDDs.

[sunslight]

I am trying to install my new WD drive as the Master in a two drive system.
Moving the old drive to the slave, my new WD drive as the Primary master and
setting it as the active drive.

My old drive was according to the Windows 2000 Disk Manager and Partition
Magic, Disk 0.

After changing the jumpers and IDE cable positions, so the old drive is
primary/slave and the WD drive is Primary Master, I booted the system from a
W98 floppy, which has the new MS FDISK for large HDDs.

The boot went perfectly. Both drives recognized in their proper place and
size.

I then went to FDISK, to partition and format my new WD drive so it would be
the boot drive and I could install Windows 2000.

To my surprise, FDISK opened to the old drive and showed it as Drive 0.

I had expected it to open to the WD drive, naming it as Drive 0, since that
is the place it is on the IDE controller; and the old drive, now the slave,
to be HDD1. Instead, FDISK shows my primary master, the WD drive as HDD 1
and the old drive as HDD 0.

I do not understand this, since, the WD drive is the master, and the old
drive, now the slave. --Which makes them drives HDD0 and HDD1 on the IDE
channel--just the opposite of what FDISK is showing.

In step 5 of FDISK, I chose to look at a different drive than "0" (the old,
but now, slave).

That screen showed two drives in the system: Drive "0" and Drive "1,"
still with my new drive being HDD1 instead of HDD 0.

It asked me to enter which drive I wanted to look at. My selections were
only HDD 0 & HDD 1. I entered 1. That took me to the old drive!~

I entere HDD 0 and got an error message that I had to enter numbers between
1 & 2. Two got me to the new primary, WD drive!

Confused? I am.

Something seems wrong here.

Did Windows 2000 set a flag on the old master drive, so it always will read
as HDD 0? If so, why, in the step where I was to select the drive to view,
drive 1 turned out to be the old master, not the new drive?

I am afraid to format.

I don't know if I tell FDISK to format HDD 0 or HDD 1.

In the IDE channels, the new master is in the position of HDD 0. But FDISK
is saying it is HDD 1.

I am at a loss. I certainly don't want to format the wrong drive. I don't
know how to proceed.

I could take out the old drive and just partition and format the new WD
master, but then it would become an HDD 0.

If I do that, then add the slave back into the system, I will have two HDD
"0"s. This is sure to upset the MBR and the entire partition table for both
drives might get messed up. Certainly with the "ntloader" pointing to drive
0 as the boot drive, but there being two, there will be problems.

As I said, I don't know what to do.

Is there a way to get FDISK to recognize the drives correctly, according to
their position on the IDE channel?

How do I proceed? (I have checked the FAQs on Western Digital and at MS,
but can't come up with an answer.)

Bob

 

[Joep]

Hi,

Fdisk doesn't format drives anyway, it partitions them. It is true that
WinNT based OS'es sometimes list the drives in a different order than the
BIOS (and Fdisk 'asks' the BIOS).

Anyway, why not disconnect the disk you do NOT want to modify temporarily,
and then partition the target disk with Fdisk. After that's done, re-connect
the other disk again.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

I am trying to install my new WD drive as the Master in a two drive system.
Moving the old drive to the slave, my new WD drive as the Primary master and
setting it as the active drive.

My old drive was according to the Windows 2000 Disk Manager and Partition
Magic, Disk 0.

After changing the jumpers and IDE cable positions, so the old drive is
primary/slave and the WD drive is Primary Master, I booted the system from a
W98 floppy, which has the new MS FDISK for large HDDs.

The boot went perfectly. Both drives recognized in their proper place and
size.

I then went to FDISK, to partition and format my new WD drive so it would be
the boot drive and I could install Windows 2000.

To my surprise, FDISK opened to the old drive and showed it as Drive 0.

I had expected it to open to the WD drive, naming it as Drive 0, since that
is the place it is on the IDE controller; and the old drive, now the slave,
to be HDD1. Instead, FDISK shows my primary master, the WD drive as HDD 1
and the old drive as HDD 0.

I do not understand this, since, the WD drive is the master, and the old
drive, now the slave. --Which makes them drives HDD0 and HDD1 on the IDE
channel--just the opposite of what FDISK is showing.

In step 5 of FDISK, I chose to look at a different drive than "0" (the old,
but now, slave).

That screen showed two drives in the system: Drive "0" and Drive "1,"
still with my new drive being HDD1 instead of HDD 0.

It asked me to enter which drive I wanted to look at. My selections were
only HDD 0 & HDD 1. I entered 1. That took me to the old drive!~

I entere HDD 0 and got an error message that I had to enter numbers between
1 & 2. Two got me to the new primary, WD drive!

Confused? I am.

Something seems wrong here.

Yes. This would be the situation as if you booted from the slave
instead of from the Floppy. Are you sure you booted the FDD?

Did Windows 2000 set a flag on the old master drive, so it always will read
as HDD 0? If so, why, in the step where I was to select the drive to view,
drive 1 turned out to be the old master, not the new drive?

I am afraid to format.

No need, since Fdisk doesn't format.

I don't know if I tell FDISK to format HDD 0 or HDD 1.

In the IDE channels, the new master is in the position of HDD 0. But FDISK
is saying it is HDD 1.

I am at a loss. I certainly don't want to format the wrong drive. I don't
know how to proceed.

Fdisk the empty drive and Format the new partition(s).
You cannot normally 'Fdisk' a drive that is already fully
partitioned so the risk is minimal.

I could take out the old drive and just partition and format the new WD
master, but then it would become an HDD 0.
Nope.


If I do that, then add the slave back into the system, I will have two HDD
"0"s.
Nope.

This is sure to upset the MBR and the entire partition table for both
drives might get messed up.
Nope.

Certainly with the "ntloader" pointing to drive
0 as the boot drive, but there being two, there will be problems.
Nope.


As I said, I don't know what to do.

That too.

Is there a way to get FDISK to recognize the drives correctly, according to
their position on the IDE channel?

It should do that from a clean floppy boot.

 

[sunslight]

Yes. This would be the situation as if you booted from the slave
instead of from the Floppy. Are you sure you booted the FDD?


No need, since Fdisk doesn't format.


Fdisk the empty drive and Format the new partition(s).
You cannot normally 'Fdisk' a drive that is already fully
partitioned so the risk is minimal.


That too.


It should do that from a clean floppy boot.

Didn't mean to say FDISK formatted the drive. Just a slip. meant partition.

Yes, I double checked, trippled checked. FDISK came in from the floppy. I
was in Dr. Dos 7.

The IDE cable is absolutely correct: the new master is 1st on the cable
(black) the slave is gray. The jumpers are correct. The BIOS is set to
boot FDD, HDD0, CDROM.

FDISK still shows, the slave, as HDD 0 and the new, unpartitioned drive as
HDD 1. So, the position on the IDE channel seems to make no difference.

I did learn that if I select drive "2" in FDISK, it pulls up HDD1 (which
is the new drive) and I can partition it, but I ran into problems when
working on a logical in the extended partition. FDISK decided to give its
own names to the logical volumes, the last one it called, * remote *
Where it got this I have no clue. When I went to undo all this and tried to
delete the partition, so it wouldn't go into effect on reboot, I kept
getting an error that * remote * was an invalid volume name. I have no clue
what FDISK was doing. I could never get it off.

Partition magic resuce disks failed, with a number of error messages. But
partition magic did load from W2k and I was able to remove the * remote *
and reset the new drive to free space. But now, PM says the drive has its
boot manager on it but is not running and that is causeing the resuce disks
to not work. --but I haven't loaded their boot manager.

The BIOS splash screen still shows the new primary master, which FDISK says
is HDD1 as the first drive and the primary slave as the second drive,
although FDISK says it's HDD 0. Can someone explain this?

The BIOS is set to boot: FDD, HDD 0, CDROM. I took out the FDD and sure
enough the system booted from the old drive, even though it is marked as
slave (there was no master in the system) and the old slave had been set to
"inactive." Yet it still booted. What am I missing here?

I did read that W2K sets persistent drive letters. So when I add a new
drive, W2K will still read it as the old drive as C, D, E, etc. and the new
drive as F, G, H. But in this case I want it to not be that way. And my
new drive to become the master, with the C & boot partition. . How do I get
out of this?

I checked the boot.ini file on C of the old drive (now the slave). It
points to HDD0 for the OS. Should I delete all the boot files from that
drive?

Changing gears: If I remove the slave, partition the new drive, will it be
HDD 1 or 0? I would think it would be HDD 0, since the old drive is gone.
If that's the case what's going to happen when I add the slave back in? I
know that answers I had above where "no" but I don't understand what's going
to happen.

I just want my new drive to be C, D, etc, active, and the boot drive and the
old one to have new drive letters and no longer be the boot drive. Or can
you not have two drives in the same system that have W2K on it? That would
mean all my programs on the old drive are no longer able to run.

I know that W2k has it's own boot manager, so i thought maybe it would kick
in.

I'm still lost. -- I've read every KB at MS that I can find. The one
that might be the most meaningful is that W2k's drive designations are
persistent, even though you remove it from the system.

A solution? If I designate in the BIOS to boot from (after the floppy),
HDD1 instead of HDD 0, will that solve the problem?

And then, just believe what FDISK is telling me about HDD 0 being the old
drive, regardless of it's position in the IDE channel?

Then I have the problem of how to get the new drive's partitions to be C, D,
etc.

Bob

 

[Rod Speed]

Didn't mean to say FDISK formatted the drive. Just a slip. meant partition.

Yes, I double checked, trippled checked. FDISK
came in from the floppy. I was in Dr. Dos 7.

Thats most likely the problem, that very last bit.

Try a proper Win9x startup floppy. Bet you dont get that effect with it.

The IDE cable is absolutely correct: the new master is 1st on the cable
(black) the slave is gray. The jumpers are correct. The BIOS is set to
boot FDD, HDD0, CDROM.

FDISK still shows, the slave, as HDD 0 and the new, unpartitioned drive as
HDD 1. So, the position on the IDE channel seems to make no difference.

I did learn that if I select drive "2" in FDISK, it pulls up HDD1 (which
is the new drive) and I can partition it, but I ran into problems when
working on a logical in the extended partition. FDISK decided to give its
own names to the logical volumes, the last one it called, * remote *
Where it got this I have no clue. When I went to undo all this and tried to
delete the partition, so it wouldn't go into effect on reboot, I kept
getting an error that * remote * was an invalid volume name. I have no clue
what FDISK was doing. I could never get it off.

Partition magic resuce disks failed, with a number of error messages. But
partition magic did load from W2k and I was able to remove the * remote *
and reset the new drive to free space. But now, PM says the drive has its
boot manager on it but is not running and that is causeing the resuce disks
to not work. --but I haven't loaded their boot manager.

The BIOS splash screen still shows the new primary master, which FDISK says
is HDD1 as the first drive and the primary slave as the second drive,
although FDISK says it's HDD 0. Can someone explain this?

The BIOS is set to boot: FDD, HDD 0, CDROM. I took out the FDD and sure
enough the system booted from the old drive, even though it is marked as
slave (there was no master in the system) and the old slave had been set to
"inactive." Yet it still booted. What am I missing here?

I did read that W2K sets persistent drive letters. So when I add a new
drive, W2K will still read it as the old drive as C, D, E, etc. and the new
drive as F, G, H. But in this case I want it to not be that way. And my
new drive to become the master, with the C & boot partition. . How do I get
out of this?

You can change the drive letters for all but the boot
drive trivially from within Win2K using the admin tools.

Its a bit harder with the boot drive but still possible.

I checked the boot.ini file on C of the old drive (now the slave). It
points to HDD0 for the OS. Should I delete all the boot files from that
drive?

Changing gears: If I remove the slave, partition the new drive,
will it be HDD 1 or 0? I would think it would be HDD 0,

You're getting yourself royally confused with these drive
IDs. Fdisk for example doesnt even use that syntax at all.

since the old drive is gone. If that's the case what's
going to happen when I add the slave back in?

Depends on the detail of what you do. If you for example do a
clean install of Win2K on the new drive with it as the only drive
connected, when you add the old drive again, as slave, it will
obviously get a later drive number and the partitions on it later letters.

I know that answers I had above where "no"
but I don't understand what's going to happen.

I just want my new drive to be C, D, etc, active, and the boot drive and
the old one to have new drive letters and no longer be the boot drive.

That sentance doesnt even make any sense.

Or can you not have two drives in the same system that have W2K on it?

Yes you can.

That would mean all my programs on the old drive are no longer able to run.

Thats a whole nother can of worms.

You'd be better off cloning the original drive to the new drive,
booting with the new drive as the only drive connected. Then
put the original drive back in again and cleaning it off.

I know that W2k has it's own boot manager,
so i thought maybe it would kick in.

It does, thats what the boot.ini file is for, it specifys the detail
to the boot manager which runs auto as it Win2K boots.

I'm still lost.

You are indeed.

I've read every KB at MS that I can find.

But havent managed to grasp the basics, so they arent that useful.

The one that might be the most meaningful is that W2k's drive designations
are persistent, even though you remove it from the system.

They are indeed, with some exceptions.

A solution? If I designate in the BIOS to boot from (after the
floppy), HDD1 instead of HDD 0, will that solve the problem?

Nope, it will make if even worse.

Best to go right back to basics and clone the original drive to the
new one, BOOT WITH JUST THE COPY VISIBLE TO WIN2K.
Adjust the partitions on the new drive if you want them bigger. Put
the original drive back in the system and just repartion and format it.

And then, just believe what FDISK is telling me about HDD 0 being
the old drive, regardless of it's position in the IDE channel?

Thats likely just an artifact of you running it on DrDOS.

Then I have the problem of how to get
the new drive's partitions to be C, D, etc.

Thats easy if you clone the original drive to the new one.
That will be automatic. You'll need Ghost or Drive Image tho.

 

[Zvi Netiv]

I am trying to install my new WD drive as the Master in a two drive system.
Moving the old drive to the slave, my new WD drive as the Primary master and
setting it as the active drive.

My old drive was according to the Windows 2000 Disk Manager and Partition
Magic, Disk 0.

After changing the jumpers and IDE cable positions, so the old drive is
primary/slave and the WD drive is Primary Master, I booted the system from a
W98 floppy, which has the new MS FDISK for large HDDs.

The boot went perfectly. Both drives recognized in their proper place and
size.

I then went to FDISK, to partition and format my new WD drive so it would be
the boot drive and I could install Windows 2000.

To my surprise, FDISK opened to the old drive and showed it as Drive 0.

I had expected it to open to the WD drive, naming it as Drive 0, since that
is the place it is on the IDE controller; and the old drive, now the slave,
to be HDD1. Instead, FDISK shows my primary master, the WD drive as HDD 1
and the old drive as HDD 0.

I do not understand this, since, the WD drive is the master, and the old
drive, now the slave. --Which makes them drives HDD0 and HDD1 on the IDE
channel--just the opposite of what FDISK is showing.

In step 5 of FDISK, I chose to look at a different drive than "0" (the old,
but now, slave).

That screen showed two drives in the system: Drive "0" and Drive "1,"
still with my new drive being HDD1 instead of HDD 0.

It asked me to enter which drive I wanted to look at. My selections were
only HDD 0 & HDD 1. I entered 1. That took me to the old drive!~

I entere HDD 0 and got an error message that I had to enter numbers between
1 & 2. Two got me to the new primary, WD drive!

Confused? I am.

Something seems wrong here.

Did Windows 2000 set a flag on the old master drive, so it always will read
as HDD 0? If so, why, in the step where I was to select the drive to view,
drive 1 turned out to be the old master, not the new drive?

I am afraid to format.

I don't know if I tell FDISK to format HDD 0 or HDD 1.

In the IDE channels, the new master is in the position of HDD 0. But FDISK
is saying it is HDD 1.

I am at a loss. I certainly don't want to format the wrong drive. I don't
know how to proceed.

I could take out the old drive and just partition and format the new WD
master, but then it would become an HDD 0.

If I do that, then add the slave back into the system, I will have two HDD
"0"s. This is sure to upset the MBR and the entire partition table for both
drives might get messed up. Certainly with the "ntloader" pointing to drive
0 as the boot drive, but there being two, there will be problems.

As I said, I don't know what to do.

Is there a way to get FDISK to recognize the drives correctly, according to
their position on the IDE channel?

How do I proceed? (I have checked the FAQs on Western Digital and at MS,
but can't come up with an answer.)

You are wasting time and efforts and risk causing a mess.

If the new drive is larger than the old one, then do a full clone of the old
drive onto the new one (CloneDisk is available from http://resq.co.il/resq.php).
The new drive should then start right away, with W2k, applications, partitions
and data, all running from the new drive exactly as everything was on the old
drive.

You should then be able to readjust the partitions on the new drive with PM (and
keep the old one as backup in case anything turns sour while playing with the
new drive configuration). Finally, you could reconfigure the old drive, or keep
directories / data on it, after you finish with the new primary.

Regards, Zvi

 

[sunslight]

You are wasting time and efforts and risk causing a mess.

If the new drive is larger than the old one, then do a full clone of the old
drive onto the new one (CloneDisk is available from http://resq.co.il/resq.php).
The new drive should then start right away, with W2k, applications, partitions
and data, all running from the new drive exactly as everything was on the old
drive.

You should then be able to readjust the partitions on the new drive with PM (and
keep the old one as backup in case anything turns sour while playing with the
new drive configuration). Finally, you could reconfigure the old drive, or keep
directories / data on it, after you finish with the new primary.

Regards, Zvi
--
NetZ Computing Ltd. ISRAEL www.invircible.com www.ivi.co.il (Hebrew)
InVircible Virus Defense Solutions, ResQ and Data Recovery Utilities
E-mail sent in reply to this post will not be considered private and
will be answered in the newsgroup. Top posting is not appreciated!

Thank you, Rod & Zvi, especially for your last suggestions.

Rod, you are correct FDISK doesn't show "HDD." that is only in the
DiskManagement Snap-In in Windows 2000 and in Part. Magic.
But FDISK did fool me, because it was using disk 0 & disk 1, then asking me
to choose disk 1 or 2. The Dr. DOS 7. may have had something to do with the
problem.

I took your collective advice and tried to copy from the old drive to the
new.

Using Ghost, it didn't work, since disk to disk copy put the same number "0"
in the new drive's boot sector. So, it did it's job, but then I had two HDD
0s.

Partition Magic was no help. Western Digital was no help. The Maxtor
MaxBlast3.0, did work. Although it said it might not, since it wasn't
responsible for a non-maxtor transfer and what might happen and would not
support any problem that came up. But, since no one was giving me any
support except for you folks--what the heck?.

That program had a screen, where it asked if the new disc was going to be
the boot drive or just an additional drive. I chose "BOOT." And evidently
it changed Sector 0 to read "0" and not 1 as it had when I tried a straight
format with FDISK.

After all was said and done, it looks like it worked.

Disk Management in W2K is showing the new disk as the Boot Disc and as HDD
0, and the old disk as HDD1. Yay.

But, the drive letters were not changed. So the old disc still has drive
letters C-F and the new drive, including the boot partition, G-J.

Now the question is how do I change, or what is the best way to get the new
drive to have the letters C-F and the old, G-J?

Partition Magic has a program that is supposed to help when you change drive
letters so the associations won't be lost. I think I can (maybe get that to
work with the logicals), but I'm at a loss as how to replace the "C" drive
designation from the Primary that's on HDD1 and move it to the first Primary
partition of the new boot.

I seem to be able to move around the other drive letters, but not "C."

At least we are a lot closer. You ideas were good, thank you. I'm not
really a dummy on all this, but just totally frustrated. Especially at two
in the morning.

Any ideas how to get my "C" drive to be on my boot disc? Instead of the HDD
1?

I'm really not certain how to use the Partition Magic Disk Mapper to keep
the associations either, but I'll read & try to find out. If you have any
hints, especially how I get my that C designations swapped, I could still
use the help.

( A thought, would blowing away all the info on HDD1, then telling
DiskManagement to rescan the disks work? If the second drive is empty will
it rename the partitions on HDD 0? I know that would work in the other OSs
(not sure about XP). I know W2K & XP say the partition names are set to
persist.

Thanks,
Bob

 

[Rod Speed]

Thank you, Rod & Zvi, especially for your last suggestions.

Rod, you are correct FDISK doesn't show "HDD." that is only
in the DiskManagement Snap-In in Windows 2000 and in Part.
Magic. But FDISK did fool me, because it was using disk 0 &
disk 1, then asking me to choose disk 1 or 2. The Dr. DOS 7.
may have had something to do with the problem.

I took your collective advice and tried
to copy from the old drive to the new.

Using Ghost, it didn't work, since disk to disk copy put the same number "0"
in the new drive's boot sector. So, it did it's job, but then I had two HDD 0s.

No you wont if you do it correctly. You have to do the clone
using Ghost AND THEN PHYSICALLY DISCONNECT THE
ORIGINAL DRIVE FROM THE SYSTEM BEFORE YOU LET
WIN2K BOOT OFF THE NEW DRIVE FOR THE FIRST TIME.

Once you do that, WIN2K will tell you that you have new hardware,
tell you that you need to reboot and will boot fine once you allow that.

THEN you can put the original drive back in the system and Win2K
will give the partitions on that letters after the ones on the new drive.

Partition Magic was no help. Western Digital was no help.

You dont need help, just do the clone correctly.

The Maxtor MaxBlast3.0, did work. Although it said it might not, since
it wasn't responsible for a non-maxtor transfer and what might happen
and would not support any problem that came up. But, since no one
was giving me any support except for you folks--what the heck?.

That program had a screen, where it asked if the new disc was
going to be the boot drive or just an additional drive. I chose
"BOOT." And evidently it changed Sector 0 to read "0" and
not 1 as it had when I tried a straight format with FDISK.

You keep comprehensively mangling this stuff, and thats your main problem.

After all was said and done, it looks like it worked.

Disk Management in W2K is showing the new disk as the
Boot Disc and as HDD 0, and the old disk as HDD1. Yay.

But, the drive letters were not changed. So the old disc still has
drive letters C-F and the new drive, including the boot partition, G-J.

You avoid that problem by letting Win2K see JUST the
new drive on the first boot after the clone using Ghost.

Now the question is how do I change, or what is the best way
to get the new drive to have the letters C-F and the old, G-J?

Do the copy again using Ghost.

Partition Magic has a program that is supposed to help when
you change drive letters so the associations won't be lost.

Yes, but thats not a desirable way to go.

I think I can (maybe get that to work with the logicals),
but I'm at a loss as how to replace the "C" drive
designation from the Primary that's on HDD1 and
move it to the first Primary partition of the new boot.

It can be done, but you're so furiously thrashing around
that you may well stuff it up completely in the process.

I seem to be able to move around the other drive letters, but not "C."

Yes, thats by design.

At least we are a lot closer. You ideas were good,
thank you. I'm not really a dummy on all this, but
just totally frustrated. Especially at two in the morning.

And thats the other problem, you're thrashing around instead
of carefully analysing why the Ghost copy didnt work.

Any ideas how to get my "C" drive to be
on my boot disc? Instead of the HDD 1?

Do the clone again using ghost, and this time do it properly.

I'm really not certain how to use the Partition Magic Disk Mapper
to keep the associations either, but I'll read & try to find out.

Much safer to use Ghost properly.

If you have any hints, especially how I get my that
C designations swapped, I could still use the help.

Clone using Ghost properly.

( A thought, would blowing away all the info on HDD1,
then telling DiskManagement to rescan the disks work?

Too risky at this stage. It may well be booting
using some stuff off that drive and the system
may well become unbootable if you do that.

Not unrepairable, but safer to clone properly using ghost.

If the second drive is empty will it rename the partitions on HDD 0?

Probably not. The NT/2K/XP family attempts to keep partitions
with their original letters so you dont get in one hell of a mess.

I know that would work in the other OSs

The Win9x and ME family, anyway.

(not sure about XP). I know W2K & XP
say the partition names are set to persist.

Yep, thats by design, for a reason.

 

[sunslight]

HDD 0s.

No you wont if you do it correctly. You have to do the clone
using Ghost AND THEN PHYSICALLY DISCONNECT THE
ORIGINAL DRIVE FROM THE SYSTEM BEFORE YOU LET
WIN2K BOOT OFF THE NEW DRIVE FOR THE FIRST TIME.

Once you do that, WIN2K will tell you that you have new hardware,
tell you that you need to reboot and will boot fine once you allow that.

THEN you can put the original drive back in the system and Win2K
will give the partitions on that letters after the ones on the new drive.


You dont need help, just do the clone correctly.



You keep comprehensively mangling this stuff, and thats your main problem.




You avoid that problem by letting Win2K see JUST the
new drive on the first boot after the clone using Ghost.


Do the copy again using Ghost.


Yes, but thats not a desirable way to go.


It can be done, but you're so furiously thrashing around
that you may well stuff it up completely in the process.


Yes, thats by design.


And thats the other problem, you're thrashing around instead
of carefully analysing why the Ghost copy didnt work.


Do the clone again using ghost, and this time do it properly.


Much safer to use Ghost properly.


Clone using Ghost properly.


Too risky at this stage. It may well be booting
using some stuff off that drive and the system
may well become unbootable if you do that.

Not unrepairable, but safer to clone properly using ghost.


Probably not. The NT/2K/XP family attempts to keep partitions
with their original letters so you dont get in one hell of a mess.


The Win9x and ME family, anyway.


Yep, thats by design, for a reason.
Rod,

But, the drive letters were not changed. So the old disc still has
drive letters C-F and the new drive, including the boot partition, G-J.

You avoid that problem by letting Win2K see JUST the
new drive on the first boot after the clone using Ghost.

***I've never cloned an entire drive before. To do it properly then, would
these be the steps?:

0) Start GHOST in DOS, point it to clone the old drive, which is set up as
master, to the new drive that is set as slave.
1a) Run
1) when clone is complete, select Quit
2) shut down system, Do Not Let It Reboot
3) remove old master drive
4) set the new cloned drive as master and reboot under Windows 2000.
5 have DiskManagement Action: rescan disk?
6) shut down system
7) reinstall the old drive as the slave
8) reboot to Windows 2000
9) have DiskManagement Action: recan disk
10) Reboot

The Drive Configuration Help files and they are very specific: "You cannot
reset either the system or boot partition drive letters."

Looking at my configuration table, it presently shows:

Volume G, **Status: System,** ** DISK 0.** (the DISK 0 and System, is
good)

Volume C, **Status: Active,** ** HDD1** (this is the old drive)

What I want is Volume C to be --Active, System (Sys. can actually go
anyplace) AND all on DISK 0-- followed by D,E,F;
and DISK 1 to be G,H,I J.

If I can do my GHOST properly and not let W2K see the old drive before it
sees the clone, maybe I can get there?

The steps I listed above, for GHOST (with whatever you correct), will be
what I will do.

I hope I'm getting there. (It's only 12:59 a.m. now, so I'm not quite so
tired.) It seems like there would be an easier way to do this?

Thanks for bearing with me.

Bob

 

[Rod Speed]

***I've never cloned an entire drive before. To do it properly then, would
these be the steps?:

0) Start GHOST in DOS,

Thats not absolutely essential, but it is safer because
it wont automatically reboot once the clone is done.

point it to clone the old drive,
Yes.

which is set up as master, to the new drive that is set as slave.

Thats not essential, the order doesnt matter at that stage.

1a) Run
1) when clone is complete, select Quit
2) shut down system, Do Not Let It Reboot
3) remove old master drive

Yes, or just unplug the cables from it.

4) set the new cloned drive as master and reboot under Windows 2000.
5 have DiskManagement Action: rescan disk?

You shouldnt have to do anything, it should be automatic.
It is with XP, I forget the fine detail with 2K, didnt do it often enough.

6) shut down system
7) reinstall the old drive as the slave
8) reboot to Windows 2000
Yes.

9) have DiskManagement Action: recan disk

Again, you dont have to with XP, just do
what you want to the drive like format it etc.

10) Reboot

This shouldnt be necessary.

The Drive Configuration Help files and they are very specific:
"You cannot reset either the system or boot partition drive letters."

Yes, but that's overstating the real story. It can be done, but
much safer to just clone carefully instead so you dont need to.

Looking at my configuration table, it presently shows:

Volume G, **Status: System,** ** DISK 0.** (the DISK 0 and System, is
good)

Volume C, **Status: Active,** ** HDD1** (this is the old drive)

What I want is Volume C to be --Active, System (Sys. can actually go
anyplace) AND all on DISK 0-- followed by D,E,F;
and DISK 1 to be G,H,I J.

Dont worry about it, just clone it properly.

If I can do my GHOST properly and not let W2K see the
old drive before it sees the clone, maybe I can get there?

Yes, thats the trick, dont let Win2K see the original and
the clone on the first boot after the clone has been done.

The steps I listed above, for GHOST (with
whatever you correct), will be what I will do.

I hope I'm getting there. (It's only 12:59 a.m. now, so I'm not quite
so tired.) It seems like there would be an easier way to do this?

Fraid not, because the NT/2K/XP family attempts to
keep drive letters constant as drives are moved around
and it does that with the original drive after its cloned.

The way to avoid it is to not let it see the original and the
clone on the first boot after the clone. It will see that the
clone is a different physical drive on the first boot after
the clone with just the clone visible, and will just fix that
without doing anything to the drive letters in that case.

Thanks for bearing with me.

No problem. Happy to keep going for as long as it takes.

 

[sunslight]

Fraid not, because the NT/2K/XP family attempts to
keep drive letters constant as drives are moved around
and it does that with the original drive after its cloned.

The way to avoid it is to not let it see the original and the
clone on the first boot after the clone. It will see that the
clone is a different physical drive on the first boot after
the clone with just the clone visible, and will just fix that
without doing anything to the drive letters in that case.


No problem. Happy to keep going for as long as it takes.

What a mess I had. I won't get into the details, but I wound up with a
"verifying DMI Pool" error. A check sum error. Loss of the BIOS to see
either drive. Loss of the new WD drive to be recognized only when it was in
position as primary master, having to write zeros to the drive, power outage
while I was in the BIOS setup, complete failure of the system--nothing, no
power, nothing. Changed the Power supply, still nothing. supposed the
power glitch had fried the mobo, ram or cpu. Did a CMOS reset for 10
minutes, nothing. Put it back on reset, left it for six hours, came back
and all is well--back to square one.

I used GHOST to make the clone. I had the ghost.ini file set to go to DOS
when finished. But when I selected continue, it put the system into reboot.
Before I could get the ATX power switch to get to it's "off" state, the
system started to POST. I never saw the POST, but it must have been enough
time for Windows 2000 to see both drives. And all the above happened as I
tried differnet ways to get the system back up. I had given up and was
going to go buy another system--certain that I had fried something when it
went down while in the BIOS. But it came back up after having the CMOS
clear jumper on for several hours.

Now, how to get to where I want to go?

When GHOST finishes making the clone copy, it ask to "continue." Since this
immediately sent me to reboot, do you think I can just pull the plug at that
point or does GHOST have to still do something to the file before shutting
down?

If I can get it down, I should be able to get the Disk Managament to see the
new drive, all by itself and have it set it up right. Then reboot for
safety. Shut down & add in the old drive. I would hope that it W2K would
then read this as a new drive, even though it has the same markers as the
new one and everything will be fine.

I have been reading other places where, MS reports that you cannot make a
successfull clone of XP or 2000. I've also been reading where some people
have gone into the registry and made edits that were successful in changing
the drive letters; and lastly, where they just put in the new drive, after
it had been cloned, ran the Recovery, fixboot option from the CD, then added
the new drive and it was fixed---and for other's, what they tried, fried
their system.

I think as you said, the key is to get the system powered down before it has
a chance to post at the BIOS level and see both drives. Once I get that
done and W2K reassigns sector 0, as it wants, I should be able to put back
in the old drive and be ok.

I wonder if I missed something in making the GHOST, since I've never cloned
an entire drive before. Someone said that you had to do something first to
the new drive, before making the clone or it wouldn't work. The only thing
I can think of is putting it back to a low-level format. For that I wrote
zeros across the drive. Is there somethng else?

As I mentioned, I have the GHOST .ini file set to put me back to DOS when
finished--go back to the "Quit" screen, which sends me back to DOS. But
with the clone of the entire drive, the "continue" sent me into reboot! I'm
not at all certain why it ignored the .ini file.

About all I can do at this point is pull the plug at that stage and hope
that the clone is complete. Then go from there, as planned.

If that works, then I wll be set. If not, I bet I'm going to get a DMI Pool
error.

I may wind up spending hours trying to get the system to go. Then when (if)
I finally do, it's likely that the BIOS will not recognize eiher drive.
I found that telling the "Action" in Disk Management to rescan took care of
this with the boot drive, but not the new drive. It was a mess.

I think the thing I dislike the most is the "verifying DMI pool" error.
After a coupld of hours, I got that to succeed but then the system hung,
just before it would have started. Once I got it up, I even reflashed the
BIOS. I finally got it to recognize both drives (even entering the 512 meg
version of the CHS parameters, didn't help.) And then after having the
entire system shut down, and finally the CMOS clear, working after 4+ hours,
now I am back to having the original drive, solid as HDD0 and the new drive
as HDD1. So, I'm ready to try again.

If you know of any tricks or preperatory things I should do before I make
the drive-to-drive copy, please let me know. The only thing I can think of
is to make certain the new HDD has a clean sector 0. and get the power off
right away.

So, I'll get my checkbook out, be ready for the worst, and hope for the
best.

Any last words will be greatly appreciated.

bob

 

[Zvi Netiv]

Of course there is.

[...]

I used GHOST to make the clone.

That's where your problem is.

[...]

I have been reading other places where, MS reports that you cannot make a
successfull clone of XP or 2000.

Not the way you did.

[...]

I may wind up spending hours trying to get the system to go.

.... or days, and lose your master drive in the process. If you insist
continuing this route.

After a coupld of hours, I got that to succeed but then the system hung,
just before it would have started. Once I got it up, I even reflashed the
BIOS. I finally got it to recognize both drives (even entering the 512 meg
version of the CHS parameters, didn't help.) And then after having the
entire system shut down, and finally the CMOS clear, working after 4+ hours,
now I am back to having the original drive, solid as HDD0 and the new drive
as HDD1. So, I'm ready to try again.

If you know of any tricks or preperatory things I should do before I make
the drive-to-drive copy, please let me know. The only thing I can think of
is to make certain the new HDD has a clean sector 0. and get the power off
right away.

When tired of the nonsense, you may try this:

Get yourself a copy of CloneDisk and clone HD0 onto HD1, with the drives
attached as they are. The cloning should be done after booting from the
CloneDisk floppy, NOT from the HD's W2K. CloneDisk will make an exact
forensic-quality duplicate of your old drive onto the new one.

After the cloning process completed, remove the old drive, and connect the new
one in its new position as main, after having changed the jumper(s) and CMOS
setting, accordingly. The system should start normally, with the new drive now
acting as main, and your partitions, applications and data on it.

You may now resize, move, or add partitions on the cloned (new) drive, with PM.
I recommend that you keep the old drive untouched until you finish all the
manipulations with the cloned/new drive, in case you mess things again.

Finally, connect now the old drive and repartition it, or just use the
partitions it contains.

Regards, Zvi

 

[Rod Speed]

What a mess I had. I won't get into the details, but I wound
up with a "verifying DMI Pool" error. A check sum error.

That would normally be due to a loss of the bios parameters
in the motherboard bios, either due to resetting the cmos or
loss of the cmos battery backup somehow.

Loss of the BIOS to see either drive. Loss of the new WD drive to
be recognized only when it was in position as primary master, having
to write zeros to the drive, power outage while I was in the BIOS
setup, complete failure of the system--nothing, no power, nothing.

That sounds like the system just got royally confused by bad bios
values as a result of what produced the cmos checksum error.

Changed the Power supply, still nothing. supposed
the power glitch had fried the mobo, ram or cpu.

Thats not likely given the checksum error.

Did a CMOS reset for 10 minutes, nothing. Put it back on reset,
left it for six hours, came back and all is well--back to square one.

Yeah, it can take a while to reset the cmos.

I used GHOST to make the clone. I had the ghost.ini file set to go to
DOS when finished. But when I selected continue, it put the system
into reboot. Before I could get the ATX power switch to get to it's
"off" state, the system started to POST. I never saw the POST,

Dunno, if you never saw the POST, it shouldnt have run Win 2K at all.
Tho some motherboards can obscure the post with a logo at times.

but it must have been enough time for Windows 2000 to see
both drives. And all the above happened as I tried differnet
ways to get the system back up. I had given up and was going
to go buy another system--certain that I had fried something
when it went down while in the BIOS. But it came back up
after having the CMOS clear jumper on for several hours.

Now, how to get to where I want to go?

When GHOST finishes making the clone copy, it ask to
"continue." Since this immediately sent me to reboot, do
you think I can just pull the plug at that point or does GHOST
have to still do something to the file before shutting down?

You should be running Ghost from the floppy.
It shouldnt reboot if run from the floppy.

Bit risky pulling the mains plug if you have done
the clone from the virtual boot, it may clean up
the virtual boot after you hit the continue.

If I can get it down, I should be able to get the Disk Managament
to see the new drive, all by itself and have it set it up right.

It should be automatic.

Then reboot for safety. Shut down & add in the old
drive. I would hope that it W2K would then read this
as a new drive, even though it has the same markers
as the new one and everything will be fine.
Yep.

I have been reading other places where, MS reports
that you cannot make a successfull clone of XP or 2000.

Thats just plain wrong. I've done it with XP just a week ago.

I've also been reading where some people have gone into the
registry and made edits that were successful in changing the
drive letters; and lastly, where they just put in the new drive,
after it had been cloned, ran the Recovery, fixboot option
from the CD, then added the new drive and it was fixed---
and for other's, what they tried, fried their system.

Yeah, its the least desirable approach.

How successful it is depends on what has been installed
where, just what's happened to the actual drive letters,
and how well the detail of the registry is understood.

I think as you said, the key is to get the system powered down
before it has a chance to post at the BIOS level and see both drives.
Yep.

Once I get that done and W2K reassigns sector 0, as it wants,
I should be able to put back in the old drive and be ok.
Yep.

I wonder if I missed something in making the GHOST, since I've never
cloned an entire drive before. Someone said that you had to do something
first to the new drive, before making the clone or it wouldn't work.

Thats just plain wrong and I proved it last week.

The only thing I can think of is putting it back to a low-level
format. For that I wrote zeros across the drive.

Shouldnt be necessary and I didnt do that.

Is there somethng else?

As I mentioned, I have the GHOST .ini file set to put me back to
DOS when finished--go back to the "Quit" screen, which sends me
back to DOS. But with the clone of the entire drive, the "continue"
sent me into reboot! I'm not at all certain why it ignored the .ini file.

Likely you edited the wrong one and the one you edited isnt used.

Just do it from the boot floppy instead.

About all I can do at this point is pull the plug at
that stage and hope that the clone is complete.

Nope, you can use the boot floppy and run ghost from that.

Then go from there, as planned.

If that works, then I wll be set. If not,
I bet I'm going to get a DMI Pool error.

Thats possible.

I may wind up spending hours trying to get the system to go. Then
when (if) I finally do, it's likely that the BIOS will not recognize eiher
drive. I found that telling the "Action" in Disk Management to rescan took
care of this with the boot drive, but not the new drive. It was a mess.

I think the thing I dislike the most is the "verifying DMI pool" error.
After a coupld of hours, I got that to succeed but then the system hung,
just before it would have started. Once I got it up, I even reflashed the
BIOS. I finally got it to recognize both drives (even entering the 512 meg
version of the CHS parameters, didn't help.) And then after having the
entire system shut down, and finally the CMOS clear, working after 4+ hours,
now I am back to having the original drive, solid as HDD0 and the new drive
as HDD1. So, I'm ready to try again.

If you know of any tricks or preperatory things I should do
before I make the drive-to-drive copy, please let me know.

Run ghost from the boot floppy.

The only thing I can think of is to make certain the new HDD
has a clean sector 0. and get the power off right away.

So, I'll get my checkbook out, be ready
for the worst, and hope for the best.

Any last words will be greatly appreciated.

You should sacrifice some chickens to the gods and do a
good grovel towards Mecca before proceeding any further |-)

 

[sunslight]

That would normally be due to a loss of the bios parameters
in the motherboard bios, either due to resetting the cmos or
loss of the cmos battery backup somehow.


That sounds like the system just got royally confused by bad bios
values as a result of what produced the cmos checksum error.


Thats not likely given the checksum error.


Yeah, it can take a while to reset the cmos.


Dunno, if you never saw the POST, it shouldnt have run Win 2K at all.
Tho some motherboards can obscure the post with a logo at times.




You should be running Ghost from the floppy.
It shouldnt reboot if run from the floppy.

Bit risky pulling the mains plug if you have done
the clone from the virtual boot, it may clean up
the virtual boot after you hit the continue.


It should be automatic.


Thats just plain wrong. I've done it with XP just a week ago.


Yeah, its the least desirable approach.

How successful it is depends on what has been installed
where, just what's happened to the actual drive letters,
and how well the detail of the registry is understood.


Thats just plain wrong and I proved it last week.


Shouldnt be necessary and I didnt do that.

file.

Likely you edited the wrong one and the one you edited isnt used.

Just do it from the boot floppy instead.


Nope, you can use the boot floppy and run ghost from that.



Thats possible.




Run ghost from the boot floppy.




You should sacrifice some chickens to the gods and do a
good grovel towards Mecca before proceeding any further |-)

Saga of the rejected chicken sacrifice:

Still hadn't gotten the WD drive to come up. Reset the GHOST .ini so it
would "quit" to DOS. But wasn't ready to put try a new clone just yet.

I had to return the original failed Maxtor to the company, so I wanted to
wipe it, before sending it back.

I installed it as the slave. That seemed to go ok. It was recognized as the
2nd hard drive, Primary Slave.

Went into the Disk Configuration in W2K and removed it's partitions.
Took it out of the system. System was stable and still booted from the new
Primary Master.

Stupid me --[no comments], I decided to use Partition Magic to see what it
said about the old drive. --Put it back in as the slave.

Paranoid that financial info might get out, I decided to make it even harder
to recover and to use PM to repartiton and delete the partitions on that
drive. It said it had done it and need to reboot to finish. Can you see
trouble coming?

The system rebooted and PM did its thing. I removed the "returning" drive.

When I rebooted, with my Primary Mastor, HDD0 only, I got the "verifying DMI
pool error," again.
I Did everything I could think of to fix it, including reflashing the
BIOS--but nothing worked.

Finally, went to Windows 2k Recovery Console, Repair, and ran a check of
system startup files.
It said they were corrupted. I ran fixboot. It said the boot had been
fixed.

On rebooting, I got passed the "dmi pool error" --yay--and then got the
message "NTLDR not found."

Booted from a DOS floppy, took a look at my drives (partitions).

C drive (part.1) only had a small bit of " \WINNT" on it and a log that said
"fixboot" had been successful. Everything else was gone. I did an "attrib"
to make sure I was seeing everything and there was no NTLDR, but since
\WINNT was mostly blown away, it hardly mattered.

Then, I offered another chicken to the gods and checked my extended
partition. All the logicals were there and intact--yay!

I haven't a clue what happened. Somehow "fixboot" must have killed part of
the Partition table and wiped C or maybe Partition Magic did it--anyway, it
had been done? As a last effort, I tried FDISK /mbr. That seemed to have
no effect.

Didn't know what else to do, so I used my latest ghost of "C" and restored
the system from a few days ago. It took.

I'm back in operation, almost back to square one. EXCEPT, The Maxtor Drive,
jumpered as Primary Master isn't recognized on POST. Then POST goes into a
search for the IDE devices. After a full 15 seconds, it comes up with the
Primary Master and my opticals (Secondary Master/Slave). That's where I am
now. And everything seems to be functioning, except for POST not finding
the ide devices.

I tried removing them with the Control Panel. --same thing. Except W2k,
says it's found new hardware and needs to install it, as it should. After
doing that, I booted down. Pulled the power reset the CMOS jumper to
"clear." Tried to reboot and got a checksum error. I went back into the
BIOS & set everything back to the "safe defaults." That brought the system
back up & working again, but the 15 seconds to find the IDE devices is still
there

What the heck--I rejumpered the HDD as slave, then booted. The HDD & my
opticals, showed up immediately!
I reset the HDD as the primary master, and again, --15 full seconds to find
the drives.

I ran Maxtor's software that resets the drive to a "new" condition, without
doing any formatting--took four hours. Same thing--15 seconds.to find
drives on boot..

Can we get me back to square-one, where POST will find the drives
immediately? Strange that it did, when I set the Primary Master to Primary
Slave--but maybe a clue?

Then I'll go looking for "Clone Disk." --and I was so close (or at least
perceived it as such) :>(

Bob

 

[sunslight]

I just found out that if I add a second, unformatted HDD to the IDE
cable--Primary Secondary, then, BOTH drives and my opticals on the Secondary
IDE are found almost instantaneously. --so quickly, I have to press pause
as soon as the POST begins, or I miss them.

It's only when the Maxtor is alone, configured as Primary Master does the
BIOS miss it, then goes into a 15 second search for the drive.

Bob

That would normally be due to a loss of the bios parameters
in the motherboard bios, either due to resetting the cmos or
loss of the cmos battery backup somehow.


That sounds like the system just got royally confused by bad bios
values as a result of what produced the cmos checksum error.


Thats not likely given the checksum error.


Yeah, it can take a while to reset the cmos.


Dunno, if you never saw the POST, it shouldnt have run Win 2K at all.
Tho some motherboards can obscure the post with a logo at times.




You should be running Ghost from the floppy.
It shouldnt reboot if run from the floppy.

Bit risky pulling the mains plug if you have done
the clone from the virtual boot, it may clean up
the virtual boot after you hit the continue.


It should be automatic.


Thats just plain wrong. I've done it with XP just a week ago.


Yeah, its the least desirable approach.

How successful it is depends on what has been installed
where, just what's happened to the actual drive letters,
and how well the detail of the registry is understood.


Thats just plain wrong and I proved it last week.


Shouldnt be necessary and I didnt do that.

file.

Likely you edited the wrong one and the one you edited isnt used.

Just do it from the boot floppy instead.


Nope, you can use the boot floppy and run ghost from that.



Thats possible.
mess.

512

meg


Run ghost from the boot floppy.




You should sacrifice some chickens to the gods and do a
good grovel towards Mecca before proceeding any further |-)

Saga of the rejected chicken sacrifice:

Still hadn't gotten the WD drive to come up. Reset the GHOST .ini so it
would "quit" to DOS. But wasn't ready to put try a new clone just yet.

I had to return the original failed Maxtor to the company, so I wanted to
wipe it, before sending it back.

I installed it as the slave. That seemed to go ok. It was recognized as the
2nd hard drive, Primary Slave.

Went into the Disk Configuration in W2K and removed it's partitions.
Took it out of the system. System was stable and still booted from the new
Primary Master.

Stupid me --[no comments], I decided to use Partition Magic to see what it
said about the old drive. --Put it back in as the slave.

Paranoid that financial info might get out, I decided to make it even harder
to recover and to use PM to repartiton and delete the partitions on that
drive. It said it had done it and need to reboot to finish. Can you see
trouble coming?

The system rebooted and PM did its thing. I removed the "returning" drive.

When I rebooted, with my Primary Mastor, HDD0 only, I got the "verifying DMI
pool error," again.
I Did everything I could think of to fix it, including reflashing the
BIOS--but nothing worked.

Finally, went to Windows 2k Recovery Console, Repair, and ran a check of
system startup files.
It said they were corrupted. I ran fixboot. It said the boot had been
fixed.

On rebooting, I got passed the "dmi pool error" --yay--and then got the
message "NTLDR not found."

Booted from a DOS floppy, took a look at my drives (partitions).

C drive (part.1) only had a small bit of " \WINNT" on it and a log that said
"fixboot" had been successful. Everything else was gone. I did an "attrib"
to make sure I was seeing everything and there was no NTLDR, but since
\WINNT was mostly blown away, it hardly mattered.

Then, I offered another chicken to the gods and checked my extended
partition. All the logicals were there and intact--yay!

I haven't a clue what happened. Somehow "fixboot" must have killed part of
the Partition table and wiped C or maybe Partition Magic did it--anyway, it
had been done? As a last effort, I tried FDISK /mbr. That seemed to have
no effect.

Didn't know what else to do, so I used my latest ghost of "C" and restored
the system from a few days ago. It took.

I'm back in operation, almost back to square one. EXCEPT, The Maxtor Drive,
jumpered as Primary Master isn't recognized on POST. Then POST goes into a
search for the IDE devices. After a full 15 seconds, it comes up with the
Primary Master and my opticals (Secondary Master/Slave). That's where I am
now. And everything seems to be functioning, except for POST not finding
the ide devices.

I tried removing them with the Control Panel. --same thing. Except W2k,
says it's found new hardware and needs to install it, as it should. After
doing that, I booted down. Pulled the power reset the CMOS jumper to
"clear." Tried to reboot and got a checksum error. I went back into the
BIOS & set everything back to the "safe defaults." That brought the system
back up & working again, but the 15 seconds to find the IDE devices is still
there

What the heck--I rejumpered the HDD as slave, then booted. The HDD & my
opticals, showed up immediately!
I reset the HDD as the primary master, and again, --15 full seconds to find
the drives.

I ran Maxtor's software that resets the drive to a "new" condition, without
doing any formatting--took four hours. Same thing--15 seconds.to find
drives on boot..

Can we get me back to square-one, where POST will find the drives
immediately? Strange that it did, when I set the Primary Master to Primary
Slave--but maybe a clue?

Then I'll go looking for "Clone Disk." --and I was so close (or at least
perceived it as such) :>(

Bob