how to clone boot partition in W2K

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jeff
  • Start date Start date
J

Jeff

I'm trying to do something that, I think, should be real easy... but I've
been fumbling with it for several weeks now and need help.
I have a completely installed version of W2K Prof. w/NTFS (SP4 with all the
patches, etc) and all my proggies. It is clean, fast, and I love it.
However history tells me that at some point I will load some utility or such
thing onto it which will corrupt it and the OS will become unstable and go
to hell. My only recourse in the past has been to spend a week
reinstalling the OS, SP's, patches, and all the proggies I need. Ugh!
I've done this too many times...
Soooooooo, I figured that this time I would just "clone" this nice new
install and put in on a partition of its own somewhere where I could pull it
back when I needed to start over again. Sounds easy, no???

First try was just a copy of all the files in the boot patition over to
another, and then back again to try it out... This did not work... some
hidden files must not have xferred or something but no boot as acheived
dispite a lot of messing around. (any body know why?)

2nd try was with Partition Magic. Copied the entire partition to another
place, so I could just copy it back when I needed it. right? Well,
n.g... it also would not boot, and when i coaxed it to boot by repairing it,
it still hung up and I kept getting BSOD and wierd errors.

3rd try was wiping a blank disk, and using the MaxBlast new disk utility to
try and copy my boot dist to the "new" one... perhaps this would have worked
but my boot disk has 3 partitions on it and in aggregate they are too large
to copy. And I could not get it to just copy the one boot partition I
wanted so it died in mid copy and roached both the source and destination
partitions..

So, please tell, how do I easily copy the complete partition to somewhere
safe and then put it back when I need it and have it reliably boot up like
the original.

Many thanks in advance to whomever can assist!
 
Jeff said:
So, please tell, how do I easily copy the complete partition to somewhere
safe and then put it back when I need it and have it reliably boot up like
the original.
Click to expand...

You need something like Drive Image or Norton Ghost. The problem with the
techniques you've tried is that either they don't copy all of the files or
they're unable to restore everything they've copied. You can't
successfuuly restore a Windows system while that system is running because
a number of vital elements including the registry are in use and cannot be
overwritten. I'n not familiar with Ghost, but DI boots to DOS in order to
back up or restore a Windows partition. That works nicely since no part of
Windows is in use.
 
Norton's ghostalso works. Used it to create and image on a
new harddrive in a USB device connected to source.
Then just swaped harddrives and was ready to go !

env: w2k sp2, IBM thinkpad, ghost 2003
 
Ghost may require Microsoft's Sysprep utility, unless
Symantec has made a change to Ghost (they should have
built this into the utility!).
 
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