howto make a vista patition-image?

  • Thread starter Thread starter hollex2108
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hollex2108

hi,

I search for a (free of cost) program which makes me an image of a
partition with a vista installation. Later I want to put the image to
a smaller partition.
 
I search for a (free of cost) program which makes me an image of a
partition with a vista installation. Later I want to put the image to
a smaller partition.
Click to expand...

Transferring an OS installation to a smaller partition is unusual,
although I know that Casper (by Future Systems Solutions in its
paid-for version) can do it by transferring only sectors with data
in them. Since I had already bought a previous version of Casper
and thus already had an "account" at Future Systems Solutions,
I paid $10 to download their live CD .iso image and burned it to
a CD, and its works fine, although it takes several minutes to load
each time I use it.

I think the free utility Clonezilla can do what you want, too, but
as with most free utilities, the documentation is minimal, and it has
a Taiwanese "accent". I just gave up on it because it was so hard
to use.

The free partition editor Gparted can clone partitions, too, but
it's reputedly very slow. I've read reports of it taking a full day to
clone a single partition.

Have you tried out Vista's ImageX? I know virtually nothing
about it except what's here:
http://technet2.microsoft.com/Windo...d44f-47f7-a10d-e23dd53bc3fa1033.mspx?mfr=true ,
and here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...7d-f12c-4676-917f-05d9de73ada4&displaylang=en .
As you can see, there's a considerable amount of work involved
and a steep learning curve.

*TimDaniels*
 
I search for a (free of cost) program which makes me an image of a
partition with a vista installation. Later I want to put the image to
a smaller partition.
Click to expand...

Have you tried shrinking the partition using Vista's Disk Management
and then cloning the resulting smaller partition - perhaps with the free
30-day trial version of Casper? Vista won't shrink its own partition very
dramatically, but I've read that it helps to first defragment the file
structure before attempting to shrink it. You can download the trial
version of Casper here: www.FSSdev.com/products/casper/trial/ .

*TimDaniels*
 
I have used part image after clonezilla has destroyed my bios-
settings.

Now I have a second partition with a clone of my vista boot partition.
After i have hide my boot partition and set active my second partition
the system begin to boot but stops with the errormessage autochk not
found and then begin to reboot.
 
I have used part image after clonezilla has destroyed my bios-
settings.

Now I have a second partition with a clone of my vista boot partition.
After i have hide my boot partition and set active my second partition
the system begin to boot but stops with the errormessage autochk not
found and then begin to reboot.
Click to expand...

Have you checked to see that the 2nd partition is really marked
"active"? You can check that with one of many partition editors.
One good one is Gparted, and it is free for downloading as an ISO
file that you can use to make a "live CD". For *my* PC, at the
startup of Gparted, I choose all the defaults except that I enter "1"
(indicating a Moderate Experience) and then tell Gparted NOT to
automatically detect my graphics card type, and then I accept all
the remaining defaults.

In addition to that possible problem, the BCD store probably
points to the Vista in the 1st partition. To fix that, boot from the
Vista installation CD and click on "Repair". Select the Command
Prompt and run "bootrec /rebuildbcd". Then try booting from the
hard drive again.

By the way, "boot partition" in Microsoft terminology means
"the partition that contains the operating system". Is that what
you mean?

*TimDaniels*
 
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