PeterC said:
I've tried XXClone and never managed to get the 'new' disk to boot. Have
also used Acronis (with a Maxtor disk, so free) and that seemed sort of OK,
but now use Easus Partition Manager: needs careful use but works,
If an application doesn't know about the partition boot sector, then
you'd need to use the Recovery Console feature of your WinXP installer
disk, and do a "fixboot" on the new partition you've copied the files to.
These are the boot resources on a disk.
+------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
| MBR sector - boot code | Partition Boot Sectors... Rest of C: partition|
+------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
(other items, Boot Flag per partition, VolumeID value per partition)
"FixMBR" fixes the MBR sector. "Fixboot" reloads the Partition Boot Sector.
The Partition Boot Sectors are towards the front of the C: partition.
A tool like TestDisk can be used to visualize the Partition Boot Sectors.
While TestDisk offers the ability to copy the backup Partition Boot
Sector to the primary one, if you're just copying files to a "new C:",
there is nothing to work with. And TestDisk won't know how to manufacture
information that is put there by an OS installer. When an OS installs
stuff, it should set the boot flag for that partition, and load what
it needs in the Partition Boot Sectors.
If a partition is going to be bootable, it should have the boot flag
set on that partition. For a free tool for viewing the four primary
partition table entries, including boot flag, you can try this. I
don't change stuff with this, but I do use it as a convenient "readout"
for my disks. I have other tools for mucking about with the values
seen here (a proper copy of Partition Magic being just one of them).
ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PTEDIT32.zip
I learned this stuff, in the process of moving stuff off C: and reformatting
the C: partition, then moving everything back. Once I did the Fixboot
from the Recovery Console and made sure the boot flag was set for the
partition, it all worked again. Depending on what you're doing,
there is also the VolumeID field to consider, but that isn't crucial
to understand. It is more of a cosmetic detail, and means one less
count against you with respect to Windows activation. Windows intends
for each partition to have a unique VolumeID, so if you're cloning,
you'd want the initial volume to not be visible, and then correct
the VolumeID value on the clone. If two identical VolumeIDs are present
when Windows is running, I'm sure Windows will see to it that one is
corrected and made unique again. There is nothing you can do about
the physical serial number of the hard drive itself (stored inside
the drive), and that remains as a potential difference between the original
and the clone. Windows activation is supposed to check the physical
serial number of the boot drive, as well as the VolumeID, and you
can fudge the VolumeID.
To correct a VolumeID, you need to keep track of the original values
on your system, for future reference.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897436.aspx
What little I learned, was learned while screwing around. The
reason I never got "burned", is because I had good sector by
sector backups. If I made a mistake, I could put it all back,
and had to on one occasion
So the first skill you want
to perfect, is your backup strategy. If any tool needs to
understand how to handle all of the above perfectly, it is
your backup tools.
Paul
