Which partition for recording changes?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Terry Pinnell
  • Start date Start date
I'm trying to understand how and where my system records all the many
changes that are made during a typical working session.

I have a multi-boot environment. For this discussion, let's stick to
just two (although I actually have three at present). Both are XP
Home. Two days ago I copied the OS (with Drive Image > Copy Drive)
from the original partition C on Disk 0 to partition H on Disk 1. I
booted into H and have been working in it today.

I expected to find that C would now be ignored, getting steadily out
of date (although still offering me security in an emergency), and
that all the new changes would now be recorded in H. But in fact, from
a simple search, it's clear they are in BOTH C and H.

Changes to my Mailwasher logs, Firefox bookmarks, etc, are being
recorded in places like these:
C:\Documents and Settings\Terry Pinnell\Application Data

Changes from Symantec LiveUpdate, ntuser.dat, shortcuts to Recent
Files, etc, are being recorded in places like these:
H:\Documents and Settings\Terry Pinnell\Recent
H:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Symantec

Is that normal? Is it down to each application (or XP program/process)
to decide whether it records automatically in the currently booted
partition, or to some previously fixed location? If so, presumably
*both* of these partitions must be present for that application to
work properly in future? So if I removed one, to get greater
simplicity, some applications would be screwed up?

Any clear insights into this would be appreciated please.
Click to expand...

I posted an explanation of this phenomenon back in February.
<http://groups.google.com/group/comp...003+author:Andy&rnum=1&hl=en#bbb8ba658f1e902f>
The cause of this behavior is Windows does not like to see two
identical (same disk signature) drives and therefore changes the disk
signature of the clone, which then prevents Windows on it from running
properly.
What I didn't try is, instead of restoring the disk signature of the
clone to that of the original drive, change the disk signature in the
registry to that of the new disk signature of the clone drive. Then
see if Windows on the clone drive runs properly with and without the
original drive connected.
 
Andy said:
I posted an explanation of this phenomenon back in February.
<http://groups.google.com/group/comp...003+author:Andy&rnum=1&hl=en#bbb8ba658f1e902f>
The cause of this behavior is Windows does not like to see two
identical (same disk signature) drives and therefore changes the disk
signature of the clone, which then prevents Windows on it from running
properly.
What I didn't try is, instead of restoring the disk signature of the
clone to that of the original drive, change the disk signature in the
registry to that of the new disk signature of the clone drive. Then
see if Windows on the clone drive runs properly with and without the
original drive connected.
Click to expand...

Corse it works fine. I normally do upgrade hard drives that way.
 
Andy said:
On Fri, 11 Nov 2005 14:01:32 +0000, Terry Pinnell


I posted an explanation of this phenomenon back in February.
<http://groups.google.com/group/comp...003+author:Andy&rnum=1&hl=en#bbb8ba658f1e902f>
The cause of this behavior is Windows does not like to see two
identical (same disk signature) drives and therefore changes the disk
signature of the clone, which then prevents Windows on it from running
properly.
What I didn't try is, instead of restoring the disk signature of the
clone to that of the original drive, change the disk signature in the
registry to that of the new disk signature of the clone drive. Then
see if Windows on the clone drive runs properly with and without the
original drive connected.
Click to expand...

Haven't studied linked thread yet (I see it's long!) but that sounds
potentially highly relevant. I don't understand this 'disk signature'
and MBR stuff, but could that account for the error messages I gave in
the other thread? Extract:

"Then, late last night, with only the 200GB disks in place (as disk 0
and disk 1), I started to get panic-generating messages like:
"A problem is preventing Windows accurately checking the licence for
this computer. Error code 0x80090006"
"Windows cannot load the user's profile but has logged you on with the
default profile for this system" (But it got no further.)
 
Jim said:
Peter, you have my response, I stand by ALL OF IT, as stated, if you have
question, ask, nuff said.
Click to expand...

There's one part you shouldn't stand by. He's going to be a long time
looking for an _ATI_ FastTrak 100 TX2. Now if he looks for a _Promise_
FastTrak 100 TX2 . . .
 
Back
Top