Bootable D: Drive

The C: drive is my master and my D: is slave on the same cable. The D:
drive is a clone of C: (XXClone) and have previously check it out by
removing the original C: and booting from the clone.

My question is with both the C: drive (master) and the D: clone drive
(slave) in place, can I safely boot on the D: drive via bios select while
leaving the C: drive in the master position and the D: in the slave
position? I have not tried this yet....concerned about maybe messing things
up.

The only reason to do this is to periodically check the bootability of the
D: drive without having to disconnect cables, open the case, removing the C:
drive, rebooting, then putting everything back to the way it was.

--
Dave C.



Remove the five 9's (leave the 4) for email.

Dave C. wrote

The C: drive is my master and my D: is slave on the same cable. The D: drive
is a clone of C: (XXClone) and have previously check it out by removing the
original C: and booting from the clone.

My question is with both the C: drive (master) and the D: clone drive (slave)
in place, can I safely boot on the D: drive via bios select while leaving the
C: drive in the master position and the D: in the slave position?

Should be fine.

I have not tried this yet....concerned about maybe messing things up.

Safest to image the C drive first, but it should work fine.

The only reason to do this is to periodically check the bootability of the D:
drive without having to disconnect cables, open the case, removing the C:
drive, rebooting, then putting everything back to the way it was.

Sure.

"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...
Dave C. wrote

The C: drive is my master and my D: is slave on the same cable. The D:
drive is a clone of C: (XXClone) and have previously check it out by
removing the original C: and booting from the clone.

My question is with both the C: drive (master) and the D: clone drive
(slave) in place, can I safely boot on the D: drive via bios select while
leaving the C: drive in the master position and the D: in the slave
position?

Should be fine.

I have not tried this yet....concerned about maybe messing things up.

Safest to image the C drive first, but it should work fine.

The only reason to do this is to periodically check the bootability of
the D: drive without having to disconnect cables, open the case, removing
the C: drive, rebooting, then putting everything back to the way it was.

Sure.
Thanks Rod, will give it a try shortly. By the way, the XXClone made a
flawless copy of my C: drive on to my second hard drive.

Regards, Dave

Dave C. wrote:
"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...
Dave C. wrote

The C: drive is my master and my D: is slave on the same cable. The D: drive
is a clone of C: (XXClone) and have previously check
it out by removing the original C: and booting from the clone.

My question is with both the C: drive (master) and the D: clone
drive (slave) in place, can I safely boot on the D: drive via bios
select while leaving the C: drive in the master position and the D:
in the slave position?

Should be fine.

I have not tried this yet....concerned about maybe messing things
up.

Safest to image the C drive first, but it should work fine.

The only reason to do this is to periodically check the bootability
of the D: drive without having to disconnect cables, open the case,
removing the C: drive, rebooting, then putting everything back to
the way it was.

Sure.

Thanks Rod, will give it a try shortly. By the way, the XXClone made a
flawless copy of my C: drive on to my second hard drive.

What was the speed like ? That was the main downside I found with xxcopy,
it worked fine, but was quite slow compared with True Image etc.

Pretty crude user interface too.

You can use the BIOS to select the drive to boot by putting
that drive at the head of the BIOS's HD boot order, or you
can make the system a multi-boot by simply adding an
entry to the boot.ini file of what is now at the head of the
HD boot order by default - the Master drive.

Your boot.ini file (at C:\boot.ini) currently looks something
like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=0
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="this is your
name for the system on the Master drive" /fastdetect

Now, using Notepad, simply change the timeout to some
reasonable no. of seconds to give yourself time to put down
your coffee and select the OS:

timeout=15

Then, assuming that the clone is on the 1st partition on the 2nd
HD, by default the Slave on the channel 0 cable, add this entry
after the last entry:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="this is your name
for the clone system on the Slave drive" /fastdetect

Here, "rdisk(1)" designates the 2nd HD in the BIOS's HD boot
order, and "partition(1)" designates the 1st partition on that HD.

Your new boot.ini file will look like:

[boot loader]
timeout=15
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="this is your name for the system on the Master drive" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="this is your name for clone system on the Slave drive" /fastdetect

At boot time, ntldr, will display your two choices, and by
positioning highlighted selection with the Up and Down arrows,
you can hit Enter to select which OS boots. When the clone
boots, it will call itself C: and the other drive D:. Both will be
visible in My Computer, and you can drag 'n drop files between
the 2 partitions, called "Local Disks" by My Computer.

*TimDaniels*

"Dave C." wrote:
The C: drive is my master and my D: is slave on the same cable.
The D: drive is a clone of C: (XXClone) and have previously check
it out by removing the original C: and booting from the clone.

My question is with both the C: drive (master) and the D: clone
drive (slave) in place, can I safely boot on the D: drive via bios
select while leaving the C: drive in the master position and the
D: in the slave position? I have not tried this yet....concerned
about maybe messing things up.

The only reason to do this is to periodically check the bootability
of the D: drive without having to disconnect cables, open the case,
removing the C: drive, rebooting, then putting everything back to
the way it was.

--
Dave C.

Thanks Rod, will give it a try shortly. By the way, the XXClone made a
flawless copy of my C: drive on to my second hard drive.

What was the speed like ? That was the main downside I found with xxcopy,
it worked fine, but was quite slow compared with True Image etc.

Pretty crude user interface too.

Using XXClone, process of cloning my C: drive to the D: drive took about a
couple of hours. Just for my information, I'll look at True Image too.

My C: drive is a 80GB drive with about 50GB of programs, files, and the OS,
WinXP Pro.
The D: drive is a 120GB drive with only one partition.
Computer is 1 1/2 year old Dell, P4, both drives are 7200 rpm.

The only reason for doing this is that if the C: drive crashes, I'll have
this as a backup rather that installing everything on a replacement drive
from scratch.

The 'opening' and the 'advanced setting' screens of XXClone a

http://www.c4.net/davec/01XXCloneOpeningScreen.jpg

http://www.c4.net/davec/02XXCloneAdvSetupScreen.jpg

On the 'Advanced Setup' screen, the only thing I needed to do is to check
the three boxes as shown.

This was my first and only try on cloning. Any personal experiences, good
or bad with XXCLone would be appreciated.

Dave

"Dave C." wrote:
Using XXClone, process of cloning my C: drive to the D: drive
took about a couple of hours. Just for my information, I'll look
at True Image too.

My C: drive is a 80GB drive with about 50GB of programs,
files, and the OS, WinXP Pro. The D: drive is a 120GB drive
with only one partition. Computer is 1 1/2 year old Dell, P4,
both drives are 7200 rpm.

The only reason for doing this is that if the C: drive crashes,
I'll have this as a backup rather that installing everything on
a replacement drive from scratch.


Try Casper XP - it's focuses more on cloning, and you can
download a free 30-day trial copy from Future Systems
Solutions' website at:
http://www.fssdev.com/products/casperxp/ .

With Casper XP you can clone single partitions from among
several on a source drive to a single partition among several
on the destination drive. True Image can't do that without
going thru the kludge of making an image file of the source
partition and then "restoring" that image file to a destination
partition. With your setup, you can put two clones of the
source drive on the destination drive because Casper XP
will see if the amount of data on the source partition will fit into
the destination partition, not just compare the partition sizes.
If your OS and data will fit into 60GB, you can put 2 clones in
your 120GB drive.

By simply adding an entry to the boot.ini file of both clones,
you can make either of them boot itself OR the other, or you
could add 2 entries to the boot.ini files of all 2 OSes and have
any one of them able to boot itself or any of the other two.
You can select the drive via the BIOS's HD boot order, and
you can select the partition that runs its boot.ini by setting
its "active" flag with Disk Management. Then you can select
which OS to startup when ntldr displays the options listed in
the boot.ini file.

*TimDaniels*

Dave C. wrote

Thanks Rod, will give it a try shortly. By the way, the XXClone
made a flawless copy of my C: drive on to my second hard drive.

What was the speed like ? That was the main downside I found with
xxcopy, it worked fine, but was quite slow compared with True Image etc.

Pretty crude user interface too.

Using XXClone, process of cloning my C: drive to the D: drive took about a
couple of hours.

Urk, that's a hell of a lot longer than TI takes.

TI allows you to adjust the partition sizes too. When replacing a drive
with a bigger one, you dont necessarily want the partitions the same size
on the clone, and dont necessarily want a percentage increase either.

Just for my information, I'll look at True Image too.

Its a lot more than just a cloner too.

My C: drive is a 80GB drive with about 50GB of programs, files, and the OS,
WinXP Pro.
The D: drive is a 120GB drive with only one partition.
Computer is 1 1/2 year old Dell, P4, both drives are 7200 rpm.

The only reason for doing this is that if the C: drive crashes, I'll have this
as a backup rather that installing everything on a replacement drive from
scratch.

There's a lot to be said for using images instead of clones in that situation.

The 'opening' and the 'advanced setting' screens of XXClone a

http://www.c4.net/davec/01XXCloneOpeningScreen.jpg

http://www.c4.net/davec/02XXCloneAdvSetupScreen.jpg

On the 'Advanced Setup' screen, the only thing I needed to do is to check the
three boxes as shown.

This was my first and only try on cloning. Any personal experiences, good or
bad with XXCLone would be appreciated.

"Timothy Daniels" wrote in message
...
You can use the BIOS to select the drive to boot by putting
that drive at the head of the BIOS's HD boot order, or you
can make the system a multi-boot by simply adding an
entry to the boot.ini file of what is now at the head of the
HD boot order by default - the Master drive.

Your boot.ini file (at C:\boot.ini) currently looks something
like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=0
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="this is your
name for the system on the Master drive" /fastdetect

Now, using Notepad, simply change the timeout to some
reasonable no. of seconds to give yourself time to put down
your coffee and select the OS:

timeout=15

Then, assuming that the clone is on the 1st partition on the 2nd
HD, by default the Slave on the channel 0 cable, add this entry
after the last entry:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="this is your name
for the clone system on the Slave drive" /fastdetect

Here, "rdisk(1)" designates the 2nd HD in the BIOS's HD boot
order, and "partition(1)" designates the 1st partition on that HD.

Your new boot.ini file will look like:

[boot loader]
timeout=15
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="this is your name for the
system on the Master drive" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="this is your name for clone
system on the Slave drive" /fastdetect

At boot time, ntldr, will display your two choices, and by
positioning highlighted selection with the Up and Down arrows,
you can hit Enter to select which OS boots. When the clone
boots, it will call itself C: and the other drive D:. Both will be
visible in My Computer, and you can drag 'n drop files between
the 2 partitions, called "Local Disks" by My Computer.

*TimDaniels*

Thanks, Tim, that was going to be my next question as to how to set up the
boot.ini for a dual boot.

Regards, Dave

I appreciate all the helpful posts. Thanks.

Regards,

--
Dave C.



Remove the five 9's (leave the 4) for email.