OS Selector fails to recognize OS on HDD #2

[dburley]

I am trying to build HDD #2 similar to HDD #1 which is my only active drive. It is composed of 3 partitions, DOS (Fat16), WinXP (Fat32, and Win98 (Fat32) in that order on the drive. They come up as C, D, and E.

I have tried this 2 different ways. The first was to mount HDD #2 as a slave, clear out existing partitions with DDS, create 1 single Fat32 partition. re-mount #2 as the master, and on booting with the WinXP CD install Windows XP. I then installed DDS in this copy of XP, mounted #1 as a slave, and used DDS to copy the 2 GB DOS partition from #1 to #2. This all seemed to work as the graphic displays showed it all had happened. HOWEVER, after mounting #1 as the master with #2 as a slave, the OS detection wizard would not find the DOS partition. I tried all the settings available in the detection dialog boxes, but no detection.

I remember reading that DOS had to be in the first partition so my second attempt was to again use DDS to clear all partitions from #2, and copy the DOS partition from HDD #1 to HDD #2. This was successful according to the graphic displays. After exchanging the master/slave mounting the result was the same, no detection of the DOS partition. In addition, both tries I had no control over the lettering of the partitions on HDD #2.

I would like this problem solved as I have to structure #2 drive the same #1 and then format the WinXP partition and do fresh install of WinXP. I could do this to my now working drive but then I would have no backup drive.

Thanks for any help !!

[MudCrab]

What you are trying to do is a clone. TI is better for cloning and imaging (backups/restores). With DD, you can just copy partitions.

If using DD, I would remove all the partitions from the new drive so it's all unallocated space (DD will only copy to unallocated space). I would also do the procedure from the DD CD and not from in Windows. It shouldn't matter if the new drive is the master or the slave for the copy operations.

Copy the DOS FAT16 partition first. Then copy the XP partition. Then the Win98 partition.

Do you know if your current setup has independent OS partitions (each partition boots from its own partition) or does the Windows 98 partition boot from the XP or DOS partition (for example)?

The MBR will not be copied to the new drive. You'd need to copy it manually (not recommended) or use your Windows XP CD's Recovery Console to fix it.

If you currently have OSS installed on the old drive, it may help to see how OSS has the booting entries setup. Can you attach a copy of the BOOTWIZ.OSS file (instructions can be found here (http://www.themudcrab.com/acronis_oss_bootwiz.php))?

[dburley]

Thanks for the reply MD. I would have cloned except that my "cloner" only clones to drives the same size or larger and in this case I am "practicing" with a smaller drive. After I succeed in learning the steps I'll use a same size drive.

I was able to get DDS to recognize the copied DOS partition by using diskmgmt.msc to add the drive letter and then I created a partition for Win XP using DDS. I used the XP CD to install XP and it will boot and run. My next task is to study how to edit boot.ini in order to have multi booting. I will try soon to run OS selector from the CD as you suggest. Attached is the bootwis file from my working HDD #1.

Thanks again