A question about backing up a dual boot HD

I have just installed Vista on a dual boot HD (160gig internal SATA).

TI 9 worked flawlessly to make this happen.

I made a tib image of my system (XP) disk from boot HD (80gig SATA). It was 25gig in size and stored it on an IDE internal HD.
Disconnected the 80gig- booted my Rea BartPE CD and restored the tib to the 160gig drive changing the drive during the restore process so that there was 70gig for the XP partition and the rest was unallocated space. Restored the MBR and track 0 during the process. This posting by our beloved Menorcaman was invaluable
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=769388&postcount=5

Rebooted the 160 gig to make sure it worked. It did. Booted up XP showing a 68 gig partition with the rest as unallocated space

Put Vista disk and booted from it. Chose custom install onto the unallocated space NOT Upgrade. I can't remember if I formatted it during the installation - I think I did. Took a while with multiple reboots. Now I get the option to reboot to XP or Vista when starting. Both work great. I used Vistabootpro to tweak the dual boot. This is a great source of info on dual booting
http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=95&sid=2984e1e0d8bbd2a04df0cce0349bcd32

NOW the question- I do have one.

Can I use TI 9 from XP to backup this 160gig HD so I can restore it if needed? Does anyone forsee any problems - I know I could try it but do not wish to replicate all the above work at present.

Thanks for any advice

 

Hello Tatou,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for the delayed response.

Please be aware that Acronis True Image 9.0 Home does not officially support Windows Vista. It may restore MBR of Windows Vista incorrectly which will result in it becoming unbootable.
Windows Vista support is implemented in Acronis True Image 10.0 Home.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

Thanks for the reply

So I take it from your reply if i upgrade to TI 10 and backup the whole drive from either the bootdisk or a BartPE then the resulting image of the drive will be able to be restored to the drive that will still let me dual boot XP and Vista. Please note there are two partitions on that drive, one with XP (the first) and one with Vista (the second).

Please confirm that this is correct.


Thank you

 

Tatou,

I'm interested in your outcome. I don't know the answer but have you seen this site? Some good background on Multibooting Vista.

http://www.multibooters.co.uk/multiboot.html

 

Great link - the best explanation I have seen

I can see why it may pose a problem to TI.
I may try it with TI 9 from reatogo BartPE by doing the whole drive plus MBR and then try each partition separately but saving the MBR with each as well and restore back to original 80gig SATA but making the partions smaller (if possible)

I may upgrade to TI10 and try that if TI 9 doesn't work

Will keep you posted

I am starting to like Vista - I am a sucker for eye candy

 

HI Brian

Well I gave it a go with TI 9 (last version). Backed up whole drive from within XP (in hindsight should have used BartPE)

Backed up 160gig drive with two partitions XP on one and Vista on the other and dual boot

Restored via BartPE TI9 to an 80gig SATA (my current spare drive)
Selected XP partition first and resized it , selected Vista partition and resized it so both would fit on the 80gig, then selected another partition to restore but only selected MBR and Track 0 to restore so had two partitions plus MBR and TRack 0

Restored OK but when I booted up the 80gig (disabled 160gig SATA) did not get option to dual boot just a straight reboot into XP. Both partitions were there

Used VistabootPro3.1 to restore the BCD (I had saved it before), but on a reboot went straight to XP again.

Have upgraded to TI10 today and will try the same process and report progress

 

Tatou, thanks for the update. Keep them coming.

 

OK

Had a heck of a time making a Bartpe with TI10. REATOGO keeps stalling for some reason all the time and would never finish the 1st configuration. Anyway got a vanilla BARTPE to work with TI 10 bart plugin- had trouble with Mustangs for some reason and couldn't get it to work.

Firstly after many tries to select each partition and resize it I had to boot from an earlier REATOGO and remove the earlier partitions on my spare drive.

OK so I booted up with BartPE with TI10 (had to F6 to load the SATA drivers)
Selected tib file (made with ti10 in XP of whole drive)
Selected XP partition, selected unallocated drive and resized, selected the Vista partition, resized, selected Track 0 and MBR to restore, selected drvei to restore to
Proceeded. Restored OK

Rebooted- yay got dual boot option screen back- select Xp- booted OK

Reboot- selected Vista - error- suggested I try a REPAIR from Vista installation disk. Tried repair- seemd to repair but unable to boot from Vista selection.

I placed the partitions in the same order as they are on the original drive.

I am going to try a backup from BARTPE and then a restore from BARTPE as well as a backup of the BCD in XP with Vistabootpro3.1

Thinking while writing this I will play around with the active designation. I have just had another look at http://www.multibooters.co.uk/multiboot.html and the problem may be that I made the Vista partition "active" as well as XP as I thought it needed it to boot but it seems that would have been a problem. The PBR always points to XP partition which then allows a selection through the Bootmanager direct to Winload on the Vista partition.

Will report back

 

It’s probably resizing the partitions that is causing your problem. The bootmgr uses the Vista partition’s starting sector on the hard drive to find the partition, so if this moves you will get a “winload.exe…..is missing or corrupt error” You can only resize a Vista partition from the top down. If you restore an image to a different hard drive then the number of the starting sector of the partition on the new drive has to be the same as it was on the old.

You also have to copy the Disk Signature number from the MBR, which if you were copying the entire MBR you would have done. However you cannot boot either drive with the other one connected as the Disk Signature of the non booted drive will be automatically changed. You can’t have two hard drives in the same machine with identical Signatures. If the Signature is wrong you will again get the winload error.

 

Tatou,

Have you seen this video? "Installing Windows Vista to its own primary partition". This is about having completely separate OS. ie not using the "Microsoft Way".

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/examples.html

 

Thanks McTavish and Brian

I think you have hit the spot McTavish as that is the error I get. I grabbed a 160gig drive from Dick Smith and will try it out tonight. I want to make sure my backup of the dual boot 160gig drive works. I never boot with both SATA drives connected when they are the same.

Thanks Brian for the link. It may be the way to go.

I will report back

 

Report back

Installed the 160g SATA. Of course it wasn't easy as it was a SATA 2 and my motherboard chip set wouldn't autorecognise the speed but a trip to the Western Digital web site found the answer - put a jumper in to drop it back to SATA speed.

After formatting it I booted my BartPE TI10 and restored the tib file to the new 160gig. The original disk was disconnected already
Rather than finish with the normal "Finished/Completed" TI said something like "Need a Reboot to Finish operation" This meant it would have rebooted the BARTPE- seems odd.

However I didn't reboot I just turned off PC via BArtPE and then booted the new SATA drive

Yes!!!!

I got the Microsoft boot menu and both Vista and XP booted ok

So I can used TI10 to back up my dual boot Vista and XP. As I discovered it must be restored to an equivilent disk size. Resizing the partitions at the same time stuffs up the boot link to Vista.

Thanks to McTavish for the solution and Brian K for links to multibooting info.

Now if I can only get REATOGO to build on my machine!!!!!!!

 

It does not have to be the same size hard drive Tatou - you can resize partitions just as long as you don’t change the starting sector of the Vista partition. In your case, if you had left the XP partition as it was and just resized Vista from the top down to fit the size of the new hard drive you would have been ok, as the starting sector of the Vista partition would not have changed.

 

I'm about to install Vista on one of my removable sata hard drives that
are controlled using a Promise controller plugged into a PCI slot. Will
TI 10 be able to resize partitions and do everything like I'm doing with
XP SP2? I've read this about the starting partition byte must be the same.
I only using cloning. Should this be the same with Vista?

 

If you are only cloning single partitions as opposed to an entire drive then you will not be transferring the Disk Signature to the new drive – hence Vista will not boot. You can manually copy the Signature if you can use a low level disk editor HxD. But remember you can’t have two hard drives with the same Disk Signature, so cloning only works if you are replacing a drive.

If you are not using the Microsoft bootmanager then there is a solution to this cloning problem here

Can’t help you with Acronis software. I may get round to testing some of their stuff again as surely it must have improved in the last couple of years.