B&R: success or …wishful thinking?

Having had two consecutive disk crashes last summer, I decided I had to take steps to protect me from going through the same nightmare again. I started downloading Paragon B&R 10 free, and studied it. Then I did the following:
I equipped my computer (running XP Pro) with two identical 500 GB internal drives, identically partitioned with four partitions each: one for the OS, then the installed Programs, then the Data, and finally Downloads (respectively: C,D,E,F; and G,H,I,J for the two disks). I already had one same size USB external disk. My intention was to use my USB disk to make a weekly backup of the first internal disk, and then to do a restore operation to the second internal drive. This way, in case of failure of the first drive I could easily switch to the second, finding practically the same content as in the first, though one week old at most.
Being however rather unfamiliar with backup/restore techniques, I feared that the transition from the first to the second drive would not be very quick. I thought in fact that, most probably, for the system to boot properly, I had to rename the G,H,I,J partitions in the second drive as C,D,E,F, like originally in the first drive; and also that I would have to physically connect the second drive as a master disk, like the first disk was before the failure.
But here was the surprise. When I started experimenting to test the procedure, I first discovered that my system BIOS allowed me, if properly modified, to choose which disk to boot from. But an even greater surprise was to realize that, by simply changing the BIOS booting instructions, the computer would immediately boot correctly from the second drive, with no need to rename its partitions.
This of course made me, at least for a few moments, the happiest person on earth: the procedure suddenly became extremely simple and the recovery practically immediate!
On second thought, however, doubts arose in my mind: is this real, or perhaps I am getting hold of the wrong end of the stick? Am I seeing things? Is it possible that the partitions in the second disk get renamed automatically?
As much as I experiment, everything appears as I described it.
Can anyone in the forum explain how things go really?

 

Assuming that you made an exact copy of the first drive to the second 500GB drive, (which it looks like you did) you should have no issues simply pointing your system to boot from the second drive, there is no need to change the drive letters, as this information is set in the windows registry, and is not actually specific to each disk, in other words, the system that you boot off of will see its partition as drive C:\ regardless of how other another OS on another partition sees them.

The only thing that matters when booting windows and changing disk order is that the MBR on the disk you are booting to is correctly configured and intact, which can be backed up and restored along with the partitions, also our recovery CD can resolve any boot issues resulting from a missing or corrupted MBR.

 

Thank you, Matt. So you are telling me not only that it works, but that it works much better and faster than I thought. Great!

 

Matt, isn't this Windows' idiosyncracy to always need to see itself living in/on the "1st House on the block"
(1st partititon) so to speak?

(in contrast to Mr. *nix, who can happily take up residence anywhere?)

This same thing happened to me early in my use of Paragon 8.5 -
and made me appreciate the way Paragon is apparently written
to handle many of these details silently, automagically.

 

Well, yes and no. Windows can be installed on any partition you like, as long as the MBR and boot.ini(xp, BCD for vista/7) are properly configured. It does not need to be the first partition, nor the first hard disk, but will always see its own partition as C:\, however this does not mean it will always see its partition as the first partition.