Copied partition accessing files of hidden partition

Hi all,

I just bought TI 8.0, used it for the first time and discovered a major bug (at least it appears to me...) ->

Situation: I have a laptop with 2 separate partitions, one called 'Normal', the other 'Test'. Both of them have the exactly identical operating system (copy): Win XP Pro. I use a boot manager that makes one of the active and the other hidden, so that I can boot from either partition (one is for testing purposes only). From time to time, I copied the 'Normal' partition to the 'Test' partition as a copy, using a similar product as TI (competitor).

The reason why I would like to change to TI is that my old product only works in DOS mode with a bootable floppy and does not support external USB harddisk for image storing.

Now with TI, I booted the 'test' os, created an image with TI of the 'normal' partition (thus it was NOT running to avoid any files being used) to an external USB drive. Then I booted the 'normal' os again and restored the image to the 'test' parition -> or expressed simpler: I copied one partition to another via an image stored externally.

So far so good, no errors, image verified successfully, and I can even boot the now identical 'test' os again! But now, the 'test' os actually accesses files on the 'normal' partition which is actually hidden, or in other words, the os open files on both partitions, the active 'test' AND the 'normal', even though I booted from the 'test' side and 'normal' is hidden!!!

How I got aware of that? When I installed a programm on the 'test' os, half of it actually was installed on the hidden partition! I then wanted to restore the 'normal' image (as half of a program was installed there and I wanted to get rid of it), so I booted the 'test' side and wanted to restore the image to the original place on the 'normal' partition (of which it had originally been created), but TI could not do it because it stated the hidden partition was in use by approx. 20 files (at that time the 'test' side was booted)! That's how I found out! (by the way, I redid the whole copy process to make sure it has nothing to do with the progrom I tried to install, but same result!)

In my opinion, TI makes a fatal mistake here and can not be used at all!!! I works with my old DOS based products. I am not an expert at all, but it seems that some pointers of files have not been changed and still point to the wrong partition.

Has anybody an idea why and what happened? is there a fix for that?

Thanks for any help!
Oliver

 

Since you said exact copy, drive references in the registry should still refer back to the original partition if I understand what you've done. I suppose that they can be manually edited if you're up for an extended edit session.

Blue

 

Hi, takeoff

Have you tried to do the restore with the BootCD, that way the HDD will not be in use.

Take Care,
TheQuest

 

Thanks for the responses...

To the suggestion from theQuest to use the BootCD to avoid the HDD being in use: that is exactly what I did to restore everything to the status before I started using TrueImage (so at least I am back in business...)

To BlueZanetti: that is not how I understand the idea of partition images (and why should then only approx. 20 files refer to the old partition, the rest to the new location?)

All I would like to do is:
A) backup my main partition to an external drive (works perfectly)
B) clone this partition image from (A) (by restoring this image to another partition). Think of it as the second partition is on another computer, it would then be impossible to refer to the old drive (making the cloning process completly useless...)

Thanks for your help!
Oliver

 

takeoff,

I'm not quite sure what you mean. My point was previously discussed here.

Blue

 

Hello Oliver,

I think it might be worth your while reading the whole of Dan Goodell's article titled <Understanding MultiBooting and Booting Windows from an Extended Partition>. An excellent explanation, of what is a very complex subject, and one which will probably help you to better understand your own situation.

Regards

 

This is the part that confuses me the most!

Usually, boot managers hides partitions by changing the high-bit of the partition type indicator (a FAT32 partition is normally '0000 1011'; when hidden it is '1000 1011'. NTFS is '0000 0111', when hidden '1000 0111'). This change is enough to cause the operating system to ignore the partition as 'Unknown' and (for Windows) to not assign a drive letter to the partition.

But from your description, it seems like Windows accepted the illegal partition type byte and guessed the right file system type, because without knowing the correct partition type and file system type, it would not know how to write to that partition?

 

Hi all

I have been on business travel for a long time and couldn't follow up... But nevertheless, I do not understand...

why can't I just make a image of the C drive (active boot partition) and restore it to another hard drive why does then the restored C partition refer to the old hardware

I have read comments that some things are hard coded in the windows settings and I should contact Microsoft, but that is no feasible. I mean, that is not what I understand by cloning, and competitor products actually do it RIGHT. So I am very disappointed that TI can not do things my old competitor product could do from a DOS prompt (but not with USB support, that's why I wanted to change). But how TI works now, it is completly useless...

Note to Menorcaman: I do NOT boot from an Extended Partition, all boot partition are primary but hidden if not in use (and worked for years)

Note to MiniMax: exactly! that is scary, no?!?!

I am now in the situation that I have to replace my old hard disk. But how should I then clone the existing one if not by making an image to an external drive and restoring to the newly bought hardware

I would highly appreciate any help!
Thanks a lot
Oliver