does clone alter source drive?

I have used 8.0 in the past with great success but my first experience with trueimage 9.0 resulted in two drives (seemingly with identical files and file structures after the cloning) that would only boot to safe mode. So does that mean that the source drive is altered somewhat by cloning? (I would think some info is placed on the source and that may have had unintended consequences). So, now is there a way to get my original source drive to again boot up normally? Appreciate a response as I am contemplating a full XP reinstall on one of the drives to get my computer running again. One last point - I would like to use 9.0 to clone some business computers and it is very important that they not be altered by the cloning process. Any ideas there. Perhaps I would need (in the future) three drives: one for the O/S, one for a source and one for a target?

 

I haven't noticed any changes to the Original HD after cloning to my Spare HD.

I have 2 WD Raptors (10,000rpm) Hard Drives installed. Each one has its own SATA cable running to the Motherboard. I don't have RAID set up. Instead, I alternate by turning one ON, and the other OFF in the BIOS. I mostly use the "Primary" HD, and use the "Secondary" for testing. Actually, this is like having 2 computers in one!! I love it set up this way.

Now, for Cloning purposes and testing, ...I turn BOTH HD's ON in the BIOS, boot up with the "Boot-CD", and then run a Manual Clone procedure. After words, I go straight into the BIOS, and select which HD I want to use. Then turn the other OFF.
I havn't had any problems "Cloning", or "Restoring" a Full Backup to the other HD.

It's good that you're considering Reinstalling XP. While you're at it, update the system too. Check for a BIOS update, Chipset update, Optical drive Firmware updates (DVD-Rom & DVD Burner), and check for Video, Sound, Ethernet, and etc.

 

I have reinstalled XP on one drive and would like to try this again. Is there any chance that cable postition or master-slave settings are critical? I believe that my motherboard permits booting from a slave (and that seems a bit unusual to me) so perhaps my clone was jinxed that way. I am also considering placing each drive on its own IDE cable. Maybe that would have changed something? Lastly, how do you turn a drive on and off. Is there an enable /diable setting in BIOS or does yours really say on and off? (I always thought my bios just finds whatever is on the the IDE cable.)

 

Usually the BIOS will assign one HD as the "Primary", and then the other "Secondary". This depends on how how your EIDE or SATA cables are hooked up to the Motherboard. The best way to ensure you're hooking it up correctly is to decide which HD you want as the "Primary". Then take that EIDE or SATA cable coming from that particular HD, and hook it to "SATA 0" on the Motherboard. Then hook the other cable from the other HD to "SATA 2" on the Motherboard.
SATA 0 is usually the "Primary", and SATA 2 is usually the "Secondary".

Ok, as the computer is booting up, I press the F2 key, and go into the BIOS.
Under the Drives, I press the Enter key to select the Hard Drive.
My listings are as follows.
SATA 0
SATA 2
SATA 3
SATA 4

SATA 0 is MY "Primary" HD, and SATA 2 is MY "Secondayr" HD.
When I select one of these, there is visable description of the Model for the HD I have turned on. (EX:: WD740AFDF 74gb)

I highlight one of these two, and choose to turn it ON. And then turn the other OFF.
Then "Save and Exit" the BIOS, and the computer Boots up.

Keep in mind,
1. That you'll only be able to Boot up one of the HD's on at a time IF both have Operating systems on them.
or
2. You can boot both up, but you can only have an Operating System on One of them. I generally put the Operating System on the "Primary" HD, and Reformat the "Secondary" HD to Remove the OS. Then you can use it as a Storage Drive to save things on.

Since I like having 2 HD's with its own seperate OS on it, I use the #1 all the time. I do my "Testing" on the Secondary HD.

 

It is recommended that you remove or disconnect the source drive before attempting the first successful boot. Has to do with partition signatures being copied such that cloning has produced 2 drives in the system with the same signatures.

Some users say they never bother but that is the recommendation from Acronis and other sources.

 

Now 8.0 is working and I will try 9.0 soon. Any advantages to 9.0, by the way? I'm not sure what fixed my problem. I replaced one IDE cable (not the one with the drives on it); started with a clean XP Pro SP1 install; made sure that master drive was on far end of IDE cable; reformatted the slave drive; I kept video resolution low ; only after it worked did I install video card and monitor drivers. I have not installed Itunes or an anti-virus program yet since these are often troublesome. Maybe most important - I have only been selecting "automatic" for my cloning operation (though actually I wasn't trying anything fancy with the manual setting). I am wondering whether my target drive (which once had XP on it )was providing some kind of info back to the master and this was goofing up things. At one point I was getting a warning that my XP was counterfeit, though it is not . I assume that was caused by XP noticing that it was running on a different drive than it expected, so it went into hassle mode.)

 

You need the 80-conductor Ultra DMA cable for that setup.

 

I would like to detach the master (the original source) before rebooting but it appears that 8.0 finishes the cloning process and then reboots everything automatically (unless I am misinterpreting something ). So I am not sure when to intervene to prevent the auto reboot so that I can detach the source so that I can then boot to the cloned drive by itself. Or am I given a choice in this process somewhere? Thanks. Also, I am using the 80 conductor cable.