Help with a tricky restore setup

I'm dual booting two versions of XP pro on two different drives. C(160G) is my standard setup with all my programs. F(80G) is my gaming drive with a barebones XP install and a few games. I imaged both drives to my external last night after i was done setting them up, they both work fine.

Today i realized i should have made my gaming drive the 160 and vise versa, so i tried to restore my image from the 160 to the 80(using the boot disk) but TI would only give me the option to restore to the drive i imaged from, the 80G drive wasn't an option. I then removed the 160, put in the 80 and imaged the 160 drive to the 80 drive. Image was sucessfull but when i tried to boot off the 80G drive i would get to the welcome screen and everything would stop, couldn't get into safe mode either. I did select active partition also. Is what i'm trying not possible or is there an easier way? Thanks.

 

Hi seething,

I'm not writing to give you a solution to your question, however I read your post and am very interested in how you have your computer hooked up.

I would really like to know how you are dual booting Windows XP Pro.

I have an old computer with 2 drives, and would love to be able to do this.

One drive for me, and one drive just for my kids.

I always squirm when I have to install a game on my computer for my children, they play it a few times, and then lose interest in it, and then I end up deleting it from the computer, however Windows always keeps stuff on it from the games, and the computer is never as clean as it was. I'd love to know how you accomplish this, and would appreciate hearing from you, if you have time.

Thank you again seething.

 

seething,

You are dual booting the Microsoft Way so that makes resizing partitions a problem I'm afraid.

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/principles.htm

See "What's Wrong with the Microsoft Way?"

 

zippo2007,

All you need to know. I had 8 WinXPs on one computer.

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/index.htm

 

Each drive only has one partition. I restored the gaming drive image and it boots and works fine. I'm wondering if i could clone the bigger drive to the smaller one? Or would the MS multiboot prevent that? Installing XP and a few games to the larger drive is no big deal. But reinstalling all my programs is out.

 

seething,

I'll try to help but I've always avoided the "Microsoft Way" because of these problems.

I gather you installed the OS on the 160 GB HD first and the 80 GB drive second. This OS order must persist so you need to install the 80 GB HD as master and restore the first OS image to this HD. I think that is what you have done and it won't boot. Is that correct?

Sounds like partition signature confusion. I'd try Method #3. Only have the 80 GB HD attached when you try this. This should allow you to boot that OS but I'm not sure how it will affect your subsequent dual boot. Let me know what you decide.

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm#method3

 

That's correct. After i installed XP on the 80G, MS set up the dual boot. When TI wouldn't let me restore across disks i put the 80G in place of the 160, but left the 160 out, restored and it wouldn't boot. Partition signature confusion sounds right cause all files were accessible. The one thing i didn't try is just switching both drives.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v190/greyeyezz/ti1.png

 

My boot.ini file looks like this. If i could edit out the dual boot option i could image the drive's separately.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

 

Hi Brian,

thanks a bunch for the info.

I took a peek at this website last night, and got a bit dizzy from reading it.
Seems I need a bit more time ( a few months ) to digest it all

You must be a programmer 'cause holy cow that's pretty heavy stuff, however I am going to try this out this week if I can figure it out.

One thing I didn't really understand ( the author didn't explain it ) how does he actually create the image files in the first place ?

Also, what I want to do is this, just do 2 versions of XP, one for me, and one for my kids. If it really is super easy, then I would opt for 3 installs of XP however.

This seems amazing, I really am thrilled to know about this info Brian, I'm glad you posted !

 

Zippo if you have one drive running XP already and another drive installed just boot off the XP cd and install to the new drive, XP will set up the dual boot. It is nice but comes with its own set of problems as you can see.

 

seething,

Are you prepared to try Method #3 to fix the partition signature problem? I've used Method #3 many times and you don't "see" anything happen. After typing fdisk /mbr and pressing Enter it just goes back to the A:\ prompt. A generic MBR is created and the DiskID is zeroed. Zeroing the DiskID is what we are after. It doesn't do any damage except perhaps to your dual boot. It should make the OS boot but you may have to manually install WinXP on your 160 GB game HD if the dual boot fails. You can sort out the boot.ini later. I'd leave it at present as it covers both possibilities.

 

zippo2007,

The image can be created with any imaging software you like. You can start with a fresh HD, create partitions, install WinXP in the first partition and then create an image. Or you can use an existing WinXP, shrink the partition, create extra partitions on the HD and install a fresh WinXP into partition 2 (no images used). You need to be proficient in using Partition Magic or Acronis DDS to create and hide partitions.

The most difficult page is

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/ptedit.htm but fortunately you don't even need to read it as you won't be using WinXP in an extended partition.

As far as a boot manager, just use pqboot.exe in a common data partition. Easy. A 5 second job. Or if this is messy then use Boot Magic. I use pqboot.exe for my current dual boot as I'm in the main WinXP most of the time.

 

The easiest way to do this is to instal a hard drive removable tray/rack system like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817123102

You will have to buy two racks in order to get two trays - one for each hard drive, although I have seen some vendors sell just the trays.

 

Hi Ralphie,

thanks much for posting !

wow, now this seems interesting also !

Can you descbribe how this works ?

I am pretty sure this would be a removeable hard drive. However,
how would Windows XP deal with this ?

So you basically put the drive in that you wish to use, and windows would boot with that drive ?

I am asking this, because we all know XP or any version of windows is very picky about what it boots from..... I'm pretty sure it can't be as simple as pulling one drive out and putting a new one in, and then booting the system ??

thanks for your time in advance !

 

Hi Brian,

I was looking at Norton's PartitionMagic 8, and they indicate that this program
can enable multi-booting on a drive.

Would this product do the job for me ? If so I would like to go and pick this up at my local BestBuy store this week. I am no programmer guy and after reviewing the pages again, I think I'm going to be totally lost.

If this PartitionMagic program can do the job I wouldn't mind buying it and letting it do the work for me.

Thank you for any help.

 

It IS as simple as that ... I have racks in my three desktop systems and several trays with drives. When I want to experiment with software, I pull out my main drive, slap in a test drive and away I go. Here's the vendor I bought mine from (about 7 years ago), costs less than at Newegg:

http://www.computergate.com/products/item.cfm?prodcd=XMRB27A

Search around their website ... I know they have just the trays somewhere. Be sure to buy the tray that goes with the rack. Not all trays work with all racks.

 

Hi Ralphie,

wow, this sounds really cool, I'm going to look into this option !

by the way, when you actually want to swich hard drives, - you would do this while the computer is OFF, is that correct ?

so just shut down, and then pull the drive out, and push in the one you wish to use, and then just start the computer up ?

Is that correct ?

I am really surprised that Windows XP doesn't put up a fuss seeing a new drive - very good news !

thanks Ralphie

 

Yes, power down, change drives then power back up. XP isn't going to complain ... both drives will have its own install of XP. It doesn't know when its powering on that you may have been running another drive before it.
BTW, this is also an ideal method of backing up your system - using removable drives, - in this case though ideally you would have two racks installed in the computer, though you could get by with one.

 

Hi there Ralphie !

you really have some good info there. I'm super happy you posted

If I go with this system, which I think I"m going to now, I can go with 2 of these racks ? hmm ok.

So for backing up a drive, I guess I would just keep one of these racked hard drives as a regular hard drive for data ( meaning, I don't need an OS on it ) and then just use True Image to mirror the c: drive to that second drive without the OS on it ?

Anyway I am getting excited here !

thanks very much for your help Ralphie !

 

I'll try it but i'm imaging both drives first. Trying to make the boot floppy i keep getting "disk error on track 1 disk 1 error in reading" should i just continue?

 

It HAS to be a Win98 boot floppy. There should be no errors. Do you have other blank floppies to try?

http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm get the Windows 98 OEM. It's a self extracting file so double click and it will extract to a floppy. Remember there is a space between the k and / in fdisk /mbr

 

zippo2007,

PM is very useful but you should use it extensively on a test HD until you understand how it works. It is quite easy but it does take some repetition to feel comfortable. PM comes with pqboot.exe and Boot Magic.

 

Well that didn't get rid of the dual boot, now i have NTLDR is missing.

 

Well luckily we are working on an OS that didn't boot properly in the first place.
First up, have you removed the floppy disc. This is the commonest cause of that message.

It could be a boot.ini problem. I'd try this and edit boot.ini to partition 1

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=210

 

Don't know what happened but i reversed the drive order in the bios and everythings booting fine now or, i'm back to square one and i'm staying there till i upgrade to Vista or buy a larger drive.

Thanks for your help Brian, next time i'm down under i'll buy ya a pint.