Help with true image!

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by downtick1121, Dec 2, 2007.

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  1. downtick1121

    downtick1121 Registered Member

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    This is my problem. I made an image with true image of my c (boot) dive to another partition on my primary drive. I then recover the image to my 2nd IDE drive. So now my c drive (primary drive) is mirroed on my 2nd IDE drive. My goal is to be able to boot off of the 2nd IDE Maxtor drive. When I restart computer, hit F8, i get all my drives up to boot from. I choose my seconddary IDE maxtor drive from the list, but windows just goes and boots from the primary IDE drive. What can i do to make this work? When I look at the image i recovered to my 2nd IDE drive, it is an identical copy of the primary boot drive. I just watnt to be able to boot from my second drive in case my first drive fails. anybody??
     
  2. Xpilot

    Xpilot Registered Member

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    Your first drive and the second both contain identical boot records. The Boot INI in both cases points to the OS on HDD 0. It follow that even if the boot order is changed under F8 the boot loader will still pickup the first drive 0.

    I have not tried this myself but it should work if you can find and edit the boot INI on the second drive from disk 0 to disk 1.
    The sure way of finding and editing the boot INI on the second drive would be to swap the two drives over and then do the edit, shut down and swap the drives back again. Then starting from F8 whichever drive you selected should boot.
    There must be an easier way but I have suggested will work. Just remember the next time you update the second drive do NOT restore the MBR or you would have to repeat the edit.

    There are various OS selector programs that could be used instead of all the above but I have never used any of them so I cannot help further.

    Xpilot
     
  3. GroverH

    GroverH Registered Member

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    In addition to the suggestions offered by Xpilot

    Look carefully at the boot selection screen. Perhaps your new selection has to be saved before the change becomes effective.
    ---------------------------

    Boot from your normal primary drive--not your backup drive.

    Then rename both your drives so you can positively identify the drive by it's newly assigned name rather than a drive letter.

    The objective is to be able to look at the drive name and identify the boot drive in use as being the primary or the secondary.
     
  4. downtick1121

    downtick1121 Registered Member

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    ok, i found the boot.ini file on my primary drive. here is what it contains:

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

    should i just copy this file to my second drive where the copy of windows is located? if so, what changes do i have to make to the above text? anybody know what to do?
     
  5. downtick1121

    downtick1121 Registered Member

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    my boot screen comes up with all my drives, i just choose a drive and it goes from there. there is nothing to save. when i put a cd in the drive, such as acronis boot cd, it loads it in either of my dvd drives i choose. it must have something to do with the boot.ini file. i just don't know how to properly edit it.
     
  6. DaveAlex

    DaveAlex Registered Member

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    Dec 2, 2007
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    Hi,
    after I did a clone image of my C: drive and removed the original (it was posting S.M.A.R.T errors), my machine would not choose automatically the correct new boot drive.

    I fixed this by going into the BIOS setup on my machine. There is a section defining the order of boot selection. It has things like floppy, a hard disk and a CD/DVD. The HD it pointed to was not my new C: drive. In another selection there was a Hard Disk option and in it I could put in order which of my many hard drives I wanted it to look at first. I moved my new C: to the top and when I went back, it now showed as the drive to be booted from.

    Now it boots properly.

    ..Dave
     
  7. Xpilot

    Xpilot Registered Member

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    I made the assumption that when you made the image of your first drive it was of the whole disk. The next assumption was that when you did the restore to the second disk you did a whole disk restore.
    If these assumptions are correct you will have identical boot INI records on both drives. These will both point the boot loader to the drive in position 0 regardless of which drive you start from with F8.

    A possible solution out of several would be to edit the boot INI on the second drive so that it points to itself in position 1. This may seem confusing because the Bios and Windows counts drives starting at 0 instead of 1!

    The only way I know to edit a boot INI is to boot from that drive and in you case that would mean first swapping your drives over. So with the drives changed over right click My computer/Properties/Advanced/Startup and recovery/Settings /Edit.
    Notepad will open and there you can do the edit. On the first line change disk (0) to disk (1). do the same for rdisk and repeat on the second line.
    Now backout close down and swap over the drives back to their original positions. You can now select the first or second drive from a F8 boot.

    However I would not actually use your proposed method for backing up your computer in this way at all. Because both the drives will be connected to the same power supply all the time, on glitch could take out both drives leaving you with nothing. You would only have one backup at one point in time with no possibility of going back to another time. Even your backup images are on the same drive as the one you are protecting.

    What I would recommend would be to remove the first drive and replace it with your second drive and leave it at that until you want to update the first drive again. This would be an interim measure until you develop a better strategy.

    Xpilot
     
  8. jonyjoe81

    jonyjoe81 Registered Member

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    heres a sample of what the boot.ini should look like with your dual boot configuration and using windows xp.

    some definitions for reference.
    multi(x)disk(x) = disk controller number ide drives will always be "0" scsi drives will have different numbers.
    rdisk(x) = hard drive number "starts at "0" for first drive
    partition(x) = partition where os is located starts at "1"


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

    some more info
    http://mirror.href.com/thestarman/asm/mbr/bootini.htm#INTRO


    One thing to note is if your second hard drive doesn't boot up, you might have a drive letter change problem on that hard drive. When ever you boot up a computer that has 2 windows xp c: drives, you run the risk of drive letter changes.
     
  9. downtick1121

    downtick1121 Registered Member

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    Posts:
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    so doing it this way with the boot.ini edits, that will give me a boot menu every time i start up, i just choose which os to boot from? also, what if i want to boot from a sata drive that i have, how do i find out what numbers to use?

    I just want to be able to boot from any drive when i hit F8. I get a list of all my drives, 2 dvd drives, 2 ide drives and 1 sata drive are all on the list. is there a way to have the pc boot from whatever i choose when i hit the F8 key? i always want to boot from c drive, i don't want to choose from a menu unless i hit F8. is there a way to do thiso_O
     
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