How to tell MBR it has new partition, after copy?

Discussion in 'Paragon Drive Backup Product Line' started by ralws277, Jan 7, 2011.

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  1. ralws277

    ralws277 Registered Member

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    My (ten-year-old) internal hard disk is starting to slow up and show errors, and I want to copy the info on the system partition to a new hard disk, before the old one dies. I have Paragon Disk Copy, which I believe allows for copies of entire disks or individual partitions. Initially, I'd like to transfer JUST the system partition from my old hard disk to a new one I have available. It looks like I can do a "sector-by-sector" copy of my C: system partition to get not just the user files, but also all the Windows metafile structures that are needed to make a fully functional system partition, so I'll do that.

    My question is, if I make a copy of the system partition, and put it on the replacement hard disk, how do I "inform" the MBR of the new hard disk that it now has a partition on it that it didn't have before? Did I miss an option or tool somewhere in Disk Copy that will do that? Thinking, is there an option somewhere like "Search Disk Structure and Update MBR with found partitions" or something similar?? I also have Paragon Partition Manager and Paragon Hard Disk Manager available, in case there's a tool in one of those that would be what I need to use.

    I know it might be easier to just do a "disk copy" (in which case the MBR of the new disk would automatically end up with the correct partition info), but due to the problems I've had copying from the old hard disk in the past, I want to take the data transfer to the new hard disk one partition at a time if that is possible. The reason I would like to do this one partition at a time rather than do the entire disk copy in one operation: I have three partitions of about 20GB each on the old disk, and due to disk errors or something, in the past it has always taken about 5 hours to back up EACH of the three partitions, so I'd rather just first back up the system partition and see if that boots off the new hard disk correctly after the copy operation, rather than spend 15 hours to copy the entire disk (all 3 partitions) and then possibly find that for some reason it didn't work out right.

    But how will the MBR of the (brand new) hard disk know that it now has a new partition on it, after the copied partition is plopped on to ito_O

    Thanks in advance for any help with this.
     
  2. Mech_An

    Mech_An Registered Member

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    The final operation after copy is updating MBR on target hard disk to write down new partition entry.

    So MBR on new HDD will know about copied partition.
     
  3. ralws277

    ralws277 Registered Member

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    Thanks for that re-assuring information, Mech_An, much appreciated. :)

    As an aside, I discovered that if I create a partition image via the Linux boot disk instead of via the Windows version of the program, I don't have the problem with massively long backup time that I previously had. I also used HDD Regenerator (a fantastic program!) to fix a couple bad sectors that ChkDsk wouldn't touch, before I did the image. I have a feeling it was using the Linux version of the program that was what fixed the ridiculously long copy time, but don't know for sure. Seems to me that copying an "offline" system partition would obviously be much easier and less prone to error than doing a live copy of a live system partition.
     
  4. Mech_An

    Mech_An Registered Member

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    Offline copy\backup is always faster because only needed services and processes are running and there is no need to create HDD bitmap for backup.

    It is truth for all backup apps I think.
     
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