Will Acronis Disk Dir Suite 10 work on Vista 64

I have a notebook with Vista Business 64 bit installed. The notebook has a 250 Gb hard drive with one partition.

I want to repartition and add another OS to this notebook as following:

I want to have drive D: and E: each of about 50 Gb. No OS will reside on these partitions.

Then I want the existing Vista Business 64 to have about 80 Gb and to have another partition of about 80 Gb for Win XP.

Therefore when starting this notebook I would be able to choose to run Vista 64 on C: with D: and E: avaialbe

Or

Start with XP on C: with the same D: and E: available.

Will Acronis 10 work for this? I could not find on the web site if the product is compatible with Vista 64. Hence my question.

Thank you in advance for any suggestions/imput.

 

Yes, ADD runs on 64-bit Vista Home.

I intend to repartition the drive so I have:

C: Vista
D Recovery crap
E: DVD drive
F: USB drive
G: Vista
H: My stuff
After that, I may install Ubuntu Linux.

 

I hope Acronis runs on Vista 64 Business too.

Thank you for your reply.

 

For the shrinking of the existing Vista partition, you'll need to do that from the Disk Director boot disk. If you tried from the windows install of the program, it would have to reboot to an installed Linux OS anyway, so it's best to do that function from the boot disk. Then you might as well create the other three partitions from the boot disk as well. The assumption of course is that you have less than 80GB in use on your current Vista partition.

By the way, Vista has the capability to reduce the size of a partition, but from my limited experience with Vista, it doesn't shrink partitions much. If you have Disk Director, it's not really worth talking about the Vista capability, IMO.

You'll need to make a decision on whether the partitions that will be for your data, D: and E:, should be primary or logical. If you make them both primary, you've exhausted all partitions on the hard drive and will need to do an extra manipulation later from primary to logical if you want any more drives on the hard disk (I've never tried that personally using any partitioin manager with live data on the partition, so I don't know if there are usually any greater risks). I have always made all my non-OS partitions logical. It's personal preference if you don't think you'll ever add more partitions.

Acronis True Image really won't come into the picture for the repartitioning work. However, it would be a good idea to do a partition / disk backup before you start on this venture. If you haven't tested that True Image can restore your system from an image backup, you may want to try first. It is best to use a spare Hard Drive for such a venture. I have gone this route both with my main PC and my wife's laptop. Hard drive prices, even for a laptop, are relatively inexpensive (especially when compared to data recovery services).

By the way, if you're not sure, you should check to see if you have any other partitions on your hard disk already, such as a recovery partition.

One other item of note. When you install XP on your second partition (with the Vista partition hidden, per your requirement for independent OSes), let XP format the partition during the installation process (assumng NTFS), even if Disk Director previously formatted it as NTFS. I have read on this board of problems with XP (at least) installs on top of DD NTFS-formatted partitions, and I saw this problem in action once myself; the installation does not complete.

Doug

 

Hey Howard, you forgot to suggest.

First defrag your drives with a good defragger such as Perfect Disk.
And after you shrik the drives, defrag again.

 

Doug,

Thank you for your detailed suggestion.

One thing I am concerned (not sure if it will work): Say I create logical partitions D: and E: (for data) and a primary partition for an independent XP. When I start my PC with XP will the XP "see/recognize" the data drives D: and E:?

 

Yes.
For example on my PC, I have 4 internal SCSI hard drives:

Drive 0: C-D, OS 1 on C
Drive 1: F-H, OS 2 on F, OS 3 on G
Drive 2: I-M, OS 4 on J
Drive 3:3: S and Ubuntu Linux

When I boot, windows offers a menu from which to chose any of the 4 Windows OSes or Ubuntu. J is the main OS, I rarely use the others, so I set up to default boot to OS on J.

When you boot into an OS, the drive letters are still the same, each OS uses the drive letter of the partition in which it is installed. Everything works as expected, e.g., programs can be installed in J:\Program Files for the OS on J, and data on any drive is available using the same drive letters as before.

Indeed, I also have a Program Files directory on K, that has programs used by the OS on J alone, and programs that are shared by all 4 OS And I hae a Program Files directory on D that has programs used by the OS on C.

All of this uses the NTLDR used by Windows pre-Vista.
Since you have Vista installed first, you will see the Vista boot menu when you restart, instead of the XP boot menu. It works, or so I've been told.

 

Thank you very much, Howard.

 

Dmitry,

As Howard states, yes, both OSes will be able to see and use drives D: and E:, and they should be assigned those drive letters (unless you have one of those letters used by an optical drive, I believe; it's been so long since I've had that situation, as I always set my optical drives to the last letter(s) of the alphabet).

If you want Vista and XP to be independent of each other / you don't want them to see each other, then make sure the Vista partition is hidden and the new primary is active and not hidden when you boot from the XP CD to install it. It will then be installed to the new primary partition. Labeling each partition prior and sizing them differently will help to avoid mistakenly installing XP into the Vista partition (though hopefully XP would warn you, but I'm not sure if it would recognize Vista as an installed OS; haven't tried this myself).

After XP is installed, it will be C: and the Vista OS will still be hidden. You will need a boot manager to switch booting between the 2 OSes. Each time you switch, the one you select will become active and the other one will become hidden, so each one becomes C: when it is booted. You can use the boot manager that comes with DD, OS Selector, or another boot manager (this is as simple a scenario as one can have for a boot manager, so practically any one will do). You could even boot to the DD CD to hide one and make the other active and unhidden, but this is much less convenient and more lengthy a process, so I wouldn't suggest it unless you plan on using one of the OSes only rarely.

Doug

 

Doug,

Again, thank you for your detailed help.

Here is my plan:

1. On my notebook I see two volume: C: with 203 Gb free of 230 Gb and D: (recovery) with 0.98 Gb free of 1.99 Gb. (I have no idea about the purpose of the recovery volume, but hopefully I can reassign some other letter to this volume using Vista Disk Management)

2. I will install Norton Ghost and make a complete back up of my notebook to an external drive.

3. So, if I am able to free letter D: from the recovery volume, I can go to step 4.

4. I will shrink 160 Gb of the existing C: drive to the unallocated/unused space. (This will leave about 40 Gb for the existing Vista Business 64). And I can use Acronis DD to that, right?

5. I will create a logical partition D: allocating 40 Gb (from the unallocated 160 Gb)

6. I will create a logical partition E: allocating 40 Gb (from the unallocated 160 Gb)

7. I will create a primary partition (probably assigning letter G: allocating 40 Gb (from the 160 Gb unallocated). This partition will be used for XP Pro.

8. Is it ok that I will keep 40 Gb in the unallocated pool for possible future OS?

Do you see any potential problems in my plan?

 

Dmitry,

So you have a second partition on your notebook, a recovery partition. You likely also have a Master Boot Record that allows you to access that partition / run the recovery. I'm not sure if you can maintain the ability of doing that while also playing with the partitions and installing an additional OS. It depends on the laptop brand / implementation. Do you also have a recovery DVD from the manufacturer as well? For example, the laptop my wife has includes both a recovery partition and the associated DVD, as well as the DVD for reinstalling the OS and a drivers / app DVD, so I have a few options for reinstalling the OS (plus the image I made with ATI). I suspect you'll need advise from someone more familiar with your laptop, unless you choose to blow away the recovery partition.

Regarding the procedures and ignoring the recovery partition issue for the moment, you can resize the Vista partition to something much smaller using DD on CD and check that it boots OK. Then I would go back and create the XP primary partition next to it using the CD. You'll want to activate this new partition and make your Vista partition hidden from the CD, then reboot with your XP CD to start the XP install onto what should be the new primary partition you just created. If you previously formatted the new partition as NTFS with the DD CD, you'll want XP to do at least a quick format at the beginning of the install, as there often is a problem doing an XP/Vista install when DD does the NTFS formatting first. I'm assuming you have the necessary XP drivers; perhaps your XP disk is from your laptop manufacturer, which is probably best.

If you go down this path, XP will assign itself as the C: drive, just as Vista has done for its own partition. This is a consequence of making the partitions independent, which is what I understood you wanted. XP won't see the Vista partition (although it will know in which partition it is installed, for setting the boot.ini file properly), and Vista won't see the XP partition. You can subsequently create your logical partitions with DD after you've completed the installs.

I would suggest you seek additional advice from here or elsewhere concerning your recovery partition as well as how to deal with the MBR, before you move forward. I don't wish to recommend a strategy for a system config of this type, with which I am not familiar. You'll eventually need a 3rd party boot manager; Windows' version won't work in this independent OSes scenario, I would think.

Oh, by the way, there's generally nothing wrong with keeping unallocated space on the hard drive. I do it all the time, typically between every one of my partitions, plus usually a large chunk at the end.

Doug

 

Do NOT change the drive letter, or move/change the size of, the recovery partition, at least not until your computer's warranty has expired.

Hopefully, you have built recovery media, but keep the recovery partition too, in case you eve have to go back to square 1, or send the computer to the system manufacturer.

I gave up on Ghost with version 10, I prefer Acronis True Image.

If you make regular image backups (do not do file backup, just image), then you will be able to get rid of the recovery partition AFTER the warranty expires.

Do NOT free drive letter D.
Drive letters are arbitrary artifacts of MSFT's implementation.

Yes.

Use, say, E, not D.

Use any free drive letter.

Use any free drive letter.

Yes.

On my 4th hard drive, I have the following partitions:

Linux swap partition
ext3 for linux /
ext3 for linux /home
ext3 for llinux /opt
unallocated space
NTFS drive (S)
unallocated space

On my notebook, I have, as you do, C and D.
E is DVD drive
F is USB

I will change that to:

C for Vista
D: Recovery crap
E: DVD
F: USB
G: Windows 7
H: Howard's stuff
Unallocated space, some of which may be allocated to Ubuntu Linux.

 

There is no reason to hide partitions in the normal multiboot situation.

Vista can run from C, and XP will run from whichever partition in which you install XP, it will use a different drive letter for the OS on X.

For example, I have OS on C, F, G, and J drives.

It all works, no matter which OS you boot into, there is nothing sacred about using C as the drive letter for the OS partition, indeed a PC will boot without an OS obn C, as long as the necessary boot loader files are on C.

 

A multiboot sysyem, using the built-in boot mechanism in the Windows Os will handle independent OS. It will even handle Linux, but you need to fool Linux.

I have used multiboot Windows since at least 1995.
First, with Win 3.1/Win 95.
Then Win 98/Win 2000
Then win 2000/Win2000
Then Win 200/Win 2000/Ubuntu

All through the built-in windows boot mechanisms.
Independent boot loaders are not needed if all you are doing is multiboot Windows.

if you start hiding drive letters, which is needless, then you are just asking for trouble or needlessly complicating things.

 

Doug and Howard,

First, thank you both for very helpful suggestions.

I do have a DVD from the manufacturer (Dell) with Vista Business 64 SP1. So, if I need to, even if I can't use the Recovery partition, I can reinstall the OS. So, most likely I will probably remove/delete this D:\Recovery partition.

I have Ghost ver. 14 and today I installed it and made a backup. But based on your suggestions I will look for an option to create an image and not a backup. I understand that the image will be easier to use as a recovery disk.

And I will read carefully all your suggestions before proceeding.

Again, thank you guys very much!

 

I would not delete the recovery partition until after the warranty expires.

An image backup cannot be used as a recovery disk, rather it is used as input to the recovery disk made by, in your case, Ghost.

you need to save multiple image backups, using more than 1 USB drive, preferable to alternate amongst the USG drives, so you neve rlose more than, say, a day's work.

Also, you need multiple copies of the Ghost recovery disk, so, as needed , you can boot from the recovery disk an recover all partitions, or just selected partitions.

 

I hope I did more to help than to confuse. With another point of view on how to proceed, I would think it can make it more confusing. My recommendation on the hiding of the OSes from each other may be a little more work now but will have benefits later, IMO, if you want to fool around with adding and/or deleting additional Windows OSes, and especially if you want to create an additional instance of the same OS, say with an image backup of one that's already installed. I defer to Howard's and any other suggestions that may be provided regarding the recovery partition.

Doug

 

There is no point in hiding drive letters, except in special circumstances, not encountered in this case.

Each OS just runs with a different drive letter and all OSes have access to the same drive letters.

You can even make use of unused space in an OS partition for non-OS files. 3 of my OS are inactive, I use them only for testing, and compiling programs using the different version of MSFT Office in each OS.

With some programs, you can even share files amongst OS. For example, I use Thunderbird for email. All 4 windows OS share the same Thunderbird Mailboxes. I used to also share Thunderbird Mailboxes with Ubuntu Linux (by placing the mailboxes in a FAT-32 partition. All other Windows partitions are NTFS.

I currently have 3+GB free out of 8GB in one of my infrequently used OS. I used a directory called, say, MyFiles-F, to indicated that the directory is user files on the F drive. I did the same thing with the OS on drive G. But as my PC is long in tooth, I moved those directories to another drive. I also moved the pagefile elsewhere, that's how I ended up with 3+GB free.

My old OS have little free space, so that gets eaten every time I do a Windows/Office update. Indeed one of them was so tight, Perfect Disk could not defrag the system files. I had to move 460MB elsewhere and resize the partitions on the tiny 9GB drive.

 

There may be a very good reason to hide XP and Vista operating systems from each other. If you rely on Vista's System Restore or if you like Vista's feature Previous versions of files then you must not allow XP to see the Vista partition. If you do, XP will corrupt and cause deletion of Vista's restore points and shadow copy files. MSKB article here.

Besides the methods given in the article, you can accomplish the same thing by hiding the Vista partition when booting into XP.

 

I would never use System Restore or ANY built-in backup, I would only use a program such as True Image.

I'll have to look into shadow copy files.

Or, I would use the workarounds in the KB article.

Do you know if the same issues will apply to an XP/Windows 7 dual boot?

 

Fair enough, but others reading this post may want to make their own decisions.

Yes. The problem is created by XP, so it is unwise to let XP see any Vista or Windows 7 partitions that have VSS enabled. I don't know why Microsoft hasn't issued a patch for XP to fix this issue, but AFAIK, they have not.

 

It is sometimes costly to fix things that were misdesigned in the first place.
Might be too expensive to fix, in the eyes of the MSFT bean counters.