Cloning of existing Installation (under) OS Selector

Hello,

i did not practice writing in english very often so there might be a lot of mistakes. Sorry for that.

True Image 9.0 and Disk Director Suite 10 ist the software wich i use.
I use True Image for installation (by imaging) and for Backup and it will worked fine.
Then i have to make some changes on my PC and i decided to use Disk Director Suite.

The "starting" configuration looked like that:
1. HD - 160GB PATA Samsung Spinpoint with two primary partions on it. The first one is the existing WinXP installation (30GB) and the rest is for data.
2. HD - 160GB PATA Samsung Spinpoint with one primary partition. This is the backup HD.

The installation of WinXP is very old, SP1 with a lot of programms, especially musican programms.
I dont want to touch it (never change a running system) because i need an up and running pc espeecialyy for mail and bankig.
I decide build in another HD, swap some partitions, and make a new installtion for "Office" and another one for "Music", parallel to the existing one. After everthing works fine, i will kill the exsting (old) one and use the partition for testing. In this way i will always have an up and running system and in dont have to hurry up with installation.

So the actual configuration looks like that:
1. HD - 160GB PATA Samsung Spinpoint with three equal sized partions (all primary) on it.
- The first one (original drive letter C is the existing WinXP installation and will be the test partion in the future
- The second one (original drive letter G, so called "Office", with WinXP/Programms installation for my office enviroment
- The third one (original drive letter H, so called "Music", with WinXP/Programms for my music enviroment.
2. HD - 160GB PATA Samsung Spinpoint with one primary partition (original drive letter D. This is the data HD.
3. HD - 300GB PATA Samsung Spinpoint with one primary partition (original drive letter E. This is the backup HD.

I do all the rezizing and swapping of partions with Disk Director Suite and it all worked fine.

Then i've installed OS Selector. This also works fine.
I've installed a new WinXP (SP2) in the second partion exactly as you describe it. This also works fine.
So my intention is to take this clean WinXP installation, with all drivers for the hardware installed, activate it and then make an image. After that i can copy the image to the third partion and in the future to the testpartition, as often as i like it.

And that is the point wehre the trouble starts!!!

I try to do the install the image (from the clean WinXP installation of the second partition "Office") to the third partion and to make it work well but it will not work.

All the time after i select the third partition "Music" in the OS Selector and boot it up, it seems to work well. It will show as the active system partition. But the drive letter will remains unaffected as H: and will not change to C:.
The second partition "Office", wich the image is from, will stay with drive letter C:.
WinXP will not work correctly (of cause).
I've tried everything, read all the FAQ's, read all the entrys in this forum, tried it in the exact way as described, even try all the nonsense ways. The result is allways the same?

Perphaps i make a logical mistake or an operational mistake. But id dont cant find the mistake. So i decide to write this whole bunch to describe the situation and the problem as good as i can and hope that someone could help me.


Thanks a lot for reading all this and for trying to help me!

 

Re: Clonening of existing Installation (under) OS Selector

I do not think this can be done the way you want to do it. You can only have 1 C: partition and it's always going to be the FIRST PART on the FIRST DRIVE the system sees.

You need to do it this way.

Drive 1 - 1st Part (Primary) - Old Windows XP
Drive 1 - Secondary Part (PRIMARY!) - Data
Drive 1 - Third Partition (Logical) - Backup
Drive 2 - 1st Part (Primary) - Office
Drive 3 - 1st Part (Primary) - Music

Then you can change the drive order using OS Selector and the 2nd or 3rd drive will become C: and all will work fine. Since you said you are going to use the old C as a test partition that is why I put the backup on it, I would suggest you move the 300GB drive there. You'll also notice that I have made the 2nd parition on the 1st drive a primary partition and not a logical one. This has a GREAT side affect. It's always the D: drive! The C:/ will be the OS but D:/ will always be there. At least that is the way it's working for me. I load my Apps to D:/ and it's available for all OS's. Works great so I don't need to waste space in each OS loading common componets.

Good luck!

 

Hello pjiv,

thank you for your response.

Maybe i havent described it clear enough.
It will work if i install WinXP bottom up from the installation cd. As you can see/read, there ist allready an winxp installation on partition 1, wich i call "old" and an winxp installtion on partition 2, wich i call "office".

The thing wich will not work, is to clone/image the second partition to the third partition.

I konw that you can have only one C on one disk.
But that's the reason wy using an bootmanager. The OS Selector, will "swap" drive letters, so that the active partition will allways have the driveletter C and will "hide" some systemfiles, so that winxp will not recognize the other installation.

And that will work fine, as i describe, for the "bottom up" winxp installations, but it will not work for the cloned/imaged winxp installations.

I think there is perhaps only one small thing wich i have to pay attention for so it will work. But i dont know what.
Perhpas it maybe the sequence of doing the steps, perhaps something different.

I hope somebody has did an lookalike "thing" before, so that she/he can give me an advise.

Thank you!

 

Well good luck, since there is no way to HIDE a partition, only a drive I don't see how this can be accomplished. If support can help you do this, I'd be very interested in knowing how, as it did not work for me. You can only have a total of 4 PRIMARY partitions on your machine, the rest have to be logical drives, how many do you have? You might have to change the status of your backup partitions from Primary partitions to logical to make room maybe? Let us know.

Thanks!

 

Hello pjiv,

i konw that there are only 4 primary partitions allowed. So the backuppartition is a logical partition.

Well as i describe in my post: It works with a bottom up installtion of winxp. The only problem is with an cloned/imaged winxp.

I will test this evening to install winxp bottom up in the third partiotion, that i so called music. I think this also will work. Then i have not only two working winxp on one harddisk but three winxp on one harddisk.

But that is not my target. My target is to get a second or third partition of cloned/imaged winxp working.

Perhaps somebody has done it allready before and can post his experince.

 

Hello,

so last evening i installed the third installation of WinXP on my first drive.

This meens that i have 3 primary partiotions on my first drive with 3 WinXP installations (bootom up installations) on it. They all worked fine.

That meens to me, that there is no problem with 3 WinXP installations on one (1st) HD but the problem is to create one or two of this WinXP installations by cloning/imaging.

So i hope again, that someone could give me a helping hint.

 

Hello rpruefer,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Software.

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.

Please prepare your Windows operating system using Microsoft System Preparation Tool (sysprep) as it is described in this FAQ article before creating an image of it.

After that please restore the image into desired location and try to boot as usual.

If this does not help then please create Acronis Report and Windows System Information as it is described in Acronis Help Post and submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files and information to your request along with the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with the solution.

Thank you.
--
Kirill Omelchenko

 

Hello Mr. Omelchenko,

thank you for your response.

I know the sysprep tool quite well, because i used True Image and sysprep in a small office situation, where they have 4 PC's an 4 True Image licence, to create a Master PC and to clone this. This works very well.

They / I also use True Image to backup everything, especialy the system partition. That also works very well (even a restore of the system partition).

So let me ask you one additional question:
I install my 1st partition by a plain install of WinXP. The 2nd and 3rd WinXP partition by imaging/cloning with True Image and sysprep.
After that, i will make a backup of a partition with True Image (of course without using sysprep, because i only want to make a backup because of security reasons).
Will i be able to restore this backup to the same partition?

For example:
- 2nd partition with WinXP working.
- Backup second partition with True Image.
- 2nd partition WinXP damaged
- Restore of the image of the 2nd partition WinXP to the second partition

If this is not possible, then, in my point of view, i am not be able to use True Image for System Backup when i am using OS Selector.

Thanks in advanced,
R.Prüfer

 

Hello Mr. Prüfer,

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.

Yes, everything you have described is possible. You will be able to create an image of your second partition, and restore this image to the same partition when it is needed. Acronis OS Selector will not be affected in any way during this process.

Thank you.
--
Kirill Omelchenko

 

Hello Mr. Omelchenko,

thanks for your response.

R.Prüfer