Is this complex cloning scenario possible?

Running WinXP with SP1. TI8.0

Is it possible to clone the C: drive to a second hard drive and leave the second drive installed as D: with the partition NOT marked active? Then I want to create a Secure Zone on the second HDD and "image" the C: drive in the secure zone. The second HDD would in effect have a double backup.

What I hope the result will be is a second HDD that can instantly replace the C: drive if it fails, by using the cloned system. But if a virus infected the cloned system on the D: partition, it would still be possible to restore to a third new HDD from the secure zone.

Is this possible using TI8?
Thanks,
Skyhawk

 

Hello Skyhawk,

Thank you for your interest in Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

Yes, you can perform the described procedure and it should work. Please use the "Disk Clone" wizard under Windows (not from Acronis bootable rescue media).

The only thing: why do you want to create a NOT Active partition on the second hard disk drive as the result of cloning procedure? After cloning you will get two completely identical HDDs (means that the partition structure will be completely the same). I just don't understand the reason why you want the second HDD without Active partition.

Thank you.

--
Andrew Berezovsky

 

Hello Andrew,
Thanks for your quick response. I thought that only one partition could be marked active at any one time.

From the TI8 user guide, appendix-A it says:
Partitioning programs perform the following:
- create a primary partition
- create an extended partition that can be split into several logical disks
- set an active partition (applied to a single primary partition only)

Also, in my "Using WinXP Professional" book it says:
10. Next, you must define the first partition as being the active partition so that the computer know from which partition it should try to boot from.

Won't WinXP get confused if both the partition on the primary master drive and a partition on the primary slave drive are both marked active?

Thanks!
Skyhawk

 

Hi Skyhawk. I for a long time had your misgivings to having 2 active drives of the same OS. I did it by mistake once and nothing bad happened. I still don’t do it on a regular basis, instead, when I have 2 active drives like described I use PM 8.0 and “hide” the second one until needed, then use PM again to unhide it.
I believe part of the reason it works is where the drive is on the cable and how it’s jumped – M/S. The end position being master is used. How cable select would work, I don’t know.

 

Hello Skyhawk,

When you set the drive to boot from in BIOS Windows won't even look at your other drive. It will try to boot from the disk you indicated. If you clone the drive under Windows there will be no problems for the operational system.

By the way, to boot from the other disk the only thing you will need to do is to change the boot sequence in your BIOS, no jumper change or something like that is needed.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Hello Ilya,

Thanks for your quick reply. I checked the boot option in the BIOS setup and see what you mean.

Funny but I never even noticed the "arrow head" on the left side of the boot drives option in the BIOS that expands to show which drive to boot from. And that is since day-1 when I bought my first IBM PC about a year after they were first sold, until now.

Thanks for opening my eyes!
Skyhawk

 

Hello Andrew or Ilya,
Oh, I think I understand something else now about making partitions active.

"If a drive has multiple partitions, then only one partition can be made active at one time. But it is OK to have one and only one active partition on every drive."

Is this correct? If yes, than I guess that is what the TI8 User Guide and the Using WinXP book were referring to regarding having only one active partition.

-----

Thought of one more question:

On a new HDD installed as the primary slave drive (D: ). What if I create a secure zone first and do an image backup to that. Will the secure zone be automatically created at the "end" of the drive? Then I do a restore from the image backup to the same drive (D: ) to end up with a clone at the front of the drive. Will this work?

What this would do would verify that my image backup in the secure zone is 100% known good.

Thanks,
Skyhawk

 

Hello Skyhawk,

Yes, it's right. You may have an active partition on every disk (not partition) in your system.

Acronis Secure Zone is always created in the end of the disk. You cannot restore the image of the disk to the disk that contains the image file even if this file is stored in Acronis Secure Zone.

You may verify images stored in Acronis Secure Zone by launching the "Check Image" tool and choosing Acronis Secure Zone as the image location. Acronis True Image will find images itself and ask you which of them you want to check (if there are more than one).

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Well thanks for the great support! You save me a lot of time from trying to restore a secure zone image to the same drive. OK, will do the drive clone first and then do the secure zone image backup second.

Thanks again,
Skyhawk

 

I assume I can't be the only one reading this who thought this, but in case Mr Skyhawk is unaware of this;
Windows XP supports Mirrored drives. IE: You should be able to convert to Dynamic disks (which is annoying, esp as you didn't need to in NT4) and tell Windows you want two copies of the one partition. When One disk fails, the other immediately takes over.
The windows FileSystem writes to both disks at the same time, so both images are always the same, both are bootable, and 100% up-to-date. The bonus side being that read speeds are (almost) doubled as both drives can read synchronously.
The two partitions need to be on two different physical drives. (it's a bit pointless on one, because you're mainly protecting vs physical failure)
However, you'd need to then get the server True Image to backup to external devices, but that's worth the extra security. (IMHO) Plus you get the ability to backup to tape drives and so forth.