Restoring Image to Different Boot Drive

I have searched to no avail for an answer to this question. I have a 200GB drive with Windows XP. I have made an image using TI8. I have a second 120GB drive I want to setup as a second boot drive for another user. Drive letters presently are:

200GB
c: NTFS OS 95GB
d: NTFS Data 80GB
e: NTFS Page 2GB
f: FAT32 Images 5GB

120GB
g: NTFS OS 63GB
h: NTFS Data 50GB
i: NTFS Page 2GB
j: FAT32 Images 5GB

My question is, can I use an image from the 200GB drive OS as the OS for the second 120GB drive and use OS Selector and have the second OS work just like the first one?

I have tried it with a Ghost 8 image and have several problems with some items not working.

Thanks in advance for the help.

Rich

 

Hello Rich,

After you've restored the image of the C: partition (200GB drive) to the G: partition (120GB drive) you may well have to carry out a "fixmbr" in order for the smaller drive to boot. If so, disconnect the 200GB drive, change your BIOS setting such that 120GB drive becomes the 1st HD (or change over the data cable with the one disconnected from the 200GB drive), boot from your Windows installation CD into the Recovery Console and run the command FixMBR. After that, reconnect the drives as they were originally and set your BIOS to boot from the drive of your choice. With luck that should work.

Regards

 

It still seems like you would have trouble with the second boot drive because of the drive letter. In other words, if you just image the C drive to your G drive, then boot to the G drive, all of the applications on the G drive still think they are on the C drive, don't they? So you try to run an app and the shortcut is pointing to C so that's where it will try to execute from, instead of from the G drive like you want it too.

Or do I misunderstand how the OS Selector works?

You might get around this by booting to the G drive then going into disk management and changing the g/h/i/j drive letters to c/d/e/f. Then when you boot to the 200gb drive it's version of XP will know that the 200gb drive is C: and when you boot to the 120gb drive it's version will know that the 120gb drive is C:. Then the apps and their associated registry settings all point to the right places.

But wow it could be confusing for you!

 

Sorry for replying so late but I had to go out of town for a few days. I think I have it resolved but the user hasn't picked up the machine yet. However from my initial checks things look like they should work.

I sort of did what you both were suggesting but I did it a different way. Before your responses I noticed the "Clone a Drive" function and I thought this might be just what I am looking for. So I followed the wizard and cloned the 200GB drive onto the 120GB drive. This in essence is the same thing that Menorcaman was talking about. The cloning caused the 120GB drive to have the same MBR as the 200GB. After cloning I set the 200GB as the master and the 120GB as the slave. OS Selector seen both operating systems so I selected the 200GB and it booted fine with C:, D:, E:, and F: drives showing. Additionally the 120GB drive showed G:, H:, I:, and J: and I could access them for storage if needed.

Next I shutdown and rebooted however this time I booted to the 120GB drive. The results were very interesting. The 120GB drive showed up as C:, D:, E:, and F:. I assume this was because the MBR and partition table were cloned from the 200GB drive. Jimmytop also made some good points that I would like to add some more information to. During some trials with the different configurations I found out that you can not change the drive letter on the boot drive from the OS. I assume that you might be able to do it with a bootable partition manager but since I didn't quite understand what I was trying to do I didn't go that route. I think he is partially correct about where a program starts and looks for data. I think that when a program starts it uses environment variables to determine locations. When I was booting to the OS on the G: drive I looked at the variables and they were pointing to the G: drive. However the program folder settings were still set to the C: and/or D: drives.

Another item is that the 200GB drive did not show any partition drives on Windows Explorer but the disk and partitions were in Disk Manager and I could assign any drive letter I wanted to them then they would show up in Explorer. I would have liked to have assigned a password to these partitons for security reasons but I don't see a way to do that. If someone could clue me in on that aspect of disk management I would appreicate it.

Thanks for the help and if this setup has any additional problems I know where I can get more help.

Rich

 

Hello Rich,

Thank you for using Acronis software (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/).

Glad to hear you could manage to do what you need.

One important addition. Please do not change the letter of the system partition because in the result your system will not boot because it will not find some system files. You will hardly fix this problem then even if you try to change the letter back.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman