Help on cloning OS & Apps from Disk 0 to Disk 1

Using Vista x64. Plan on using True Image '09 to clone OS & Applications partitions C:, D: from Disk 0 to Disk 1.

Of course, before booting to the new cloned OS, have to set it active & old one hidden. Windows will assign C: to new active boot partition. Not sure about others.

Question is about the drive letters of the other several partitions on BOTH HDDs. Maybe my questions should be about switching HDD cables or changing BIOS settings?

1) Right now on disk 0, have C: thru L:
On disk 1, have partitions M: - P:. Some / all of those could be moved to disk 0, at some point during whole process.

Don't have to move all those partitions & data from disk 0 to disk 1 & not too concerned about the assigned drive letters of any except the OS & Applications.

2) After creating blank, formatted partitions in front of M:, if also cloned D: (& maybe E:, F: from disk 0 to 1, how would Vista treat the cloned drive letters on disk 1 (& others already on disk 1 - M: thru P:)?

3) Since current disk 1 will become booting disk, is there any reason or necessary to switch disks 1 & 2 HDD cables on mobo?

Thanks.

 

Cloning multiple partitions (drive letters) can be a tricky process. I don't have an answer to all your questions; however I'll try to offer a few bits of advice:

Obviously, the new physical drive should be the same raw capacity as the original drive. If the new drive is a larger capacity you may have to make one or more of the cloned partitions larger (see next paragraph).

Although some programs will "automatically" set sector sizes, I prefer to do it manually if a program allows it. My experience has been that, if the new sector is preset to the same file format and exact size of the original sector, it reduces the chance of glitches in the clone (especially for boot sectors).

If you have not purchased the cloning software yet, check reviews on sites like Newegg and ZDnet. You may find specific user experiences (good or bad) on what you're going to be doing. Once you have the software, read the instructions carefully. If you're unsure, I would send this question directly to the tech support e-mail for the specific software you're using.

As for the cables, are the drives IDE or SATA?

If IDE (80-pin), you'll likely need to set the cables so the original drive is "primary" and the cloned drive is "secondary" plus possibly set the BIOS options for the drive you want to boot from. If SATA, the cables don't matter: The only thing you'll need to do is set the preferred boot drive in the BIOS setup and (if using a multiple OS boot option) possibly your multi-boot software.

Finally, based on your post, I am assuming you are making a one-time clone in case the first drive dies and not using the "cloned" drive for backup. If this is the case, I would test the cloned drive then disconnect it. In the event of a malware attack or your power supply freaking out and zapping the PC, this will protect the cloned drive from possible damage. This will also eliminate the boot setup issues.

Hope this info. helps.

 

Just out of curiosity, why so many partitions?

 

Thanks for replies. Sorry for delay. I still don't get instant email notifications, tho my settings are to get them. I've asked about this before.

Is there a mod or Help dept or webmaster to contact for forum technical issues? Don't find one. Thanks.

Well, the cloning went fair. Yes, I've got 2 SATA HDDs.
Wasn't using as a BU - was switching OS & apps to another, faster disk.

In past cloning, I used Partition Magic 8, when still worked on XP & was doing dual boot. This time I used Ac. Disk Dir 11. I'll have to say, Partition Magic did a whole lot better job. ADD 11 did it, but (as I was concerned ) did some very strange things w/ drive letters that will have to be fixed manually.

Didn't even come close to putting drive letters in order (physically) on target disk.

It also didn't clone the entire disk, even thou selected entire disk (no, didn't make a mistake). It left out an OEM recovery partition, though I can move that partition around using just Explorer, so it should have cloned it.

It also wrote some data from one partition on disk 1 into another of same name (but on another disk). One volume label was all upper case - one all lower. It should have wiped all existing data on target disk before the clone, but didn't. Wound up w/ both of those partitions on target disk. Each orig had diff info, but ADD "cloned" some of same info into both, instead of del all data on target disk, as said it would.

I have a lot of partitions because put a lot of diff stuff in them. Makes it easier to BU, defrag them, wipe them, del them w/o affecting other apps that might use folders from a drive, etc. I'm an undercover operative & have to wipe a lot of data. Damn...wasn't supposed to say that. Well, cat's out of the bag, now.

 

If you haven't already done so, take a few minutes to try out the cloned drives to be sure everything copied correctly (or, to save time, put the new cloned drives in and keep the originals as the "backup" clones).

My experience is not to trust Acronis' "verify data" feature. Although it may have improved over the years, I got burned on this with a DVD system backup using an older version of Acronis True Image.