Bootable copy of XP partition.
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From: Bob Taylor on 22 Jun 2010 09:14 Regards to All, Win XP SP2 I have two hard drives, each partitioned. The first drive has the XP partition (C) and a partition (E) with all my data. One partition on my second drive (D) has backup and archive files. The others are unused. I want to make a bootable copy of my c drive onto the first (unused) partition of the second drive without destroying the archive and backup partition (D). What program can do this? Acronis cannot do this and I have been assured that EASEUS Data Backup & Recovery cannot do it either. (Both of these want to destroy the whole drive) I used to do this regularly with Win 98 using PowerQuest Partition Magic, but this was bought by Norton and is no longer available which is a shame because it was a very good program. I still have a copy of the old Partition Magic, but it will not copy a XP boot partition. Thanks for your attention to my problem, Bob Taylor philologos at mindspring dot com
From: Paul on 22 Jun 2010 10:14 Bob Taylor wrote: > Regards to All, > > Win XP SP2 > > I have two hard drives, each partitioned. The first drive has the XP > partition (C) and a partition (E) with all my data. One partition on my > second drive (D) has backup and archive files. The others are unused. > > I want to make a bootable copy of my c drive onto the first (unused) > partition of the second drive without destroying the archive and backup > partition (D). > > What program can do this? > > Acronis cannot do this and I have been assured that EASEUS Data Backup > & Recovery cannot do it either. (Both of these want to destroy the > whole drive) > > I used to do this regularly with Win 98 using PowerQuest Partition > Magic, but this was bought by Norton and is no longer available which is > a shame because it was a very good program. I still have a copy of the > old Partition Magic, but it will not copy a XP boot partition. > > Thanks for your attention to my problem, > Bob Taylor > philologos at mindspring dot com There is a list here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_disk_partitioning_software Easeus Partition Master comes in a free version. No idea what feature set. GParted (comes with its own bootable Linux OS on CD) is also free. I have a copy, gave it a quick test, but the program makes me nervous, due to presenting status messages for operations that make no sense with respect to the currently requested operation. Like Partition Magic, it has the notion of queuing up operations until you click an Apply button. But what bothered me, is it was printing things on the screen as component operations, that seemed to have nothing to do with what I wanted done. (I.e. If you were moving a partition, you wouldn't expect to see "resizing your partition" in the status window. That pisses me off. When something as risky as partition meddling is being done, I don't need surprises.) I suppose, depending on the brand of disk drive you've got, you could download a tool from a disk drive manufacturer. But such a freebie, may have restrictions on what operations it supports. If you're going with a freebie, I recommend doing a backup first. All partitioning tools, even Partition Magic, have had "accidents". If you don't have backups on yet another disk, then you're taking a risk. I use Partition Magic 7 here, for some of these operations. But it still has some restrictions. I think there was some kind of size restriction I ran into, along the way. And when I had PM7 make an EXT2 partition for me, it formatted it in less than an optimal way. When I tried to create a large file (a lot bigger than 4GB) on my new EXT2 partition, the operation failed due to the way PM7 had prepared the partition. Using the appropriate Linux tool to format it, fixed it. So PM7 still has rough edges, but if I need to do resizing or moving, I still trust it to not screw up. I also has the odd issue with the MBR, like PM7 complains about what some other tool has done to the MBR. And on one occasion, it stored the partition entries in non-ascending order in the MBR. Meaning, the third partition entry in the MBR contained the second partition, and the second partition entry carried the third partition. This doesn't hurt anything, except your brain when looking at things like Disk Management, and trying to figure out what is what :-) Paul
From: smlunatick on 22 Jun 2010 10:22 On Jun 22, 2:14 pm, Bob Taylor <nos...(a)nospam.com> wrote: > Regards to All, > > Win XP SP2 > > I have two hard drives, each partitioned. The first drive has the XP > partition (C) and a partition (E) with all my data. One partition on > my second drive (D) has backup and archive files. The others are unused. > > I want to make a bootable copy of my c drive onto the first (unused) > partition of the second drive without destroying the archive and > backup partition (D). > > What program can do this? > > Acronis cannot do this and I have been assured that EASEUS Data > Backup & Recovery cannot do it either. (Both of these want to destroy > the whole drive) > > I used to do this regularly with Win 98 using PowerQuest Partition > Magic, but this was bought by Norton and is no longer available which > is a shame because it was a very good program. I still have a copy of > the old Partition Magic, but it will not copy a XP boot partition. > > Thanks for your attention to my problem, > Bob Taylor > philologos at mindspring dot com Partition Magic was the reference tool on partition cloning. PM7 was very nice in a "text console" style. PM8 was a great improvement with the GUI screens. However, the action queueing was very "nerve racking" since all actions were then processed in a pre-boot environment.
From: Bob Taylor on 22 Jun 2010 10:42 Paul wrote: > > Easeus Partition Master comes in a free version. No idea what feature set. > As I mentioned, this will not creat a bootable partition. I have been assured by the support people that they cannot guarantee the copy will be bootable. One can google and finds dozens, maybe hundreds, of programs which will copy disks, but which one will do what I want, make a bootable xp partition without reformating the entire target disk? I came to this newsgroup hoping you would know what google doesn't. > If you're going with a freebie, I recommend doing a backup > first. All partitioning tools, even Partition Magic, have Pardon me! A bootable copy IS a backup. That's the point. > I use Partition Magic 7 here, for some of these operations. As I mentioned, Partition Magic is no longer available. Again, I have been so assured by support personel. I had the option of buying a newer version of Partition Magic a few years ago and I much regret not doing so. Thanks for your input. Bob Taylor
From: dadiOH on 22 Jun 2010 11:35
Bob Taylor wrote: > Paul wrote: >> >> Easeus Partition Master comes in a free version. No idea what >> feature set. > As I mentioned, this will not creat a bootable partition. I have been > assured by the support people that they cannot guarantee the copy will > be bootable. > > One can google and finds dozens, maybe hundreds, of programs which > will copy disks, but which one will do what I want, make a bootable xp > partition without reformating the entire target disk? The simplest thing is to just install another (minimal) XP to the partition. Doing so will create a boot menu from which you can boot should the need/desire arise. To avoid confusion, you could rename the new XP install to something like "XP - Basic" in the boot menu. Alterntively, you can copy the existing XP and make a bootable CD. You might also want to check out Paragon Hard Drive Manager, it will clone one HD or partition to another. The same is true of the programs distributed along with HDs by manufacturers. http://www.paragon-software.com/home/hdm-personal/features.html -- dadiOH ____________________________ dadiOH's dandies v3.06... ....a help file of info about MP3s, recording from LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that. Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico |