The very ugly drive letter picture is exactly why I named my hard drives. Drive 0 is main boot drive and has only the one primary partition. Drive 1 has a primary partition plus two logical drives. Windows Explorer displays the volume name so my picture looks like this: (Bootable physical drives are named after the desktop wallpaper) (C:, D:, E:, G:, H:, and I: are hard drives or logical drives) Win XP Pro Waterlillies (C:) Win XP Pro Stonehenge (D:) 20 GB Hard Drive (E:) USB Drive (F:) Stonehenge 2 (G:) Stonehenge 3 (H:) External Maxtor (I:) DVD Drive (J:) DVD-RW Drive (K:) ----- Original Message ----- From: "GMan" <gman.pctt@xxxxxxxxx> To: <pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Friday, February 22, 2008 1:12 AM Subject: -=PCTechTalk=- Re: GMan -----Question about creating a Acronis image > Hi Roger, > A clone is an exact duplicate of a storage volume (a full unpartitioned > hard drive or a single partition from a multiple partitioned drive). If > you > clone a bootable volume onto another drive, that new partition clone will > also be bootable. So yes, you will be able to pull out the original > drive, > replace it with the cloned drive and get right back to computing as though > nothing happened. You should also be able to enter the BIOS and set the > external as your primary boot device and get the same end result. > > Assuming you use the same type of hard drive for both (SATA, PATA, > SCSI, > RAID), the only sticking point is that you'll have to make sure that the > second drive is jumpered the same way as the original (Master/Slave/Cable > Select). This does not mean that you cannot clone a PATA drive onto a > SATA > drive, but if you do something like that, you'll still have to go into the > BIOS of the system and make sure that the cloned drive is set up as the > primary boot volume, just like the original one was. > > > Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that volume letters > are > assigned by Windows in such a way that you might run into trouble if you > were to attempt to run both drives at the same time. Allow me to explain. > > Let's assume that we have two drives sporting 3 partitions each. > Drive0 > has partitions 1, 2 & 3, while Drive1 has 4, 5 & 6. Either drive would > show > up under Windows using drive letters C, D & E if it was installed by > itself, > but what happens if they are both installed in the same system? Well, > that > depends. I strongly suggest that you strap yourself in for the following > ride. > > > First of all, there are different types of partitions that can be > created. The very first on a given harddrive will normally be a Primary > partition. Up to 4 Primary partitions can exist on any given harddrive > (or > RAID array, but that's beyond the scope of this writing), but none are > necessary if the drive will not be used for an OS. If chosen, the person > can then create an Extended partition which isn't an actual volume. An > Extended partition is more of a container that is designed to store > Logical > drives. Once each partition is formatted, Primary and Logical drives will > assume drive letters starting with the letter C and ascending up the > alphabet in the same order in which they appear on the drive itself. > These > letter assignments can later be changed by the partitioning software, if > desired. > > A bootable drive must have at least one Primary partition set as > "Active" (also called the 'System' partition). This Active partition will > hold the boot info for all of the operating systems installed on ANY of > its > partitions. During boot, all BIOS' will look for this Active partition > when > trying to hand off control of the hardware to the OS. If no Active > partition is found, bootup will fail. Convention has convinced nearly > everyone that the very first partition on a bootable drive should be the > Active one, but that is not a strict rule. If there are 3 Primary > partitions, any of them can be set to serve "Active Duty". > > Now, here comes the fun part. In a normal setup where there is a > single > harddrive with 3 partitions, it will have an Active Primary partition > holding the operating system followed by an Extended partition that > contains > two Logical drives. That translates into 3 drive letters of C, D & E. If > the entire physical drive were cloned, you would have a second drive with > those same characteristics (and they would also want the letters C, D & > E). > If you choose to install both onto the same system at the same time, the > letters will get somewhat jumbled. Here's why. > > When it comes to drive letter assignments, all Primary partitions will > push their way to the front of the line. However, the first physical > drive > in the chain (drive0) gets first dibs. This would be followed by any > Primary partitions on drive1, then drive2, etc.. Once all of the Primary > volumes have their assigned letters, the Logical drives get their shot. > Understanding all of these definitions and subsequent rules becomes the > key > to planning your partitioning if you expect to utilize more than one > physical drive broken into separate partitions. > > Using our assumptions in paragraph 4, you would end up with the letters > C to H representing the following volumes in this order: > > C:\ - 1 > D:\ - 4 > E:\ - 2 > F:\ - 3 > G:\ - 5 > H:\ - 6 > > Now THAT'S Ugly!!! And, while my reason for explaining all this is to > help you best plan your adventure, I hope I have not further confused you > with these statements. :O) > > Peace, > G --------------------------------------------------------------- Please remember to trim your replies (including this sentence and everything below it) and adjust the subject line as necessary. To unsubscribe or change your email settings: http://www.freelists.org/webpage/pctechtalk To access our Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PCTechTalk/messages/ http://www.freelists.org/archives/pctechtalk/ To contact only the PCTT Mod Squad, write to: pctechtalk-moderators@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ---------------------------------------------------------------