-=PCTechTalk=- Re: GMan -----Question about creating a Acronis image

Good morrow GMan!  (this is an Olde Englishe form of address, which I 
hope you will condone, as it equates more with my rustic roots than "Hi")

ANOTHER book !..... I shall soon be able to start a library!

I am feeling like a gold miner, discovering a rich new vein in each 
chapter I get from you.

My equipment is fairly simple:

Drive 0 Toshiba laptop, HD nominally 40GB, partitioned C, Extended, E, F.

Drive 1 Seagate external HD, nominally 250GB partitioned G, H, I, J

for partition contents and sizes please see my msg of 13th Feb.

I shall attempt to clone C (which now includes all my OS, Files, 
Documents, Programs, Documents and settings, Applications, Emails; in 
fact absolutely EVERYTHING) across to Drive 1 (which includes 
backups,backups, and more backups. So have formatted partition I to be 
the Target.

If I then find I can boot from partition I in Drive 1, then I (myself) 
should feel comfortable in working just with Drive 1 for a while.

Initially I may just clone the OS to a Secure Zone  on partition I and 
see if it will boot.


For the remainder of your latest, I must request a few more days to 
study it, because I am embarrassed (well, not really) to admit that
BIOS, SATA,PATA,SCSI,RAID are all greek to me, and I shall have to go 
and look them up; then see what they do, how they relate to each other, 
and whether I can comprehend their functions.

I shall undertake this study in conjunction with my trialling of 
Acronis, and report progress as and when.

Again I am immensely grateful for your patience and for the  time you 
are puttting into my education.

Roger W.

On 22/02/2008 7:12 p.m., GMan wrote:
> 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
>
> http://tinyurl.com/ynlcr7
> "The only dumb questions are the ones we fail to ask!"
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "RMB White" <roguer@xxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2008 9:08 PM
> Subject: -=PCTechTalk=- Re: GMan -----Question about creating a Acronis 
> image
>
>
>   
>> I was very pleased to see your post as I am in the middle of
>> decision-making also.
>>
>> Whilst  am slowly learning to do Real backups by the longhand method
>> (with the incomparable erudition and tireless patience of GMan), I am
>> also a "belt AND braces" man and need all the options, so have been
>> researching both Acronis and Ghost (which has now evolved into version
>> 14.0).
>>
>> I found a useful Review of Acronis (www.BrightHub.com) also by PC
>> Magazine (www.pcmag.com) and waded through the Acronis Forum at
>> www.wilderssecurity.com (becoming confused, but not drowned)
>>
>> I was finally swayed in favour of Acronis by the 2008
>> (http://data-backup-software-review.toptenreviews.com)     ........
>> which gave some unhappy news about Ghost (which I had previously been in
>> favour of; because it was invented here in New Zealand).
>>
>> So I have downloaded a Free  trial of Acronis 11 Home, and hope to have
>> some time to road test it before it runs out in 15 days.
>>
>>
>> I have a question please, "When is a dual boot NOT a dual boot??"   and
>> wonder whether the answer is "When a clone of the HD puts a  mirror
>> image of your OS  on the external HD"       So, does this mean  I should
>> be able to reboot from the external??
>>
>> Any help will be much appreciated
>>
>> Roger W 
>>     
>
>
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