Safest Way to Clone Windows 7 Volume for Dual Booting

[Night Hawk]

Haven't heard anything yet! As far the bios setting knowing the make and model board for that model might help if found listed at the board manufacturer's site. Typically you can switch the drive modes to ide if the Raid option was enabled by default.

That may result in other problems however with the preinstall as it can with a custom clean install with your own 7 dvd. After the initial install of 7 on this build set at Native ide the switch to AHCI saw a few until returning back to the ide mode.

As far as calling up the boot device menu that was found much easier with Asus boards over other companies and as was seen on the new Gigabyte board now in use here you won't need a PS/2 keyboard or adapter to see the menu come right up.

When going to upgrade into a custom build you may want to look over the user manual closely at the manufacturer's site before ordering to see what that show for the section on the bios in the pdf download. That will point out the various settings seen for drive modes as well as other things.

As for seeing a dual boot where you edit the BCD with a clone or restored image using the system image option in 7 that will see the imaged drive made the only OS canceling out the first drive! I ended imaging the first with Acronis and then adding a new entry to get a dual boot between original and image to work.

That was all experimental when tried however. The restored image in the early tries however saw both drives as stand alones for use of the F12 option to select until making the mistake of adding in the new entry.

 

[GeneO]

That is basically what I did with trueimage sector clone and add a new entry in the BCD.

Did you try restore points on them? Everything is fine AFAIK except the shadow copies and restores linked together.

 

[Night Hawk]

At first I tried out the clone option found in the WD freebie version and tried to add that in and saw the clone boot but was able to load the default in safe mode to remove the second drive's entry. That was test #1 with the obvious results having seen a working clone but refused to allow the first drive's normal install to load normally by default.

The next test saw the system image created with the CP>Backup & Restore method which grabs the drive signature and duplicated "everything" including one element still unidentified that made the host drive unusable! Fortunately a full image had already been made ahead of time and had to be used!

The final attempt saw an image of the first with True Image and was restored to the second before adding the new entry in for that. Surprize! was the pleasant relief when the host HD didn't require a second restoration.

This is also points out the need for a "disaster recovery plan" whenever going to try something like this out. When adding a new drive in a clean install and restoration with the Windows Easy Tranfer tool once everything is installed fresh cleans up the lingering items left behind. Once everything is set a full image is still advised using the build in option found in 7 for any emergencies!

Fortunately I am able to recover everything in the event both OS drives end up being trashed by having those other backup drives storing a few images as well as the usual storage and backups and note "just in case of...?"!

 

[gregrocker]

Sorry if I missed it but were you given an option to change the drive letter while cloning?

What if drives have separate letters and are booted via BIOS?

 

[GeneO]

The drive letters came out right for me, no need to change them while (sector by sector) cloning.
Disk 1(booted system) C: Disk 2 E:
Disk 1(E Disk 2(booted system) C:

 

[gregrocker]

Ok just wanted to see if they were the same or different. Different makes no difference, looks like.

 

[Night Hawk]

When using the clone option in the Acronis Disk Director that lists drives by make and model not by any logical drive letter. That's the one thing you have to keep in mind if you have more then two drives installed to start with.

You have to know which is Drive 1, 2, or 3 since Drive 1 may not be the first drive but the first on a second channel such as the Sata III drives here are on channels 4 and 5 but are seen as Disk 0 or 1 in the DM while being Drive 1 and 2 or 4 and 5 in a 3rd party app. I almost batch things up a few times on the new build here due to running into this one! greg

 

[mjf]

The drive letters came out right for me, no need to change them while (sector by sector) cloning.
Disk 1(booted system) C: Disk 2 E:
Disk 1(E Disk 2(booted system) C:

What specific changes did you make to the BCD store?

I tried this exercise some time ago.
2 1TB sata HDD with same image. Both working the same when independently plugged into 1st sata port (disk 0).
Connected one to sata port 1, one to (esata) port 3. Bios boot from port 3 ok then port 0 disk appeared to take over reporting OS errors. Both disks needed reimaging afterwards!

Of course BIOS only knows physical devices and it isn't until you hit the OS (presumably at bootmanager stage?) that logical drive letters mean anything.
I made no BCD changes and expected the same result as what I think GeneO is talking about.

There appears to be no problem with a BIOS directed boot with 2 different OSs. If you have to change the BCD is it really just a BIOS directed boot anyway?

 

[Night Hawk]

The BCD store on any Vista or 7 machine is the actual boot configuration for the one or more OSs installed unless opting to add on another type of boot loader as with Windows/Linux or other OSs involved. A program like EasyBCD is the graphical gui type BCD editing program that will see drive letters used there while behind the scenes the BCD store itself is still looking hardware.

Note even when looking in the boot.ini file for XP you will see the same reference to device not logical drive letter there seeing the typical "rdisk(0 or 1 or 2)partition 1 or 2 or 3 or 4" depending on how many drives and partitions are present as far as which drive and primary the older version was installed onto.

As for selecting a drive or device when pressing the designated F key to bring up a boot device menu you will see the drive models under the particular catagory of drive or device selected being shown there. If you have two hard drives one WD and a Seagate you see WD model number or Seagate model number as the two options not whether they are C, D, E, F, etc..

 

[mjf]

The BCD store on any Vista or 7 machine is the actual boot configuration for the one or more OSs installed unless opting to add on another type of boot loader as with Windows/Linux or other OSs involved. A program like EasyBCD is the graphical gui type BCD editing program that will see drive letters used there while behind the scenes the BCD store itself is still looking hardware.

Note even when looking in the boot.ini file for XP you will see the same reference to device not logical drive letter there seeing the typical "rdisk(0 or 1 or 2)partition 1 or 2 or 3 or 4" depending on how many drives and partitions are present as far as which drive and primary the older version was installed onto.

As for selecting a drive or device when pressing the designated F key to bring up a boot device menu you will see the drive models under the particular catagory of drive or device selected being shown there. If you have two hard drives one WD and a Seagate you see WD model number or Seagate model number as the two options not whether they are C, D, E, F, etc..

Is this an attempt at humor?

 

[Night Hawk]

The BCD store on any Vista or 7 machine is the actual boot configuration for the one or more OSs installed unless opting to add on another type of boot loader as with Windows/Linux or other OSs involved. A program like EasyBCD is the graphical gui type BCD editing program that will see drive letters used there while behind the scenes the BCD store itself is still looking hardware.

Note even when looking in the boot.ini file for XP you will see the same reference to device not logical drive letter there seeing the typical "rdisk(0 or 1 or 2)partition 1 or 2 or 3 or 4" depending on how many drives and partitions are present as far as which drive and primary the older version was installed onto.

As for selecting a drive or device when pressing the designated F key to bring up a boot device menu you will see the drive models under the particular catagory of drive or device selected being shown there. If you have two hard drives one WD and a Seagate you see WD model number or Seagate model number as the two options not whether they are C, D, E, F, etc..

Is this an attempt at humor?

First you have to know the difference between bios, mbr, and boot loader being three totally different things to start with. The bios looks for the mbr on whichever drive it comes to first that has entries present or you end up only seeing a small dash blinking on the upper left corner of the screen not having found any OS.

From there the mbr points to the boot loader and the entries in that for the drive and partition as well as the OS installed. It's when you first get into a BCD edit you start seeing "C:" or any other drive letter while in a command prompt. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2676-bcdedit-how-use.html

Note this is also the case when booted live from a 7 install dvd or repair cd made up since you are still using the software method.

 

[mjf]

Night Hawk

It is humor!!! I tried to explain this to you a few days ago - post 65

What's on that 100MB partition? Can I delete it? (

1 2 3 ... Last Page)

"POST 65"
Hopefully the full Picture I'm confident that what I said earlier is correct except I left out one element of the picture and that is the Partition Boot Record which I believe is the first 16 sectors of the active partition. So the MBR passes control to the PBR which loads the boot manager on it's partition and so on.
So the boot sequence is:

BIOS --> MBR (inc partition table) at start of disk --> [ PBR (at start of active partition) --> Boot Manager (Using BCD) ] --> C:\windows\system32\winload.exe

[....] Key elements of 100MB system reserved for booting

Again here is the Hex of the MBR and the Hex of the first part of the PBR.
To get the PBR Hex I mounted a macrium image of the 100MB system reserved and opened it with a Hex editor.

Attached Thumbnails

 

[gregrocker]

Can I borrow your hex editor for Halloween? :devil2:

 

[Night Hawk]

I wonder if you can set that up in a dual boot?! :roflmao:

 

[mjf]

I wonder if you can set that up in a dual boot?! :roflmao:

If only you could keep your confused, ramblings as brief as this one.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

I wonder if you can set that up in a dual boot?! :roflmao:

If only you could keep your confused, ramblings as brief as this one.

:roflmao:
​

 

[Night Hawk]

Hey Trailerman I hope you're still with us! This went way offtrack here! :roflmao:
We're still waiting to hear how you made out.

 

[Trailerman]

Sorry guys - was away for a few days.

The more I read, the more terrified I become about trying this at all - once bitten twice shy I guess.

I don't mind using a BIOS switch to choose boot drive (the system in question is a Dell - so F12), but I don't have clean drives to work with. Because I'm now booting using a clone (on an otherwise clean drive) of an original which then refused to boot, I somehow need to try and find a way to reclone my clone back over my currupted original, which shares a drive with 2 other partitions (both of which I need to keep).

I do also have a 3rd drive in the system, which I can use to create a backup image to restore from, but I'm concerned about some suggestions that the only safe way to do this is to clone onto a clean (and preferably identical) drive.

I will try and wade through the extensive set of posts above and hope I've understood everything before I embark.

Jules

 

[gregrocker]

Plug back in the source HD alone, set as first HD to boot in BIOS. If it won't start any longer, then boot the Win7 DVD Repair console or Repair CD, click through to Recovery Tools list to run Startup Repair up to 3 separate times with reboots until Win7 starts. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105541-startup-repair-run-3-separate-times.html

If it fails, make sure Win7 partition is marked Active and run Startup Repair again x3: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/71432-partition-mark-active.html

Once it starts, you can plug the other HD's back in, set the preferred one as first HD to boot, then boot the other one using one-time BIOS boot menu key given on first screen, in setup literature, or in your Manual which can be read on the Support Downloads webpage for your computer or mobo.

 

[GeneO]

Here is a link I found useful. The did not do advice for a generalized BCD before cloning, but did afterward and it does work.

Multibooters, Vista Dual and Multibooting - Cloning Vista

I also wonder if having a separate system and boot partition make a difference (i.e. installing windows 7 on an existing partition where boot and system are the same vs. reformatting and letting windows 7 install create a separate 100MB system partition and boot partition). I have the system=boot.

- Gene