Need to Clone Laptop HDD

[Guest Patrick Keenan]

Re: Need to Clone Laptop HDD

 

 

"Kerneldebugger" <krnldebuggr@anonrem.gov> wrote in message

news:eIhywAGHJHA.456@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...

>

> "Big_Al" <BigAl@md.com> wrote in message

> news:ejg7Qn$GJHA.4408@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...

>> Daave wrote:

>>> "Kerneldebugger" <krnldebuggr@anonrem.gov> wrote in message

>>> news:uVp7v8sGJHA.4600@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...

>>>> I just tried the free trial version of Acronis, and it wouldn't allow

>>>> me to clone a C partition of 15 GB to a blank USB HDD of 80 GB.

>>>> I want something like Drive Image 2002 wherein I can select any

>>>> partition on on HDD and clone it to another HDD (but not one on a

>>>> USB port). Also, it requires a floppy drive. I want to clone a

>>>> primary

>>>> partition of about 80 GB to a USB drive of 80 GB by booting to a CD

>>>> that has the cloning program.

>>>

>>> My understanding is that Acronis will allow you to clone the entire hard

>>> drive, but not just one partition. I believe Casper XP can do what you

>>> are describing.

>>>

>>> But why not make an image of your C: partiton? Granted, it's another

>>> step to restore this image to your USB external hard drive, but it will

>>> work in a pinch.

>> Acronis will do partitions of a drive.

>

> Will Home version 11 do that?

 

Yes, and the only difference between the paid and trial versions is the time

limitation.

 

-pk

[Guest Daave]

Re: Need to Clone Laptop HDD

 

Patrick Keenan wrote:

> "Daave" <dcwashNOSPAM@myrealboxXYZ.invalid> wrote in message

> news:OVZYOh$GJHA.4564@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...

>> "Kerneldebugger" <krnldebuggr@anonrem.gov> wrote in message

>> news:uVp7v8sGJHA.4600@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...

>>> I just tried the free trial version of Acronis, and it wouldn't

>>> allow me to clone a C partition of 15 GB to a blank USB HDD of 80

>>> GB. I want something like Drive Image 2002 wherein I can select any

>>> partition on on HDD and clone it to another HDD (but not one on a

>>> USB port). Also, it requires a floppy drive. I want to clone a

>>> primary partition of about 80 GB to a USB drive of 80 GB by booting

>>> to a CD that has the cloning program.

>>

>> My understanding is that Acronis will allow you to clone the entire

>> hard drive, but not just one partition.

>

> TrueImage can absolutely do this.

 

I have ATI Home 9.0. Although it lets me resize the partitions during

the cloning of an entire hard drive, I'm pretty sure there's no way to

select just *one* of the partitions to clone (of course it's possible to

*image* a partition in ATI Home, but OP specifically asked about

cloning). Googling confirms this (even in Version 11). (And according to

OP, Acronis themselves confirmed this!) If you are able to point me to

information to the contrary, I certainly welcome it. I would imagine

more expensive versions of Acronis (Workstation or Enterprise) have this

capability. Or if I am wrong or if there is a tweak or hack to make this

work, I would certainly like to know about it.

 

To Galen, the key word is *not* trial. As Patrick pointed out, other

than the time limitation, there is no difference at all between the paid

and trial version.

[Guest Ken Blake, MVP]

Re: Need to Clone Laptop HDD

 

On Tue, 23 Sep 2008 17:47:37 -0400, "Daave"

<dcwashNOSPAM@myrealboxXYZ.invalid> wrote:

 

> >> My understanding is that Acronis will allow you to clone the entire

> >> hard drive, but not just one partition.

> >

> > TrueImage can absolutely do this.

>

> I have ATI Home 9.0.

 

 

May I make a suggestion to you and the others who are using the

abbreviation "ATI" to mean Acronis True Image?

 

Please do not use "ATI" for this purpose. The abbreviation "ATI" is a

well established one for the company that manufacturers such things as

video cards, etc. If you use it for something else, as you did here,

you run the severe risk of confusing the readers.

 

 

--

Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP - Windows Desktop Experience

Please Reply to the Newsgroup

[Guest Daave]

Re: Need to Clone Laptop HDD

 

Kerneldebugger wrote:

> You are correct Daave. I contacted Acronis and they confirmed that

> Acronis Home 11 will not clone a partition, only the complete drive.

> Bummer, eh?

 

Not necessarily a bummer. It depends on your needs. Ordinarily, the

purpose of cloning is to wind up with a bootable copy of a hard drive.

Otherwise, you might as well make an image. And Acronis will certainly

allow you to make an image of a partition.

[Guest Timothy Daniels]

Re: Need to Clone Laptop HDD

 

"Galen Somerville" wrote:

>

> "Big_Al" wrote:

>> Kerneldebugger wrote:

>>> You are correct Daave. I contacted Acronis and they confirmed that Acronis

>>> Home 11 will not clone a partition, only the complete drive. Bummer, eh?

>>> Drive Image 2002 was so sweet, copying each partition as you choose, in

>>> Caldera DOS, and copying at 2,100 MB/Min.

>>>

>>> Also, Acronis advised me that it does not clone a drive in DOS. And, that

>>> they do not recommend cloning to an external USB drive because of the

>>> possibility of boot problems. Woe is me.

>>>

>>> Thanks to everyone for their replies.

>>>

>>>

>>> "Daave" <dcwashNOSPAM@myrealboxXYZ.invalid> wrote in message

>>> news:uFAS1nHHJHA.4272@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...

>>>> "Big_Al" <BigAl@md.com> wrote in message

>>>> news:ejg7Qn$GJHA.4408@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...

>>>>> Daave wrote:

>>>>>> "Kerneldebugger" <krnldebuggr@anonrem.gov> wrote in message

>>>>>> news:uVp7v8sGJHA.4600@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...

>>>>>>> I just tried the free trial version of Acronis, and it wouldn't allow

>>>>>>> me to clone a C partition of 15 GB to a blank USB HDD of 80 GB.

>>>>>>> I want something like Drive Image 2002 wherein I can select any

>>>>>>> partition on on HDD and clone it to another HDD (but not one on a

>>>>>>> USB port). Also, it requires a floppy drive. I want to clone a primary

>>>>>>> partition of about 80 GB to a USB drive of 80 GB by booting to a CD

>>>>>>> that has the cloning program.

>>>>>> My understanding is that Acronis will allow you to clone the entire hard

>>>>>> drive, but not just one partition. I believe Casper XP can do what you

>>>>>> are describing.

>>>>>>

>>>>>> But why not make an image of your C: partiton? Granted, it's another step

>>>>>> to restore this image to your USB external hard drive, but it will work

>>>>>> in a pinch.

>>>>> Acronis will do partitions of a drive.

>>>> I have ATI Home 9.0. Although it lets me resize the partitions during the

>>>> cloning of an entire hard drive, I'm pretty sure there's no way to select

>>>> just *one* of the partitions to clone. Googling confirms this (even in

>>>> Version 11). If you are able to point me to information to the contrary, I

>>>> certainly welcome it. I would imagine more expensive versions of Acronis

>>>> (Workstation or Enterprise) have this capability. Or if I am wrong or if

>>>> there is a tweak or hack to make this work, I would certainly like to know

>>>> about it.

>>>>

>>>

>>>

>> I think the issue is the word Clone. I do an image backup of just a

>> partition and have no issue. But clone, no, I have not done it this way.

>> Just one time I "cloned" the entire 2 partition drive.

>> But on the other side of the coin, can you create an image of one partition,

>> then just restore that image to a newly create partition of the right size?

>> Granted you have to do the partition manually.

>

> I think the real clue is, the OP was using a "Trial" copy. It doesn't have all

> the features of a purchased copy.

>

> Galen

 

 

A clone of a single partition can be made with True Image by

making an image file of a single partition and then "restoring" it to

another hard drive - but it involves 2 steps and the use of an

intermediary medium. Casper and Ghost, on the other hand, *can*

make single-partition clones. With Casper, there is a downloadable

trial version that it only limited in that the clone must be of the same

size as the original (the full version does not have that limitation).

 

*TimDaniels*

[Guest Timothy Daniels]

Re: Need to Clone Laptop HDD

 

"Galen Somerville" wrote:

> I think the real clue is, the OP was using a "Trial" copy. It doesn't have all

> the features of a purchased copy.

>

> Galen

 

The only limitation mentioned for the trial copy of True Image is

that it only works for 15 days.

 

*TimDaniels*

[Guest Timothy Daniels]

Re: Need to Clone Laptop HDD

 

"Daave" wrote:

> Kerneldebugger wrote:

>> You are correct Daave. I contacted Acronis and they confirmed that

>> Acronis Home 11 will not clone a partition, only the complete drive. Bummer,

>> eh?

>

> Not necessarily a bummer. It depends on your needs. Ordinarily, the purpose of

> cloning is to wind up with a bootable copy of a hard drive. Otherwise, you

> might as well make an image. And Acronis will certainly allow you to make an

> image of a partition.

 

I don't think my purposes are much different from other users

of cloning utilities, and my purpose is to make a bootable *partition*,

i.e. a bootable operating system. I keep several clones of my

Windows OSes on a single large backup hard drive, and to boot up

any one of the several clones, I merely have to either:

1) restart and reset the hard drive boot order in the BIOS and then

select the correct OS from the boot manager's menu, or

2) shutdown, toggle OFF the power to the primary hard drive, then

startup and select the correct OS from the boot manager's menu -

which will boot from the secondary (backup) hard drive.

 

There are other ways to do the equivalent, but the result is always

that a backup of a recently made clone of the entire partition can be

back up and running in one or two minutes. You can't do that with

image files - especially if they're compressed and stored on optical

media.

 

*TimDaniels*

[Guest Kenneth]

Re: Need to Clone Laptop HDD

 

On Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:58:12 -0700, "Timothy Daniels"

<NoSpam@SpamMeNot.com> wrote:

 

>> SNIP<<

 

> A clone of a single partition can be made with True Image by

>making an image file of a single partition and then "restoring" it to

>another hard drive - but it involves 2 steps and the use of an

>intermediary medium. Casper and Ghost, on the other hand, *can*

>make single-partition clones. With Casper, there is a downloadable

>trial version that it only limited in that the clone must be of the same

>size as the original (the full version does not have that limitation).

>

>*TimDaniels*

>

 

Howdy,

 

I am not up on the different flavors of TI products, but

True Image Echo will make a clone in a single pass.

 

All the best,

--

Kenneth

 

If you email... Please remove the "SPAMLESS."

[Guest Bill in Co.]

Re: Need to Clone Laptop HDD

 

Timothy Daniels wrote:

> "Daave" wrote:

>> Kerneldebugger wrote:

>>> You are correct Daave. I contacted Acronis and they confirmed that

>>> Acronis Home 11 will not clone a partition, only the complete drive.

>>> Bummer,

>>> eh?

>>

>> Not necessarily a bummer. It depends on your needs. Ordinarily, the

>> purpose

>> of cloning is to wind up with a bootable copy of a hard drive. Otherwise,

>> you

>> might as well make an image. And Acronis will certainly allow you to make

>> an

>> image of a partition.

>

> I don't think my purposes are much different from other users

> of cloning utilities, and my purpose is to make a bootable *partition*,

> i.e. a bootable operating system. I keep several clones of my

> Windows OSes on a single large backup hard drive, and to boot up

> any one of the several clones, I merely have to either:

> 1) restart and reset the hard drive boot order in the BIOS and then

> select the correct OS from the boot manager's menu, or

> 2) shutdown, toggle OFF the power to the primary hard drive, then

> startup and select the correct OS from the boot manager's menu -

> which will boot from the secondary (backup) hard drive.

>

> There are other ways to do the equivalent, but the result is always

> that a backup of a recently made clone of the entire partition can be

> back up and running in one or two minutes. You can't do that with

> image files - especially if they're compressed and stored on optical

> media.

>

> *TimDaniels*

 

True enough. But OTOH, you can't make multiple backup images (for various

dates) to be stored and called upon, as desired (well, unless you want to

have a whole bunch of new partition drive letters created on the other

drive; and they are also not compressed in size, whatsoever).

 

So unless you intend to actually swap out and replace the drive (which can

be a PIA with some external HD enclosures), there seems to be little to be

gained by going the "cloning" route, vs imaging.

[Guest Timothy Daniels]

Re: Need to Clone Laptop HDD

 

"Bill in Co." wrote:

> ...you can't make multiple backup images (for various dates) to be stored and

> called upon, as desired (well, unless

> you want to have a whole bunch of new partition drive letters

> created on the other drive; and they are also not compressed

> in size, whatsoever).

>

> So unless you intend to actually swap out and replace the drive

> (which can be a PIA with some external HD enclosures), there

> seems to be little to be gained by going the "cloning" route,

> vs imaging.

 

 

My OS partitions each take up 40GB. I can fit at least 8 of

them on a 320GB hard drive (I use Casper to clone them, and

Casper can clone a partition's data to a smaller partition if there

is room). Boot.ini can accomodate up to 10 entries, i.e. 10 OSes.

Each OS, WHEN IT IS RUNNING, calls its own partition the

"C:" drive. As long as there are no shortcuts in a partition which

reference other partitions, the renaming of drives is irrelevant.

So I just have to choose which partition to load from the boot

menu, and it loads and runs with no need at all to remove a

drive. As a matter of fact, I can have 3 hard drives in my PC

simulataneously, and I can choose to load a particular partition

from any one of them - such is the nature of ntldr and boot.ini.

To be e-x-p-l-i-c-i-t, there is no need to remove a hard drive

to cause booting from another hard drive. The BIOS or boot.ini

can take care of where the partition to load comes from - the

BIOS can control which hard drive's MBR gets control, and

the "active" flag on that hard drive controls which partition on

that hard drive will provide the boot.ini file, and boot.ini allows

selection of which hard drive and which partition on that hard

drive will be loaded. It's all very flexible, much more flexible

than most people realize. You just have to read the Microsoft

online documentation of XP to understand it. The only badly

documented feature of boot.ini is how "rdisk()" corresponds to

a partitcular hard drive, and that has been the subject of many

threads and much mythology.

 

*TimDaniels*

[Guest Bill in Co.]

Re: Need to Clone Laptop HDD

 

Timothy Daniels wrote:

> "Bill in Co." wrote:

>> ...you can't make multiple backup images (for various dates) to be stored

>> and

>> called upon, as desired (well, unless

>> you want to have a whole bunch of new partition drive letters

>> created on the other drive; and they are also not compressed

>> in size, whatsoever).

>>

>> So unless you intend to actually swap out and replace the drive

>> (which can be a PIA with some external HD enclosures), there

>> seems to be little to be gained by going the "cloning" route,

>> vs imaging.

>

>

> My OS partitions each take up 40GB. I can fit at least 8 of

> them on a 320GB hard drive (I use Casper to clone them, and

> Casper can clone a partition's data to a smaller partition if there

> is room). Boot.ini can accomodate up to 10 entries, i.e. 10 OSes.

> Each OS, WHEN IT IS RUNNING, calls its own partition the

> "C:" drive. As long as there are no shortcuts in a partition which

> reference other partitions, the renaming of drives is irrelevant.

> So I just have to choose which partition to load from the boot

> menu, and it loads and runs with no need at all to remove a drive.

 

Well, to me, this sounds like a bit of a PIA, but we have different goals,

evidently.

 

I just want (and have) ONE bootable drive (with a total of 4 primary

partitions, two created by Dell), and no boot menus to have to wade through,

and a separate backup drive to just store the backups.

 

Added to which, Dell is very finicky about the partitions on the system

drive, with its own Dell System Restore and Diagnostics hidden partitions

being present there.

 

So, I think we have different goals. My goal is to have a selection of a

some backups I can restore, and that's all. And, as time goes by, I delete

the images I'm not ever finding I need anymore. (These are all from some

different software installations that I may wish to completely end up

removing later, but without any latent hidden problems that can pop up

later)

> As a matter of fact, I can have 3 hard drives in my PC

> simulataneously, and I can choose to load a particular partition

> from any one of them - such is the nature of ntldr and boot.ini.

> To be e-x-p-l-i-c-i-t, there is no need to remove a hard drive

> to cause booting from another hard drive. The BIOS or boot.ini

> can take care of where the partition to load comes from - the

> BIOS can control which hard drive's MBR gets control, and

> the "active" flag on that hard drive controls which partition on

> that hard drive will provide the boot.ini file, and boot.ini allows

> selection of which hard drive and which partition on that hard

> drive will be loaded. It's all very flexible, much more flexible

> than most people realize. You just have to read the Microsoft

> online documentation of XP to understand it. The only badly

> documented feature of boot.ini is how "rdisk()" corresponds to

> a partitcular hard drive, and that has been the subject of many

> threads and much mythology.

>

> *TimDaniels*

[Guest Timothy Daniels]

Re: Need to Clone Laptop HDD

 

"Bill in Co." wrote (in part):

> I just want (and have) ONE bootable drive (with a total of

> 4 primary partitions, two created by Dell), and no boot

> menus to have to wade through, and a separate backup

> drive to just store the backups.

>

> Added to which, Dell is very finicky about the partitions

> on the system drive, with its own Dell System Restore and

> Diagnostics hidden partitions being present there.

 

That's fine if you don't need the backup running right *now*,

as in stock day-trading. And since you don't need the backup

right *now*, I think your method is quite practical.

 

But about the Dell partitions.... The System Restore

partition becomes obsolete after you've used the system

for a few days or weeks and you've installed a few apps

and acquired a few data files, because (as you know)

System Restore is equivalent to System Obliterate. As

for the Diagnostic Utilites, Dell also supplies them on a

CD, so you don't need them on a partition unless you do

frequent diagnostic checks while traveling. I have a Dell

laptop that came with Vista installed, and I deleted those

partitions plus the MediaDirect abortion, and now I use

the freed-up partitions for dual-booting Vista with Ubuntu.

It's like having a 2nd computer.

 

*TimDaniels*

[Guest Bill in Co.]

Re: Need to Clone Laptop HDD

 

Timothy Daniels wrote:

> "Bill in Co." wrote (in part):

>> I just want (and have) ONE bootable drive (with a total of

>> 4 primary partitions, two created by Dell), and no boot

>> menus to have to wade through, and a separate backup

>> drive to just store the backups.

>>

>> Added to which, Dell is very finicky about the partitions

>> on the system drive, with its own Dell System Restore and

>> Diagnostics hidden partitions being present there.

>

> That's fine if you don't need the backup running right *now*,

> as in stock day-trading. And since you don't need the backup

> right *now*, I think your method is quite practical.

 

I think so, at least for my purposes.

> But about the Dell partitions.... The System Restore

> partition becomes obsolete after you've used the system

> for a few days or weeks and you've installed a few apps

> and acquired a few data files, because (as you know)

 

But I don't mind keeping it, just in case. And if I ever wanted to get rid

of or donate this computer, I could roll it back to that point.

 

But there have been times I've thought of dumping the DSR partition (and

maybe the diagnostics one too), but then again, doing so will mess up

booting up to windows, unless I reconfigure it (I think just the boot.ini

file needs to be modified slightly).

> System Restore is equivalent to System Obliterate. As

> for the Diagnostic Utilites, Dell also supplies them on a

> CD, so you don't need them on a partition unless you do

> frequent diagnostic checks while traveling.

 

True enough. I've hardly used it, anyway.

> I have a Dell

> laptop that came with Vista installed, and I deleted those

> partitions plus the MediaDirect abortion, and now I use

> the freed-up partitions for dual-booting Vista with Ubuntu.

> It's like having a 2nd computer.

>

> *TimDaniels*