Boot from Slave.. (Resolved)

[RatPack]

Win XP Home SP.2

I have cloned my Master drive (partitioned C: and D:) to my Slave drive (partitioned E: and F:) for backup. I can boot from what was the Slave drive by making it the Master (changed the jumper setup and IDE ribbon cable) so that I know the cloning went without problem.

Now want to know if/how I can boot from the cloned Slave drive without making the hardware changes above. Is it possible to change the Boot.ini file to achieve this, sort of like a dual boot system? This is just to test the backup to ensure that the cloning process was error-free.

My current boot.ini file is:

[boot loader]

timeout=5

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Win XP Normal" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

Thanks

Edited December 16, 2007 by RatPack

[PC_LOAD_LETTER]

this should work based on the description you gave:

[boot loader]
timeout=20
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Win XP Normal" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn 
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Win XP Slave" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

This is the same but makes windows default to the slave drive (dont have to select it manually)

[boot loader]
timeout=20
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Win XP Normal" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn 
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Win XP Slave" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

all that said, you really should set you BIOS to boot to whichever drive you want to use. If you can boot to the drive by changing the jumper, then i would say the clone worked.

[jaclaz]

NO, changing the BOOT.INI won't work by itself, as drive letters will NOT be properly set.

For an explanation of the suggested changes to BOOT.INI see this:

http://www.msfn.org/board/BOOTINI-hard-drive-t25365.html

Drive letter assignment is dependent on Disk Signature (4 bytes in the MBR), see this:

http://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/Win2kmbr.htm

You need to change the Disk Signature, using MBRfix:

http://www.sysint.no/Nedlasting/MbrFix.htm

http://www.sysint.no/Nedlasting/MbrFix.zip

http://home.graffiti.net/jaclaz:graffiti.net/

http://home.graffiti.net/jaclaz:graffiti.n...X/mbrfix0.2.zip

or MBRWiz:

http://www.mbrwizard.com/

AND change the /DosDevices key in Registry to avoid possible "mixing" of the two drives:

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=20094

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=19663

jaclaz

[RatPack]

Update...

In order to know from which hdd I had booted I deleted/added items displayed on the desktop then cloned the drive. After cloning I reinstated/deleted the items on the Master drive desktop only.

After running on the Master drive for a couple of days I amended the boot.ini file to the first Code shown by Geek in his post of 9 Dec, no change was made to bios, or the mbr of either drive. The dual-boot option was displayed on startup and the Slave drive selected. The displayed desktop was that before items on the Master desktop were reinstated/deleted and several user data files were out of date indicating that booting from the Slave had been successful. Almost immediately after booting a popup indicated that my Anti-Virus definitions were out of date and that MS updates were available for downloading. The relevant files on the Master drive had been fully updated prior to cloning.

With respect to Jaclaz's post of 10 Dec I checked the drive letter assignments.

The original configuration was:

C: = first partition on Master drive

D: = second partition on Master drive

E: = first partition on Slave drive

F: = second partition on Slave drive

After booting from the Slave drive the configuration is:

C: = first partition on Slave drive

D: = second partition on Slave drive

E: = first partition on Master drive

F: = second partition on Master drive

The changes are confirmed by checking disk labels and partition serial numbers.

My conclusion - booting from the slave drive has been successful with only the change to boot.ini being needed. This post is added whilst boot is from the Slave drive.

Thank you Geek and Jaclaz for your interest.

[jaclaz]

Yep, as said drive letters are NOT properly set.

I mean, the SAME drive gets different drive letters depending on what you chose when booting.

If you are OK with this, this is not a problem , but it is very easy to confuse a volume with another, thus saving data to one while thinking to be doing it on another one, on what I call "properly set" all drives and partitions should get the same letter no matter which OS you booted from.

jaclaz

[RatPack]

Thank you for clarifying 'properly set' Jaclaz, I'd never come across that term before.

RP.