RE: OT: Cloning a multiboot system

["Marc" marc@xxxxxxxx]

Jordan,

For re-sizing partitions I have found Powerquests' Partition Magic V7 to be
quite reliable. I have used it on at least 6 occasions to re-size partitions
without any problems.
Don't go near V8 - this ALWAYS failed for me leaving me with a disk needing
re-imaging again.

M.


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-xywrite@xxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-xywrite@xxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of J R FOX
Sent: Tuesday, 5 September 2006 4:54 a.m.
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: OT: Cloning a multiboot system

--- "Stephen A. Carter"  wrote:
> Over the weekend I successfully used DFSee 8.06

Hmmm, the last version I had was 8.05, and I don't
recall getting the notice about 8.06.

> to copy an 11-partition, three-OS
> multiboot system to a
> hard disk twice the size (80 GB to 160 GB). The
> OSes were WinXP,
> OS/2 MCP2, BootOS/2, and SuSE 9.2J. The file
> systems were NTFS,
> HPFS, ReiserFS, FAT16, and Linux swapfile.

Yes, that's close enough to be a good match.

> Everything boots and works just as it did before.
> However, I didn't
> try relocating or resizing the WinXP partition in
> any way, as I'd
> heard (as you mention) that that can sometimes be
> problematical.

I would say more like "almost always" than
"sometimes."  There seems to be some unique partition
identifier for each Win32 boot partition install that
is recorded in some not-readily-findable location(s).
It is quite possibly something _other than_ the NT
Disk Admin. Signature. The result is one of two or
three repeatable boot failure scenarios. Either 1)
Your auto-password entry goes away / is no longer
acccepted, and you can't get past this, or 2) The
Pagefile can no longer be found, or 3) There is an
endless loop of "Loading your Settings" / "Saving your
Settings." I found a few KB entries on these items,
but so far no solution that I could employ. In due
course, I expect to have a Bart's PE cd, which might
prove useful in future attempts.

I believe that if the mechanism at work here can be
identified, there must be some way to finesse it.
That is why what Patricia had to say about the Acronis
product claiming the ability to relocate and adjust
the boot partition freely sounded so interesting to
me. 


Jordan