Moving the OS partition

kensuguro · Post by **kensuguro** » Tue Dec 24, 2002 2:00 am

Well, maybe there's no way around this. Here's the situation. I've got an XP boot Primary, and have the OS installed in the first logical drive. Fresh install.
What I want to do, is to just copy the image of the OS in the logical drive, into the second logical drive. That way, I can do away with the ever so boring OS install.
But, of course the situation isn't quite as easy. Windows of course doesn't realize that its drive letter has changed, and therefore, won't boot. Not even in Safemode. (goes up to the blue "welcome" screen and hangs)
I'm wondering if there's any specific file I can edit, or some way I can just copy the thing, and not install it. Cuz once I have it up and running, I can use DriveMap. I'm sure there's an easy way out. Or isn't there?

kensuguro · Post by **kensuguro** » Tue Dec 24, 2002 2:02 am

And by the way, there was a VERY GOOD reason to upgrade to SP1. 200GB drives need it, or else they're seen as 131GB drives.

Havoc · Post by **Havoc** » Tue Dec 24, 2002 12:22 pm

You want a bit too much. First all references are to a different drive letter, so you would have to change every entry in the registry adnd in each .ini, .cfg, whatever! Then you would need to edit the master boot record.

Probably take you more time than a full install.

dbmac · Post by **dbmac** » Tue Dec 24, 2002 11:49 pm

There may be other options, but I do what you're describing with System Commander (boot/partition manager) and Norton Ghost (partition copy/restore).

/dave

kimgr · Post by **kimgr** » Wed Dec 25, 2002 9:28 am

All you need to do is to add a extra line to the boot.ini file found in the root of your boot drive.
This is what mine looks like:
------------
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS="XP music" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)WINDOWS="XP development" /fastdetect
------------
When booting into partition 2 (which was a clone of part1 originally) it automatically becomes drive c:, and partition 1 becomes drive d:, so there's no need change paths etc.

Kim.

Havoc · Post by **Havoc** » Wed Dec 25, 2002 2:49 pm

Thanks Kimgr, looks a very good tip.

Grok · Post by **Grok** » Sun Jan 26, 2003 2:26 am

A very good solution to have few customized OS running on one PC (I have 4 Win98 and 3 WinXP right now): Hyperos

http://www.hyperos2002.com

Some advantages are: very fast backup/restore; OS customized (I use one 98Sleek for audio and one XP for audio)

I bought the release 6 (20 OS) but 10 OS is enough. The backup/restoration is so fast that I use it for defragmentation, it is much quicker in this way!

Reliability and versatility, that's what Hyperos give me.

And simplicity also: I have one SFP repertory for all the installed OS. And one "My Documents", one Outlook Express repertory...etc

Want a new XP installation? Just copy the installed XP you choose to another hard drive partition, reboot in this new XP, it's done.

Want to test a new soft? You can do it with no risk

And so on...This soft is truly great

Grok · Post by **Grok** » Mon Jan 27, 2003 9:11 pm

A new competitor for Hyperos!

Paragon: http://www.paragon-gmbh.com/f_fm.htm

I think that know Hyperos must lower their prices

I told them so

Grok · Post by **Grok** » Mon Jan 27, 2003 11:54 pm

Well finally it seems that Paragon is not exactly a competitor to HyperOs but to Acronis Utilities. It's only a multiboot outfit. And it seems that Acronis Utilities are better...

http://www.acronis.com/

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Tue Jan 28, 2003 12:36 pm

Ken, I think you need a utility like BootMagic - this can hide one partition while booting off the other - so that whichever partition is booted, it will still be on C:

Therefore you can ghost your install and make as many variations as you want. I haven't yet tried the next generation boot managers like HyperOS, I'm sure these offer a lot of advantages, but BootMagic is tried and tested, and works great (and it's not too expensive).

peace

mythalethe · Post by **mythalethe** » Wed Jan 29, 2003 5:49 pm

just a warning about boot magic and XP: i had very bad luck with the combo of 2 XP OS and boot magic. If you check out the support FAQ's and documentation on the bootmagic website (which is a subprogram of partition magic 8, which DOES work great), you will notice that there have been many probs using boot magic to dual boot 2 or more WIN XP OS. These probs don't arise with XP and linux or win98 apparently... I went back to using the windows OS selector that comes with XP as described by Kim.

Norton Ghost works great at mirroring drives as mentioned above!

(I do want to try out hyperOS sometime in the future... it sounds very interesting.)

-mythalethe

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: mythalethe on 2003-01-29 17:52 ]</font>