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cloning disk to make fallback

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by franistan

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hi,

i'm putting together a system w/2 disks, one of which i want to be a fall-back disk so i can boot to it in case smth happens to the boot drive. i want to avoid having to reinstall windows from scratch on the second disk, if i can.

current config:
there are 2 partitions on the boot disk, system and data, and the system partition has a stable install of windows xp sp2 w/all the needed apps etc. in a "known good" config. the second drive also has 2 partitions, both empty.

what i want to do is create a clone of the current boot disk's boot partition on the second drive. i've never done this before, but in reading, i thought i might go about it like this:

1. make an image of the boot partition, using an image program like powerquest 'drive-image' or terrabyte 'image'. store the image in a partition on the new disk.
2. restore the image to the other partition on the new disk, which will become the system partition of the new disk.
3. shutdown and remove the old disk.
4. boot w/the new disk as boot disk.
5. change the disk's letter following the instructions here - http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;223188
6. update env vars as mentioned here - http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;124298
8. shutdown and put the old disk back in.

i'm thinking that i should now be able to boot to the old disk and see both drives correctly, or in case of emergency boot to the new disk and see both drives, w/o problems.

has anybody done anything like this before? does what i've got above look right?

thanks

3 replies

by hal 9000

Well I do use Ghost with Server installations but you have to copy the whole drive over not just an image as it takes far longer to be backup and running.

While you can do it with images it is a lot more time consuming and when you have both drives fitted you'll see all 4 partitions but of course the second drive will have its partitions being shown as E & F but they will sit there quite happily without a problem.

Generally I disconnect the second Drive just to be on the safe side in case something happens with a power problem. But I also use Hot Swappable SCSI's so it isn't a big deal to just pull one part way out of the box and not have it connected while the other one runs. My users know that if something goes wrong with their Gateway servers to shut down pull the installed drive and push & lock in the uninstall ed drive then power back up and then ring me to fix it up latter. As these drives may be sitting idle for quite some time other than some patches they are ready to run.

Col

by b_pope

I would suggest you use Norton Ghost 2003 if you can find a copy, version 9 of Ghost has some possible problems, it is drive image in disquise. Drive Image isn't your best choice for backing up a system, to many known problems. Norton bought PowerQuest a couple yrs back, & Ghost 2003 was the last true Ghost version.

Now I hear what you want to do, clone your C: drive, this isn't your best choice.

There's a better way, use Norton Ghost & make a Ghost image of your C: drive, this will create a smaller image file which you can store on CD's or DVD's, my choice is CDRW or you can keep it on any available partition other then C: drive. I use external drives but you have to use a FAT32 partition for them.

By making a Ghost image you allow yourself a lot more flexibility, the image can be restored to any HD, but there's one catch?

If you have a 10GB C: drive with 6GB used, you can't restore the image to a partition smaller than 6GB.

The reason I'm saying this is because once you create the image it will be smaller than the 6GB your drive reads being used. Ghost doesn't image your swap file so now that image you just made may only be 5GB, something you have to keep in mind.

The good news is you can restore that image to any HD, as HAL 9000 mentioned it doesn't matter about drive letters. If you wanted to make the 1st partition on your 2nd drive the boot partition, just unhook the 1st drive & restore the image to 1st partition of the 2nd, it will appear as C: drive when all's said & done.

If you want to make your system multi-boot, go ahead & put your image on additional HD's

by sgt_shultz

why don't you just use the built in mirroing the the windows raid software? see Help in disk admin. all the directtions for using this scheme to recover a had are well known. see Help and see mirroring at support.microsoft.com

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