Finally Booted a Windows 7 Clone
DES
they let on it, but just in case...
Creating a clone isn't a biggie, I can copy disks several ways. A
recent product try that was impressive in it's copying capability,
disappointing in it's philosophy of not duplicating VolumeID's and
unhiding and assigning drive letters to Hidden partitions, is EaseUS
Todo Backup. Knocked the socks off SyncBackSE on a first pass basis.
SyncBack is great for data in general but hasn't quite arrived in the
Windows 7 world yet. It's requiring specific configuration for the
Windows 7 Junction Points and NTFS Security in Windows 7. In fairness,
several Windows 7 locations don't have Full Access for even
Administrator. And getting Write (let alone list) Permissions can be
a real interesting nightmare. But take heart, it can be done! The
secret is to back up to a level where you have Write Permission and
Take Ownership (from there on down), then Grant yourself Whatever
(from there on down).
Booting a Clone though became quite Interesting. Lots of folks say it
should just work. Ha!
I got one going by Repairing. Which was a bit complicated because it
was an Asus laptop, and the Asus Recovery Disk isn't a Windows
Installation disk, no Repair Utilities. Which led to discovering
Windows 7 can burn it's own Repair Disk (and HD Images). And... that
"fixed" things quite nicely.
The BCD store was the hangup. It was of course identical after
cloning. And sorry but the windows Boot Manager didn't buy this. It
apparently wanted a unique identifier (UUID) assigned to this separate
disk. I don't know the details (yet), and don't need to know to use
it. The bottom line is the BCD file is quite different on the clone
from the original. As long as the two are kept separate and available
I'm home free.
The Destination (Clone) registry mods to swap Drive Letter & Volume
label Assignments still work just fine. Keeping volume identification
and Windows Confusion at bay. But this Boot Store change complicates
cloning by one more file exception. I never used Vista so it's all
completely new to me.
DES
Dan Anderson
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DES
Today was the day to get rid of the original Asus Recovery Partitions
and all the System Restore Points. Like I'll actually want to return
my new laptop to the out of the box state after spending 3 weeks
configuring it. And... there's an Asus Recovery CD that can do that
too should I get really desperate!
OK, Disk Manager will certainly Delete said partition. But, not Extend
\Resize the 2nd partition (OS) to include this space, at least without
Converting the disk to Dynamic which means "unable to boot any
included Operating Systems".
And the Paragon Hard Disk Manager 2009 Suite pretty much drops dead at
this point too. In fact, it's hasn't been able to do do squat in
Windows 7? The 2010 Suite will probably handle all this fine... right
after I'm done with the project?
It certainly would have been possible to just reformat the disk and
copy the running C: onto it... but I got curious. And tried the EaseUS
Partition Master (since their Todo Backup worked so well). Ah, but the
free version only works with 32 bit systems (calculated I'm sure).
After wasting time figuring all this out, and already being partially
vested. And spending $31.95 for the "Professional" version (grrr). it
actually worked quite nicely. Slow as hell, and the progress reports
lie like a Washington Politician, but it does work in 64 bit Windows
7!
While running the Clone what the hell, in for a penny, in for a pound.
I deleted all the Restore Points on both disks (reducing the actual
data by nearly 50%), and that did speed up the Moving\Resizing of the
original disk significantly. Sorry, but I'll manage this myself from
now on. In just under 3 weeks of building a System, the system restore
data had nearly reached the size of the System (47%)! I consider my
Clone to be a much more comprehensive System Restore provided I manage
it with some sense. And considerably more efficient overall.
Now that these disks are established, keeping them up to date is about
a 6 minute operation with SyncBackSE. (Only takes 1 minute 20 seconds
in XP with 2 internal SATA disks?) Which works well with; under Expert
\ Copy\Delete \File Copy Method (Backup Read\Write File Copying) (To
bypass NTFS Security) and under Copy \ Delete Advanced checking "Copy
all files from the Volume Shadow Copy (snapshot)" to work-a-round the
Windows 7 Junction Points for now. I just haven't had time to evaluate
whether "Including" the NTFS Junction Points (a default op-out) would
negate this particular option? That's coming.
Anyway, it took me 6 months (but before xxclone existed) to get this
working in XP. And I use this as an excuse to congratulate myself in
Windows 7 at 2 weeks 6 days. Saying either I'm getting better, or M$
is slipping? Whichever, Windows 7 seems to actually be quite stable,
and certainly more tolerant to my fiddling! The number of process and
services running are about double that of XP. But at least the
"Windows Genuine Advantage" components are transparent!
I'd excruciated over just moving to Ubuntu since the learning curve
was going to be steep either way. Having tried Ubuntu 6.04
previously, Windows 7 was probably easier over all? Certainly more
"stuff" is more readily available.
DES