acronis error "partition configuration has changed"

[Jess Fertudei]

Hello again

WinXP SP3
A7V600
Acronis 9


I want to clone the boot disk to another, brand new in sealed wrapper disk I
had on a shelf. Original is a Seagate 120G on Primary Master the new is a
Maxtor 200G in a removable drawer set as Cable Select (and showing as
Slave).

Whenever I open Acronis (used *many* times in just this situation) I select
Clone. I can take it through automatic or manual with the same eventual
conclusion. I verify the proportional reallocation of partitions and let it
start the process. It goes to the reboot and locks partitions and such but
then gives an error of:

acronis error "partition configuration has changed" press any key to reboot.


I tried auto and manual. I tried it with Avast disabled. I tried restarting
and then running it again after disconnecting the LAN. I ran a CHKDSK from a
Command Prompt window that was good. I have searched for similar complaints
and have found them but none with resolutions posted.

What the heck?

[jon...@nocrap.com]

I'm no expert at this stuff, and I know nothing about "Acronis" I never
touched it. But what if you make a 120gb partition on the new drive?
Just a thought!

-OR-

Get a copy of the old Partition Magic 8.0. I have made clones with that
on larger drives. It just makes an identical size partition. Which you
can later make that partition larger using the same program, and without
data loss.

I'm assuming you're using XP. Partition Magic 8.0 works fine in XP as
well as Win98 and Win2000. I dont know if it works on any newer windows,
since I dont own or use or want anything newer than XP. It works fine
for both Fat32 and NTFS drives.

[Jess Fertudei]

<jon...@nocrap.com> wrote in message
news:mbh43cpabc6vnoah8...@4ax.com...

Thanks.

I have used ATI 9 many many times with very good results. I do have
partition magic around here somewhere but as I recall it did not do bootable
clones... maybe I remember wrong. I want to clone all partitions and resize
them proportionally. Most stroage in that box is on other 750G drives but
what these small partitions do is rather important to me.

I have cloned the very drive I'm cloning from another drive I cloned in that
box with this installation of Acronis True Image... there has to be some
small reason why it is choking now.

Hopefully someone has an answer.

[jon...@nocrap.com]

On Sun, 20 Nov 2016 21:11:55 -0500, "Jess Fertudei"

I cloned Bootable Win98 and Win2000 many times with PQ Magic. Each time
upgrading to a larger drive. I only did it once with XP. That worked
well too. I think I changed from a small Fat32 to larger NTFS drive, but
I cant remember anymore, it was years ago. I sort of quit building
computers from used parts, because nothing is compatible with newer OSs
anymore, and I could not sell them older machines because everyone wants
Windows 10 now.(except me).

Hell, even the newer Linux versions wont run on the old computers
anymore. I tried it, and I gave up, but I never liked it anyhow.

These days, it almost dont make sense to upgrade to larger HDDs, (Unless
it's real small, or dying), because those USB portable drives have
gotten rid of the need for huge HDDs, as well as burning CDs / DVDs.

I still remember backing up 80 megs to floppies. That sucked :)
Now you can put over 80 GIGS onto a flash drive. Times shure have
changed.

PQ Magic was a great piece of software until Semantek destroyed it. But
they destroy everything they touch. I refuse to buy any of their crap.

Has anyone on here used PQ Magic on Vista, Win7, 8 or 10? Just curious?

I have 3 computers that work.
A desktop made in 2000, running Win98se and Win2000 Pro. (with two 120gb
drives)

A desktop made in 2005 running XP-Pro Sp3 (with 750 gb drive)

A laptop made in 2006, running XP-Pro Sp3 (With 40gb drive)

[Ian Jackson]

In message <mbh43cpabc6vnoah8...@4ax.com>,
jon...@nocrap.com writes

Partition Magic is also one of my tools.

IIRC, if you use it to clone, like the other cloners I've tried, on the
new (larger) disk the resulting partition(s) is/are indeed the same size
as on the source - leaving you to do what you want with the unused
portion.

Most of my cloning efforts have produced a clone which boots without any
trouble - but occasionally one doesn't. When this happens, I think that
in every case it has worked OK after I've done a 'Repair MBR' on it
(which I'm sure Partition Magic can do). However, I have no idea what
causes this problem.


>
>

--
Ian

[Paul]

The MBR has a four slot partition table.

The WinXP partition has boot.ini, a text file with
an ARC path that contains a pointer to a particular
slot in the partition table.

Partition Magic does not wish to edit the boot.ini
for you. In an effort to make a cloned WinXP work,
it tries to copy WinXP to the same slot in the
destination partition table, as was used on the
source disk.

If that slot in the destination partition table is
already occupied, Partition Magic says "no problem,
I'll just stick it here". The user tries to boot
and it doesn't work. However, if you use the
recovery console and edit boot.ini, you can
correct the ARC path, save the file, and reboot.
And, it will work.

In an effort to preserve the slot number, Partition
Magic will even put partitions out of spatial order
on the destination disk. Normally, the partitions
are in spatial order, so slot 1 is on the outer
ring of the platter, and slot 4 is nearest the hub.
But when Partition Magic wants your boot.ini to
"just work", it may be forced to change the order
of the partitions in some cases. (Is this annoying ?
You betcha.)

More modern tools do not shy away from editing
boot.ini or BCD on their own. They will even
change disk identifiers, like a GUID, in order
that two disks have unique identifiers. And this
prevents disks from going "Offline" because they
are "too similar". They are also more likely to
boot. Modern backup/clone tools are so powerful,
they will even resize a cloning operation on the
fly, to fit the available space. With Partition
Magic, you may achieve a similar result by shrinking
the source partition, cloning across, then expanding
the source partition back to its original size.

For police forensic work, obviously you would use
none of these :-) Too sloppy. Something more exact
and careful must be used, than a consumer program
of this nature. Consumer programs are more interested
in the "just works" part, than the "exact copy" part.

And when it comes to the foibles of any backup/clone
program, "after a while you get used to it" :-)

Paul

[jon...@nocrap.com]

Slots? I dont understand that ??????

So what would be a more modern cloning software?

No, I'm not doing any police forensic work, because no one died inside
my computer (not yet anyhow)... <LOL>

Like I said, I only cloned XP once and it worked fine. If it matters,
that drive was just an install of XP with very few programs installed,
and little drive storage. I just wanted a bigger HDD, and did not want
to start from scratch. .
On the other hand, I have cloned Win98 and Win2000 MANY TIMES, and never
had any problem. But I know they are not as critical as XP.

I'm still wondering if Partition Magic works on Vista, Win7, 8 , or 10.
Anyone know? (Just curious).

PQ Magic also has the ability to format drives for Linux. I never
understood the purpose for that, since you cant run PQ Magic in Linux
(that I know of, since I've never really used it, just played around
with it for a short while).

[Paul]

I needed a term for the table entries in the
partition table.

MBR

446 bytes Boot code
16 bytes Partition Table - first slot
16 bytes Partition Table - second slot
16 bytes Partition Table - third slot
16 bytes Partition Table - fourth slot
2 byte Signature 0xAA55

And the ARC path in boot.ini makes
a reference that depends on it.

*******

As for the EXT formatting capability, don't
get too carried away with it. It uses an
older format, not compatible with large partitions.
There is some sort of EXT hack, where a Linux OS
can change the info in the partition on the
fly, but I don't know if it works with a
Partition Magic EXT or not. I think I had
some trouble once, around maybe 15-16GB or
so. I don't recollect all the details.
All I can remember is to not do it from
Partition Magic. Not worth the trouble,
when Linux has a MKFS ready to go.

Paul

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <RqSdnaCLBs5xyq_F...@giganews.com>, Jess
Fertudei <n...@this.juncture.com> writes:
[]

>>>I want to clone the boot disk to another, brand new in sealed wrapper disk
>>>I
>>>had on a shelf. Original is a Seagate 120G on Primary Master the new is a
>>>Maxtor 200G in a removable drawer set as Cable Select (and showing as
>>>Slave).

[]
(So these are [E]IDE rather than SATA discs then.)

>them proportionally. Most stroage in that box is on other 750G drives but
>what these small partitions do is rather important to me.

(You've got me curious now about what those do!)

>
>I have cloned the very drive I'm cloning from another drive I cloned in that
>box with this installation of Acronis True Image... there has to be some
>small reason why it is choking now.
>
>Hopefully someone has an answer.
>

Just a wild guess: perhaps you've crossed some size boundary (128G?)
that something - your BIOS, your cloning software, your partitioning
software, even XP itself if before a certain update - can't handle?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
8
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

# 10^-12 boos = 1 picoboo # 2*10^3 mockingbirds = 2 kilo mockingbird
# 10^21 piccolos = 1 gigolo # 10^12 microphones = 1 megaphone
# 10**9 questions = 1 gigawhat

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <LRfmqdCy...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk>, Ian Jackson
<ianTAKEOUTTH...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> writes:
[]

>Partition Magic is also one of my tools.
>
>IIRC, if you use it to clone, like the other cloners I've tried, on the
>new (larger) disk the resulting partition(s) is/are indeed the same
>size as on the source - leaving you to do what you want with the unused
>portion.
>
>Most of my cloning efforts have produced a clone which boots without
>any trouble - but occasionally one doesn't. When this happens, I think
>that in every case it has worked OK after I've done a 'Repair MBR' on
>it (which I'm sure Partition Magic can do). However, I have no idea
>what causes this problem.
>

I use Macrium (5) for backup etc. and EaseUS for partition management.
>
When my disc died, but I was able to revive it (a head stuck so it
stopped rotating!) so that I was able to save stuff, I made a Macrium
file of the C: partition and the hidden partition (this was XP as
supplied preinstalled on the netbook). I restored from the Macrium file
to the new disc, so those two partitions were on the new disc. The old
disc was something like 120G - the new about 250G. Then, heart-in-mouth
time, I put the new disc in and let the system boot. It booted into the
Samsung recover/repair software, saying something is wrong, shall I fix
it, so I said yes, and it did, and I got my old system back - you can't
imagine what a relief when my old desktop reappeared. (I then resized
partitions to use all of the new disc: in fact I think I first made C: a
bit bigger, and then made D: for the rest, probably using XP's own
partitioning features.)
>>
I'm assuming the Samsung recovery software was what was on the hidden
partition. Would that have been doing the "Repair MBR" thing you
mentioned, or something else? (Could it have used the hidden partition
if the MBR wasn't quite right?)
>>
Oh yes, I now use Macrium occasionally - once bitten is quite enough!

[Ian Jackson]

In message <o0v96k$hib$1...@dont-email.me>, Paul <nos...@needed.invalid>
writes

I have to admit that a fair bit of your explanation is beyond my present
comprehension.

I think the only time I've ever edited a boot.ini file is when I
installed Ubuntu on an XP machine, and on boot-up, instead of being
presented with a choice of booting either XP or Ubuntu, I got neither! I
think I connected the hard drive to another machine with a USB adapter,
and manually corrected the boot.ini file.

But regarding cloning, I thought that the principle was that what was
copied to the destination disk was supposed to a bit-by-bit copy of the
source - and if this is successful, I don't see how anything gets
screwed up. That said, I have a feeling that the size of the copy isn't
necessarily absolutely exactly the same as the original.
--
Ian

[Paul]

The clones aren't "exact" like they used to be.

The third-party software makers are more interested
in convenience than precision, and that's why they
fix stuff for you.

*******

Regarding Ubuntu, sometimes it's possible for the
output of GRUB to go onto the wrong disk. One way to stop
that, is install an OS while only one disk drive is
connected and cabled up.

Paul