Virtual Harddrives on Single Disk

[GamerBro10]

Hi. I am wondering how I can create a virtual partion or hard drive on a single disk seperate from the OS C drive. I want to be able to have a D drive on the same hard drive for storing files so that if I need to restore the C drive completely nothing on the D drive is changed or deleted. I basically want both drives to be independent of each other but still on the same physical disk.

 

[McHenryB]

Forget "virtual". Just create a separate partition on your hard drive for this purpose. You may need to shrink your existing C: partition to do so. The easiest way to do this is to use a partition manager such as Paragon Partition Manager, which is available for free. (That is just an example - other partition managers exist.)

 

[GamerBro10]

Forget "virtual". Just create a separate partition on your hard drive for this purpose. You may need to shrink your existing C: partition to do so. The easiest way to do this is to use a partition manager such as Paragon Partition Manager, which is available for free. (That is just an example - other partition managers exist.)

Alright so I downloaded both Paragon Partition Manager and MiniTool PartitionWizard. I was able to successfully create a secondary disk and everything is good.

My next question is how do I change the partition I boot into? If I copy/backup my Windows partition how do I set the copied partition as active and boot into it later? How do I change the MBR to point to the coped Windows partition via one of these tools?

 

[McHenryB]

If you want to use the new partition as a backup of your Windows partition then you would never boot into it. You copy files, or the whole partition, to it and if you need to restore you copy them back. If you were to boot from the backup partition you would risk corrupting it, which defeats its purpose.

You now need to decide whether you want to back up individual files, which you can do with some sort of copy process or backup program, or whether you wish to clone the partition exactly - in that case you need to use proper cloning software.

 

[GamerBro10]

If you want to use the new partition as a backup of your Windows partition then you would never boot into it. You copy files, or the whole partition, to it and if you need to restore you copy them back. If you were to boot from the backup partition you would risk corrupting it, which defeats its purpose.

You now need to decide whether you want to back up individual files, which you can do with some sort of copy process or backup program, or whether you wish to clone the partition exactly - in that case you need to use proper cloning software.

I would like to clone the entire partion and for that I had clonezilla in mind. So how would I use Partition Wizard to dual boot windows 10 and fedora? Just create a seperate partition and load it into that and then just go back and forth setting the OS drives as the boot drive?

 

[McHenryB]

You are asking a completely different question now. A quick Google will give you the answer to this new question.