Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (
More info?)
"Z" wrote:
>> if you have a second hdd in the machine, you can ghost
>> a bootable image to that drive, all that needs to be done
>> in the event of failure is to change the jumper on the drive
>> to become the master and boot 2 minute job, do this
>> on a regular basis myself
>>
>
> That method allows you to save exactly one image. Useful
> if the hard drive failed, not useful if you need to go back to
> 5 days ago. And not useful if you need just a single file from
> 2 days ago.
1) Ghost and Casper XP (and a few other utilities) can make
a bootable image (i.e. a "clone") of a single partition and
put it among other partitions on another HD. If your OS-to-
be-archived is small enough and the destination HD is
large enough, you can put several clones on a single
backup HD. If you put enough entries in each clone's
boot.ini file (one entry for each partition on the backup HD),
any partition on the backup HD can act as the loader (i.e.
act as the "system" partition in Microsoft's terminology) to
load any of the other partitions.
All that is necessary to boot any one of the partitions is
to make one of the primary partitions "active", and that
partition will be the "system" partition, i.e. it will run the
loader and present the boot menu. To make the backup
HD take control for booting, you can remove or disconnect
the main HD, or you can simply readjust the HD boot order
in the BIOS to put the backup HD at the head of the boot order.
To backup 5 OSes on a single HD, you can have a maximum
of 3 partitions be Primary partitions - any one of which can
marked as the "active" partition that will do the loading - and
the 4th partition can be an Extended partition which can hold
several more clones, each clone selectable for loading by
the boot.ini file residing in one of the Primary partitions.
2) A simpler system would involve copying the main HD to one of
several backup HDs, each backup HD sitting in a removable
tray. For that operation, you can use not only Ghost or
Casper XP, but also True Image (which can only clone an
entire HD, not just a designated partition). The single partition
on the backup HD would always be the "active" partition, and
no knowledge of boot.ini syntax would be necessary.
To use a backup HD, just slide in the appropriate tray, remove
or disconnect the main HD, or readjust the BIOS's HD boot order
to put the backup HD at the head of the boot order, and restart
the computer.
3) To just copy a file from the backup HD, just connect it or slide
in its removable tray and boot up. The backup partition will
be visible to the running OS as just another Local Disk, and
you can drag 'n drop files between the partitions.
4) CAUTION: When starting up a clone for the 1st time, don't
let it see its "parent" OS, or it will forever be dependent on
the continued presence of its "parent". Once it has booted
and run for the 1st time independently, it can be allowed to
to see its "parent" OS with no problems.
Making the "parent" invisible can be done in several ways:
a) Simply disconnect or remove the source HD,
b) Cut the power to the source HD (works best if the 2 HDs
are on different IDE channels),
c) Use Partition Magic to "hide" the source partition
(done from a bootable floppy or an OS on a 3rd partition).
*TimDaniels*
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