How do I create multiple BOOTABLE partitions? 3

[57chevy]

I have four different personal computers. A pc and a laptop for me and a pc and laptop for my wife. I bought a 1TB hard drive, installed it as a slave drive on my pc, and then created four partitions. All machines are running WinXP and networked. I want to create BOOTABLE copies of each of the pc and laptop hard drives as backups so that when one of the hard drive dies, I can just copy the partition back to the newly replaced hard drive and be ready to go again. How do I make all four partitions on one hard drive bootable?
I would certainly appreciate any help!

 

[BadBigBen]

I want to create BOOTABLE copies of each of the pc and laptop hard drives as backups

That is the wrong way to go about it, in my opinion, and most likely will not work the way you expect it...

best option here, for backing up the BOOT partitions, would be to use a dedicated back up solution, along the lines of Paragon Harddrive Manager or Acronis True Image...

These will back up the partitions to the drive, and through a boot CD, will reimage them to a different HDD, if ever the originals die...

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.

 

[wahnula]

Howdy 57chevy,

This is a simple process using disk cloning software. I swear by Ghost 2003 (works with server 2003, cheap) but also own Acronis True Image, Farstone's DriveClone, DriveImage, and a few other good cloning apps. There's also free ones available, but you will never regret the $30 or so you will spend on Ghost 2003 (or a similar app). It's very easy to use.

From there, it's a simple process of installing Ghost on the four machines, and pointing the Destinatiion drive to the partition you choose. You will need to make sure the drive is shared on the network first.

Recovery would be as simple as installing the new HDD as a slave on the host machine, starting up Ghost, selecting the partition you want to restore as the Source, and pointing it to the new HDD as its Destination. Shutdown after the process is complete and before rebooting, and install the freshly-imaged HDD into the recovered PC. You're done!

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[pmonett]

I may be wrong, but I seem to recall that, under Windows, a hard disk can only have one primary partition, and only the primary partition can be bootable.

So I don't think you'll be able to have four bootable partitions on your disk.

On the other hand, I'm not sure that you need them to be bootable. You need a copy of a boot partition to be an exact copy of the data. If you need a new disk, all you will need to do is format it and make it bootable, then recopy the proper partition to it and the job is done.

And if you have the proper tools to make an image of a Windows boot partition, then this should not be a problem for you since the tool will be able to handle it.

If you're just doing a DiskCopy, I would strongly suggest that you get a proper tool, like Acronis or Ghost.

Pascal.

I've got nothing to hide, and I'd very much like to keep that away from prying eyes.

 

[57chevy]

Ben, I believe you are correctly reading my thoughts concerning the backups. Using a boot cd should keep the solution to my problem smooth and simple. Thanks Much!

 

[57chevy]

Tony, thanks much for the directions. I now know what I've got to do. Your help is greatly appreciated!

 

[57chevy]

Pascal, thanks for the input. You are correct. And thanks to all of you, I'm finally on the right track!

 

[BadBigBen]

I may be wrong, but I seem to recall that, under Windows, a hard disk can only have one primary partition, and only the primary partition can be bootable.

Not with the advent of NTFS... those where the DOS days...

e.g. my PC has 3 primary each bootable (XP, Vista, 7even)...

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.

 

[pmonett]

@Ben :

Hé, hé. Just goes to show that, in this industry, you just can't count on things staying still ;-).

Thanks for the heads-up.

Pascal.

I've got nothing to hide, and I'd very much like to keep that away from prying eyes.