TIH11, Dual SATA Disks, Disk Clone, Win7, Dual Boot?
Yes, I've read a lot here but posts are of mixed OSs or too old.
I believe this is simple: two SATA disks; I want to clone the existing Win7 disk to another internal disk, and then choose which one to boot from upon restart.
My Gigabyte mobo BIOS lets me specify which disk to boot from, and it even has an F12 option during boot for a Boot Menu - choose disk on-the-fly. That should be simple.
I'd just like it confirmed that my TIH11-boot-CD will clone my current disk to my blank second disk AND MAKE THE CLONE DISK BOOTABLE. (The manual, non-wizard, method of copying a disk leaves off any reference to making the clone bootable. I believe it does make it bootable, but..)
I expect that either drive will be visible from the other, with drive letters switched alternately, depending upon which disk is the current boot/system disk. Confirm?
So, identical SATA disks/installs, boot disk chosen via BIOS. Do I have this right?
Thanks.
April'11
Decadus,
You can clone your disk to your new disk. If you use a cloning operation, you will get a full copy of your disk on your other disk. Choose the manual method, and clone as is.
Once you are done, I recommend you disconnect the other disk and boot first with only one disk in the system. Then, reconnect the other disk, and disconnect the new clone and verify you can still boot.
This will ensure that your cloning worked well.
Once you have verified you can boot separately on both disks alone, then try with both disks.
Thanks Steve and Pat L,
It looks as though it's a viable operation. I'll get as adventurous as you, Steve, after a bit of experience with the product. It seems very capable; I'm wondering why they impose a name like Home on it..
I'm interested to see youir recommendation, Pat. Your suggestion that I disconnect one drive, the original, say, before a reboot: your thinking? Just that the install will like to familiarise itself on a disk with a new serial? That it will need to make notes to itself having woken up on a new line/port? That it suddenly finds itself standing beside an idential twin who wasn't there before, while its former buddy has disappeared? Or that you've found that it gives you more peace of mind to run them separately, at first? Just interested.
There's one feature of these programs that is still a little ephemeral - when to power down. They don't do it themselves, don't ask to, don't advise to. With thoughts of uncommitted cache, power-off during restart (drive marked 'dirty', dual disks still mounted), etc, in mind, it's dependent on judgement as to when we press and hold the power button firmly, then finally release. You have to take a stab when the BIOS info flashes up. A design flaw, IMO.
My greatest fear is that something could go wrong; something not accommodated in TIH11's design. I say this because of the devil's own job I had when I cloned using a Paragon (German) tool. The clone failed for some unknown reason yet the program didn't notice. It gaily went ahead and disabled the boot capability of the source disk - and NOTHING booted.. I was down in the back of the bottom drawer before I found the right tool to make it bootable again. No more Paragon.
And there's precious little reference to the boot-state of disks in a clone operation on this site, or in the box, and certainly no discussion of modern BIOSs and boot-choices of multiple SATA disks.
The reason I want to perform the clone is that a couple of tools report errors on my current source disk. Acronis's is one of them (reported as lacking in total reliability by some friends). Steve Gibson's SpinRite is another. It's a 2 y/o Samsung Spinpoint terabyte drive. So I move forward with a touch of trepidation.. :-\
Decadus,
Booting separately on each disk will make sure the cloning work out well, precisely because of the risks or issues you already encountered. Once you actually have 2 bootable disks, having your system capable of booting one or the other is workable.
There is risk involved with cloning. Be sure to read Grover's cloning guide. If I were you, I would do an all-partition image backup of the disk I clone, before cloning it.
Thanks, Pat L.
I suppose I have to infer from what you say that cloning today, in spite of all the developments we've had in technology, demands that it's necessary, in a practical sense, to have three disk drives when you want to clone one.
The original, one for an all-partition image backup, and the target.
True?
Decadus,
It could be argued that 2 disks are needed anytime in a backup and recovery situation and a third is needed if you want to create an duplicate drive via cloning or restoration.
The 2nd disk would normally be used anyway for routine backup storage. Of course, if you do not do backups, then why take the precaution to make a backup before cloning.
If you follow the forum postings, there most definitely is a risk when cloning. Probably the biggest risk is the user making a mistake in procedures but there is also the risk of power loss and a hardware or software malfunction. If you want to be prepared should that happen to you, then taking the time and having the space for a disk option backup is a sensible safety alternative. Perhaps, the question should be rephrased to "What are your recovery plans if you lose your source disk during the cloning". If you have other recovery in place, then maybe a disk to store your safety backups is not necessary. Not everyone is aware of the risks in cloning and having a disk backup makes a lot of sense for many of us.