Restore bootable image into 1 of several existing partitions?
Hi - I've been able to successfully create an image of my XP Pro boot on a new hard drive, but I would like to run both Vista and XP Pro from separate partitions on a single drive. Apparently I can't "clone" the XP drive to one of several existing partitions on the other drive (saving the Vista partition). I've also tried making an image backup of the XP drive and restoring it to the partition, but that doesn't get me a bootable image.
Can I get there from here?
Thx, Mark
Can you post a screenshot of what Disk Management shows for your drive?
What boot manager are you planning on using?
Just to make sure: The XP image you're wanting to restore to a partition on the Vista drive was from a different drive (an XP-only drive). Was the XP installation running on the same computer (you're not changing physical computers, just drives)?
Thanks for checking in MudCrab... I've attached a Disk Manager screen shot showing the 2 drives.
Both drives came from other machines and now reside in a box I built from scratch.
- Source=120GB IDE with a single XP Pro SP3 partition (~70GB data size, has all current drivers and works well)
- Target=250GB SATA drive with 3 partitions:
- 10GB Recovery (recovery partition from original EMachines Vista install).
- 106GB Vista (original Vista that came on Emachine desktop - no install CD available).
- TARGET:XP 117 on 250 SATA(G:) - empty partition where I want to migrate XP boot to.
I'll retire the source 120GB IDE if successful. I'd like to select between Vista and XP Pro boot and would like your advise for boot management.
Do you have any partitioning software (Disk Director, GParted, PartedMagic, etc.)?
Do you have a current backup image of the entire 250GB drive?
When you restored the XP image to the third partition on the 250GB drive, did you select to restore it as an Active partition? If not, repeat the restore and select this option. Then, before you boot, shutdown and disconnect the IDE drive. Turn on the computer and see if XP boots.
After trying this, to boot back into Vista, you'd need to boot to your partitioning software and set the Vista partition as Active to switch back to it.
Regarding boot managers, it's usually a matter of personal choice. Do you want the XP and Vista partitions hidden from each other? If so, you'll need a third-party boot manager (non-Microsoft) such as Grub4DOS, BING, OSS, etc. If you plan to have access to each partition from each OS, you can probably use EasyBCD or another BCD editor to add XP to the Vista boot manager.