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Number : 5499 Date : 2003-09-09 Author : Dan Anderson Subject : XXCLONE - some observations Size(KB) : 5
Kan, congratulations on the beta XXCLONE (v.0.20.1). It works! and gives some insight regarding the multiple actions needed to get a cloned XP partition to function on its own. Some general input/comments: 1. To clarify my context, I had used Partition Magic 8.0 to archive several XP clone partitions created at different stages of installing various applications, but was previously unable to have them operate as independently bootable backup partitions. If the original source partition was hidden or deleted then they would not function. (I should note that I've also turned off the system-recovery option under control panel / systems due to some prior attempts and have not turned it back on as yet so that might simplify my environment some as partitions are created and deleted.) XXCLONE seems to solve the problem of making them independently functional. Congratulations! 2. When working with several XP partitions in a multi-boot-backup situation, I've found that several times when running XXCLONE I forgot to change the target drive (there is a default inserted for the drop-down menu), causing some unintended over-writes. As a safeguard for people like me, a suggestion would be to require the user to select a drive (when there are several) rather than provide one as a default. No selection, no run, just a reminder warning. The source drive is less of an issue because it seems logical to default to the currently active XP drive as the source drive. 3. Excellent that you have anticipated the situation I prefer, with a small primary XP boot drive (with the boot.ini file) separate from the logical XP system drive containing the windows etc directories. XXCLONE automatically detects the various XP system directories. XXCLONE also seems to explicitly recognize and handle my configuration of the primary boot partition on hard drive A and the logical system partitions being on a separate hard drive B. (One of the yahoo group emails suggested that in the situation of a logical drive on a separate hard drive B, XXCLONE tries to work from a primary partition on that same hard drive B but I'm assuming that's not the case since I don't have any other primary partitions available on hard drive B ... they are used for W95, W98 etc). 4. What is the safest procedure when trying to abort a run? Hitting the cancel button didn't seem to stop the process when I realized I was hitting the wrong target partition and there doesn't seem to be a dry run or undo capability (no criticism, just observation). Going back to the source directory on the first reboot (rather than booting up to the unintended target partition) does seem to partially cancel the process but I expect any overwrites have already occurred. I did sometimes re-boot to the wrong XP partition but it didn't seem to matter (unless it was the source partition) and it waited patiently until I got things right. 5. As a side issue, rebooting XP seems to be a pain (not an xxclone issue itself). Although XP boots quickly for purposes of using something like EXCEL or WORD, there seems to be an additional 60+ second wait for certain system operations to be functional/initialized and this causes a corresponding delay when trying to do quick reboots for XXCLONE. Anyone know any solutions? Is XXCLONE's functionality dependent on a full boot-up? 6. Does the debug log file get produced each time that xxclone is run, or is it necessary to specific xxclone /debug from a DOS command prompt each time? I should have tested that but I've been assuming that I need to use the DOS command prompt since the gui does not seem to provide an option list for that (I should look again, but I'm writing this under W98). Any other switches other than the four mentioned when specify /? ? 7. The current beta versions indicate that they will expire at the end of 2003. 8. I tried to run the third option (back up only the critical windows files and make the new partition bootable) with an empty target partition, but near the end of the first step there was a pop-up error message referring to XXCLONE.ERR which I was unable to locate. I also tried to use that option to revive 9. All of the XP partitions that I've been able to make independently bootable were created from a common installation. I should note that I have not been able to re-activate a partition that I had ghost-cloned to a CDR. An extra complication is that I found that I had to use the ghost-explorer recover feature to get at the content of the partition because I apparently did a no-no putting two partitions together in one CDR-backup creation. The first is image-accessible but the second is only accessible via the file-recovery interface. I had expected that the third option (mentioned in 7 above would solve the problem regardless how corrupted things had become) but that was not the case (I just got the blue screen with the small XP windows icon), and I was less sure where to turn when I found that the third option did not work on a blank partition. If I can get it to work there then maybe it will re-activate this older version. The main reason for pursuing this is to know that archived version will be recoverable in future, but maybe I should just worry about archiving versions that XXCLONE has made bootable prior to archiving. 10. As a side note, sometimes when creating or deleting partitions, XP modifies the boot.ini file and distorts the various boot options that I've set up. In that case I keep a back-up copy called boot.txt and use a simple W98 boot diskette that allows me to specify c:\> copy boot.txt boot.ini. Kan's boot diskette probably improves on this approach but I haven't explored that yet. 11. One of the yahoo group emails noted that the fifth option is like fixmbr. Is it correct to assume that nothing in XXCLONE will affect the master boot record? A good product (again) Kan ! Dan [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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