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Number   :  6762
Date     :  2004-01-06
Author   :  Dan Anderson
Subject  :  Re: XXCLONE and MBRs
Size(KB) :  2


Hi James,

The understanding is that the xp partition that xxclone creates is intended to be a fully valid XP operating system, and the XP system will be equally valid regardless of whether it has been created on a primary or logical partition or which hard drive it is located on. I agree that there are advantages to having a backup on a second hard drive but that is not the limit of xxclone's capabilities.

The availability of an option switch does not displace the consideration of whether Kan may decide that it is preferable to have a default approach of not overwriting a pre-existing MBR on the hard drive that contains the source boot.ini. It is good that Kan's team will be looking at over-write compatibility with BootMagic's approach, but there may be other equally valid software that other users are using (e.g. for dual boots with Linux) and it may add unnecessary complexity if there is no compelling need for xxclone to take on the role of overwriting pre-existing MBRs on the hard drive that contains the source boot.ini.

Dan Anderson 


============================================================
From: "J. Merrill" 
Date: 2004/01/06 Tue PM 01:00:46 EST
To: xxcopy@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [xxcopy] XXCLONE and MBRs

At 08:30 AM 1/3/2004, Dan Anderson wrote (in part)
>However, however, however, when the source and destination partitions are on
>the same hard drive, maybe in that situation the default should be that the
>MBR is not affected by running XXCLONE.

Whether your suggestion is reasonable or not isn't clear to me. Someone using an alternative boot manager should be able to specify the parameter (I believe it's /BC0) that tells XXCLONE not to overwrite the target partition's MBR. 

However, I hope you (and anyone else cloning to another partition on the same hard drive) understand that the scenario in question is NOT what XXCLONE was designed to address. If you use another partition on the same physical disk as the clone target, then you are unprotected should the disk fail. The main idea of XXCLONE is to make it virtually trivial to continue working, without almost any delay (particularly if your BIOS allows you to change the boot order of the installed hard drives) should your main disk fail.

I understand that there are situations where cloning to the same physical disk can help you recover from software-only problems that have afflicted your main partition, if you discover the problem before you clone the contents of the damaged partition. But XXCLONE's design was based on the primary scenario of helping you easily survive a failed disk -- the fact that it sometimes will let you recover from a software failure is a somewhat accidental benefit.


J. Merrill / Analytical Software Corp



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