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Number : 10807 Date : 2005-03-18 Author : Kan Yabumoto Subject : Re: How does xxclone copy the registry? Size(KB) : 3
Dan Anderson wrote: >At 3/17/2005 04:41 PM, Dan Anderson wrote: > > >I'm not the expert Des, but the xxcloning process includes a second step > >that is carried out after booting for the first time into the clone-copy of > >the original partition. Since that second step apparently (I think) cannot > >be carried out unless the original partition is still read-accessible from > >the clone-copy partition, I assume it is at that stage that the copying of > >the registry file from the original partition is completed. As you can see > >I'm guessing a bit here, pending confirmation from the experts. > > > >Dan > >I don't know how xxcopy copies the registry but it does not need the >original partition. I know because my C: drive was completely corrupted >and I was still able to boot off my secondary drive and restore my C: drive. > >I'm very interested to know how the xxclone completes the process myself ;) > >rotaiv Here's our trade secret. In nearly all cases, XXCLONE does all the work in the first step which includes: 1. file transfer (equivalent to XXCOPY C:\ D:\ /CLONE/YY) 2. a special registry transfer step (probably the same technique that ERUNT uses but I have used ERUNT only a few times and never tried to reverse-engineer.) 3. boot-related job (MBR, bootsector, BOOT.INI) 4. swapping the drive letter assignments 5. preparation for auto-start after the reboot. When the new volume is booted, XXCLONE5.BAT in the StartUp directory will be automatically executed. XXCLONE then checks a few things (most notably the registry and the drive-letter assignment). If everything is OK, it will remove the auto-reboot mechanism and declares a success. When the drive-letter assignment is not done right, then, it will performs a double-boot procedure to correct that. The above scenario is for the great majority of the cases. But, in Win NT4 (and other cases where the system registry transfer does not succeed), XXCLONE will resort to the dual-reboot procedure where the registry transfer will be done in a awkward multi-boot sequence. It took months to come up with this scheme --- for a long time, we were under the impression that Microsoft deliberately made our attempt to write such a tool like XXCLONE impossible. But, once we figured out much of the necessary conditions for a successful system boot, everything seems logical. To be honest, we do not fully comprehend what triggers the annoying "scandisk" step at the beginning of a reboot. It is probably some form of "checksum-like" data item that flags theh necessity for a scandisk. When it comes to the competing (disk-imaging) approaches, it is my estimation that they have even more complicated tasks to deal with and I don't think they have all figured out everything. I would not even think of doing sector-by- sector cloning that involves two different partitioning especially when the volume size will be reduced. Although many people may think that we spend a lot of time studying our competitor's products, we just don't have time to learn them. It's not so much as designer's ego but mostly the time factor. In order to really study a product, you have to become completely familiar with the product and then, would have to conduct time-consuming experiments. We just do not have time to invest on such a task. Besides, when we become too familiar with the product, we may be biased in such a way our fresh look at the problem at hand will be negatively influenced. We rather try to rely on our own gut feeling of how to tackle the problem. Since our company do not have a budget to promote products, if our product is similar to a well- known product such as Norton Ghost, our product will have no chance for success. So, we try to come up with something out of a combination of everything we know and things that learn from the Internet and other people. Kan Yabumoto
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