Matt Smollinger just replied to this with greater precision than me. I use the 'copydisk' command exclusively because that is what I want to do, clone an entire disk to another disk. I don't copy partitions. So I stand corrected on that (thanks Matt!)
Bob Robert L Cochran wrote: > Well you are wrong. I've cloned, and booted to the cloned versions, of > NTFS systems (Windows XP et al) so many times that I know it works. I > don't need to use purchased software to do my cloning. I can > confidently clone any NTFS system from an existing hard drive, to a > larger hard drive, swap the drives, and boot to that larger drive > without the slightest problem. I've also cloned Linux systems and > those too boot just fine. The trick is to make sure that the cloned > drive is at least as big or bigger (in actual bytes) than the source > drive. > > You can also clone any NTFS filesystem which has been created as a > virtual machine, as in VMWare. You just copy the virual machine from > disk A to disk B, all you need is enough space. You may have to do a > bit of fine tuning and debugging but it works. when run under VMware. > > Bob Cochran > > > > David Balazic wrote: >> Hi! >> >> At http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/#filesystems it says : >> >> 5.1 Supported filesystems >> >> One of the questions arising a lot is "what filesystems does g4u >> support". The answer is: "all of them". g4u reads the disk bit by >> bit, starting from byte #0 to the end. It includes any MBR, boot >> record, partition table and the partitions themselves without further >> investigating the structure of the data stored in these partitions. >> >> For NTFS and Windows, this contradicts itself ;-) >> >> Problem 1 : >> If you copy a ntfs partition to another partition (let say on the >> same disk) bit by bit, it wont work (at all, or will report errors; >> in Windows). >> Namely, ntfs stores some data related to its position on the disk. >> After days of debugging this problem, I found a web site explaining >> the background and also how to fix it. Unfortunately, I don't >> remember the address of that site. Basically, the start postion of >> the partition must be stored somewhere in the ntfs system data >> sectors, expressed as bytes from the beginning of the disk (warning, >> writing from memory). >> >> Problem 2: >> If you clone bit by bit a disk to another and it contains Windows, >> the clone will probably not work (fail right in the boot loader). >> This is again, because the Windows boot system has a dependency on >> certain crap that you surely know, called "geometry". Which can be >> different for different disks. In this moment, I have no idea how to >> fix this. >> >> I believe this info would clear up a few things for users cloning >> Windows related disks and/or partitions. >> >> Regards, >> David >> >> PS: I would be great if you propagate this info to other implementors >> of free disk cloning programs, so they can inform they users. (and by >> that reduce traffix on their mailing lists; this of course should >> hold also for this list) >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------- >> This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft >> Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005. >> http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> >> _______________________________________________ >> g4u-help mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/g4u-help >> > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft > Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005. > http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > g4u-help mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/g4u-help > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ g4u-help mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/g4u-help
