How to overlay a clean XP image to currently running C: XP

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irwin8

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Feb 1, 2014
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What I am trying to do and need advice with is:

With one large internal Hdd:in my laptop:

1. Set up my C: drive / partition, XP Pro, and all my software on this partition, without regard to effectiveness / “optimal-ness” of the setup, just to get this computer up and running quickly; then

2. Set up a second partition with an optimal install of XP and all my applications (and create an image of it); then

3. Replace the sloppy, initial C: partition installation with the with optimized XP & applications image residing in the second partition.

I was going to make an image of the sloppy initial C: partition (just in case I needed it later), then move the optimized partition to the C: partition, to take advantage of it’s faster location on the outer tracks of the hdd.

I was thinking I’d do this overall process by creating a dual-boot of XP.

So: I need advice -

Am I going about this properly?

How do I copy and overlay the second partition (which has the clean install of XP & my applications), on top of the C: partition, while the computer is still running? Doesn’t the system crash if I copy over the running version of XP with the optimized image?

I have used Macrium Free for imaging and was going to use a freeware partition manager. Are these the apps to use? Other recommendations?

Thanks for your help and thoughts in advance.
 
Solution
getochkn
If you do want to do this for an exercise, you need a good boot manager. I remember playing with this back in the day, and using a boot manager, it will automatically hide the one partition, make the other one active, etc when you choose at bootup which OS to boot. This way they are completely hidden from each other.

I do believe I ran into problems though doing what you want to do, and that is restore 1 partition to another. That is because Windows sometimes records thing in an a path different to what we see.

Example

C: is really disk(0)\partition(1) to windows and it access files that way upon bootup, it doesn't use C:

If your second windows install then becomes disk(0)\partition(2) and then you try to restore that to the...
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irwin8

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Thank you.

Learning about setting up systems & using partitions is a large piece of doing this exercise.

I think I can reassign my second partition as the active partition. That might be a fine solution.

 
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irwin8

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I'm practicing this in XP, before I buy a different computer and do a Win 7 install.

 
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irwin8

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Yeah, I may experiment a bit with Linux along the way in this exercise.................... thanks for the suggestion :)

 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Mar 16, 2013
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OK. But no need to install, install again 'properly', and then attempt to clone over top of the first install.

I read a LOT of comments in here, and the cloning operation often brings more hassles that it is worth.
'Usually' it works. But the fail is far more than just a fresh install.

Install.
If all is not OK, fresh install again, blowing away the old stuff during the install.
Repeat until it is right.
 
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getochkn

getochkn

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Jul 2, 2006
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If you do want to do this for an exercise, you need a good boot manager. I remember playing with this back in the day, and using a boot manager, it will automatically hide the one partition, make the other one active, etc when you choose at bootup which OS to boot. This way they are completely hidden from each other.

I do believe I ran into problems though doing what you want to do, and that is restore 1 partition to another. That is because Windows sometimes records thing in an a path different to what we see.

Example

C: is really disk(0)\partition(1) to windows and it access files that way upon bootup, it doesn't use C:

If your second windows install then becomes disk(0)\partition(2) and then you try to restore that to the first partition, windows is still going to try to load stuff from partition(2) even though it now resides on partition(1)

I do believe I was able to get around all that with manually editing files and such, but, really, it's such a PITA. If you do want to do it, then install the good OS first, then leave it, then use a boot manager, swap around active partitions, etc, then install your second OS as the second bootable partition and use that for your quick and get setup now. Then when you want to nuke that partition and start working on your good OS, it's already the first partition and you don't have to move anything around or try making 1 OS that has some hardcoded paths to partitions work on another.
 
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Solution
I

irwin8

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Feb 1, 2014
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Woa........................ now we're talking :)

Do you know of a good freeware boot manager? How about a freeware application that shows, graphically, where on a drive the different lettered partitions reside?

So, if I understand you correctly, when an imaging software makes an image of a partition, it actually doesn't use the drive letter in it's references, but the disk number and the partition number, and that putting an image from one bootable partition onto a different bootable partition, it might not work properly for that reason? Do I have that right?

In a different situation, where you have no choice but to mount a disk 0 part 1 image onto a different partition, say because the disk is damaged, that that image might not work properly?

Thank you for taking the time to help educate me :)

 
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