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Startup programs on cloned D backup drive is active when booting, can that be stopped?

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  • Boot
  • Windows 7
Last response: in Windows 7
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October 9, 2014 1:47:05 PM

How I keep my systems backed up is to have 2 identical sized drives in the computer, the 2nd one is an exact clone of the C: boot drive. Nightly I sync changed documents, images, etc. from C to D. I might not make a fresh clone for 6 months to a year, there's no need to. If anything goes wrong with the C drive, a virus, bad software installation, hard drive failure, I just boot up into the 2nd drive and I'm back up and running in 2 minutes and can fix or replace the bad drive. The system works perfect for me, and I've never had to use any special boot loader.

Now with Windows 7 though and UEFI partitions, it seems that the D drive is also active on boot up. If I change file placements in the Start Menu on D for instance, the change also immediately takes place on the C drive Start Menu. Some programs start up 2 copies on booting up because of this, a few programs misbehave because of this.

How can I stop that from happening so D is treated simply like an additional storage drive on boot? I know I can hide the D Drive with other software and that probably will work for booting up, but I need to sync new files nightly to it, so that's not a solution for me at all.

Thanks for any suggestions.

More about : startup programs cloned backup drive active booting stopped

a c 363 $ Windows 7
October 10, 2014 6:25:55 AM

Put the backup drive in to an external hard drive enclosure.
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October 10, 2014 7:53:43 AM

There must be another way than that though. While I can see it probably would work, it would be inconvenient to have to make sure I remember to turn the external drive on when it's time for backups. Which means changing their time run from the middle of the night to when I know I'd be around to monitor it, since I wouldn't want to leave on a enclosed drive 24/7 like I do my computers. Nor do I want the clutter of having an external drive.

There must be a way, or maybe a way to install Windows 7 without the EFI partition, I think that's the cause of the entire problem.

Edit: Actually I'm not sure the cloning process will work to a USB drive where it will be bootable. And if it did, I'm pretty sure I couldn't reclone from the external to the internal drive to fix the issue. If I have to take apart the computer to be swapping drives in and out, that defeats the purpose of how easy this setup makes recovery.
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