Yet another XP/Vista dual boot issue

I've scoured the related threads on such dual boot issues in this forum, and my actual situation appears not to be exactly addressed.

I have a dual boot system, with XP in the primary partition (50GB), and with Vista in the first logical partition (150GB). XP sees itself naturally as being in C:, and sees Vista as in E: (absurdly seeing the CD/DVD drive as D: ), whereas Vista sees itself as C: and XP being in D:.

What I want to do at the moment is NOT ONLY to enable myself to boot straight into Vista, and NOT ONLY to clear out XP, but also to move my Vista installation to the physical position where XP is at the moment, so that it is on the outside of the disk and would have better disk performance - the same reason that good HD defragmenters put the most-used files on the outside of disk or at least of the respective partition.

This isn't by any means essential for me to do of course, and one option would be simply to use EasyBCD to enable me to boot straight into Vista (which I've tried and it works fine) and simply clear the true C: drive (where XP is at the moment) of all files except the essential Vista boot files, which I understand would be currently resident there, and simply use that partition as a data one.

I have an old Powerquest (i.e. pre-Norton and thus presumably unsupported) copy of Partition Magic 8.0, which is not wise to try to use in Vista because of compatibility problems, but which I've installed under XP, and I've checked in its documentation to see if what I want to do with it would be possible, and it looks as though it wouldn't be, because the user guide sternly warns against trying to merge partitions which contain operating systems.

One 'fudge' solution that looks as though it would be perfectly doable would be to clear out all the files in the primary partition apart from the essential Vista boot files, then shrink the primary partition to a really tiny size just for those files, and move or expand the whole Vista partition up to fill the free space. However, that is untidy and I'd much rather have Vista actually in the primary partition, fully at the 'front' of the physical drive.

One practical problem about that would be that once I'd cleared out XP I wouldn't be able to run Partition Magic from Windows, and I'm not sure to what extent I'd be able to carry out the necessary functions from PM in DOS booted from a rescue disk.

Another possibility which occurs to me - and indeed could well be safer because the original Vista installation wouldn't be tampered with at all until / unless the change had been made successfully - would be to first clear out the XP installation, leaving the essential Vista boot files in place, and to do a drive image copy of my Vista installation, which apparently occupies only about 17 GB, into my 50 GB primary partition, and then, once I'd established that Vista was operational there (or at least made some adjustments so that it was), then to clear the original Vista installation from the partition where it is now, and I could then shrink that (then) empty partition or delete it to allow the primary partition to be expanded to a generous size for Vista to operate in.

Presumably it would be a simple matter, once I had the copy of my Vista installation in the primary partition, to get myself booting into the primary partition copy rather than the logical partition copy? - Most likely by use of the Vista installation DVD and using the fixmbr option or something similar?

Would there be any dangers about trying this? Or am I being too simplistic about this and contemplating doing something that couldn't work?

Of course there's always the old fall-back of simply wiping the whole lot (after having transferred out my settings - my data is almost all on other logical partitions) and doing a new Vista installation in the primary partition, though naturally I'd prefer to avoid that as I have a lot of installed programs and it could be quite a lengthy business getting that whole setup up and running again.

I'd really appreciate properly informed and considered suggestions. Many thanks.

Kind regards,

Yes there would be some dangers trying to change to your ideal situation, with Vista in a Primary partition at the start of the disk. It should be possible but there will be quite a few steps to it, so it might actually be faster and easier to start again from scratch.

One problem is that Vista doesn't like haiving the start possition of its partition moved on the disk. It doesn't mind if you resize by changing only the end position. That's because something in its startup files points to an absolute sector address on the disk instead of just pointing to a file name or a relative sector address. That can be fixed by doing a boot repair from the Vista DVD after you move its partition.

Another problem is that Vista is in a logical drive inside an extended partition. That makes it a more complicated job (but still possible) to resize and rearrange the partitions.

A few suggestions:
Don't try to use Windows disk management console, which is very limited.

Don't use Partition Magic. It's not compatible with Vista (can't run in Vista) and even if you run it in XP or from a bootable CD, it's not compatible with partitions which were created by Vista. Up until Vista, all Windows versions including XP, and DOS etc, made partitions start and end on track boundaries. Vista's disk management and also its partitioning functions when run from the Vista DVD break that tradition.

Many non-Microsoft partition managers have been updated to cope with Vista's weird partitions but Partition Magic hasn't. If you run it in XP or from a CD, and show it a disk with Vista type partitions it will just crash if you're lucky, or if you're less lucky it won't crash and will show wrong info and do damage if you let it make any changes.
PartitionMagic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So either use the latest stable version of gparted, which is free and reliable, or buy Paragon Partition Manager or Acronis Disk Director, which are both less epensive and more up to date than PMagic. They have more features and abilities than gparted.

Your message shows you have a good understanding of most of the issues involved.

As you are probably aware, you can have up to 4 primary partitions on one hard disk.-- or up to 3 primaries and one extended partition which can contain any number of logical drives.
Primary partitions can be used for data only as well as for operating systems. There's no good reason for making logical drives unless you want more than 4 partitions. They are more complicated and cause problems if you need to modify things later.

If you only have up to 4 partitions in total, I would prefer to first convert them all to primaries. Then it will be much easier to move and resize them however you wish.
You can convert them quite easily in Paragon.
It will be more difficult in gparted which doesn't have wizards. Maybe you would have to make some unallocated apace outside the extended partition and then move the Vista partition out of the extended partition into that unallocated space. I've never tried that in gparted because I avoid having logical drives like the plague.
GParted -- Documentation

Alternatively this might be an easy way to do it if you have backup copies of everything on another hard disk.
Save an image or copy of the Vista partition onto another HD.
Delete all partitions on the main HD.
Restore Vista from the image to the main HD, placing it at the start as a primary partition. Adjust its size if you wish. Make up to 3 more primaries in the rest of the unallocated space, whatever sizes you want.

Whatever method you use, you will need to fix Vista's boot, as the last step:
While only the main disk containing your moved Vista partition is connected in the PC, boot the Vista DVD, go through the Language settings page, then on the next screen clcik "Repair..." at the bottom. Get it to do a startup repair.

I can't guarantee any of the above will work so be prepared that you might possibly have to reinstall Vista and have backups of everything important on another HD or DVDs.

I should add;
If you want to be sure the Vista DVD's startup repair will write its startup code on the Vista partition (which is a good idea) you need to set the Vista partition as "Active" beforehand, which you can do in any good partition manager.

Any one of the primary partitions can be set Active. That is the partition which will be booted by the MBR code. Some partition managers, such as gparted, call that "setting the partition's Boot Flag on" others call it "setting the partition active". Same thing.

XP's or Vista's boot repairers, or their installers, must write some starup code on the currently Active partition on whatever hard disk is set in BIOS as the boot hard disk, to ensure they will get booted.

Very many thanks for all that, 'Old Bloke'! :D What a pleasure to be greeted first thing in the morning by such a clearly informed answer showing a clear understanding of the issues involved - something very different from so many answers I've seen in various forums relating to situations similar to my own. Actually last night I could get little sleep as my mind was mulling over something close to the method that you're suggesting, of using an intermediate drive image copy done onto another HDD. This does look to be the most likely best option to try (as clarified by you), and I most appreciate your reinforcement over that.

My HD configuration is actually one primary partition plus one extended partition containing 6 logical partitions, the first of which is the Vista one, and a bit of unallocated space at the end, so on the basis of what you say about the virtues of keeping to primary partitions as far as possible, I look forward to actually repartitioning the whole HDD, though I couldn't avoid having the fourth partition extended and containing a few logical partitions if I am to keep my present data storage structure (which does make sense).

Anyway, I'll ditch Partition Magic and get one of the partition managers you suggest. Also, one of my first steps will be to get a 500GB external HDD, which I've noted would be inexpensive and would comfortably take a full disk image backup and any individual partition images. I'll report back once I've got this fixed (or have further questions prior to getting started). Thanks again for the time you must have spent on your clearly very considered reply.

Kind regards,

Philip Goddard said:

. Also, one of my first steps will be to get a 500GB external HDD, which I've noted would be inexpensive and would comfortably take a full disk image backup and any individual partition images. I'll report back once I've got this fixed (or have further questions prior to getting started). Thanks again for the time you must have spent on your clearly very considered reply.

Kind regards,

Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback

Come to think of it, if you're buying a new HD you could consider using that as the internal, if it's as fast as your current internal HD. (I'm assuming this isn't a laptop so it's easy to change HDs)

Connect the old one as an external and the new one internally.
Boot a partition manager on a bootable CD.
Copy your Vista partition as a primary partition at the start of the new internal HD. Run Vista DVD's boot repair, so it can adjust to the new position of the system partition. See if it boots OK.
If Vista doesn't boot OK like that, you still have your old HD unchanged. At least you know it boots Vista, although not in a very efficient manner.

If the new HD does boot Vista OK from its new position as the first primary, you can then gradually copy your partitions to the new internal HD, some as primaries.

When I say "boot a PM on a bootable CD" I'm referring to either Gparted, which can only run from a CD, or the Paragon or Acronis PM, which can both run either in Windows or from a CD. To make their CD, you first install the program in Windows. Then run it in Windows and pick "Make bootable media" from the file menu.

Thank you again. Yes, that's a neat idea, and, once one has thought of it, glaringly obvious! However, I don't think I'd do that (i.e. swap drives), because I'll want the external drive sitting on top of my system unit - my computer system dominating my inadequately sized living room - and I'd want it to be looking reasonably neat, as an ex-internal drive wouldn't. On the face of it just a cosmetic issue, but nonetheless important in keeping my living environment as harmonious as possible for me.

Actually, one more related query - do you have any particular recommendation of drive image copy software, which would allow me to copy particular partitions from the drive image (on the external drive) to my specified partitions on the target drive? I have an old copy of Norton Ghost, which I think theoretically would do the job, but I have heard things being said about its being unreliable and buggy for some users, and so I'd want to use a currently most-recommended utility for such a critical purpose.

Philip Goddard said:

Thank you again. Yes, that's a neat idea, and, once one has thought of it, glaringly obvious! However, I don't think I'd do that (i.e. swap drives), because I'll want the external drive sitting on top of my system unit - my computer system dominating my inadequately sized living room - and I'd want it to be looking reasonably neat, as an ex-internal drive wouldn't. On the face of it just a cosmetic issue, but nonetheless important in keeping my living environment as harmonious as possible for me.

Click to expand...

Oh I see. You're planning on getting a smart looking external disk, not just an ordinary hard disk plus an adapter for USB, in which case you could easily switch which is internal or external.

Philip Goddard said:

Actually, one more related query - do you have any particular recommendation of drive image copy software, which would allow me to copy particular partitions from the drive image (on the external drive) to my specified partitions on the target drive? I have an old copy of Norton Ghost, which I think theoretically would do the job, but I have heard things being said about its being unreliable and buggy for some users, and so I'd want to use a currently most-recommended utility for such a critical purpose.

Click to expand...

There's a big difference between copying partitions as partitions into unallocated space (also called cloning) versus saving them as image files into an existing partition (about half the size because they are compressed).

For copying them, the partition managers already mentioned are good.

For saving as backup images, the Paragon and Acronis partition manager programs have some features for doing this but not quite as full featured or as many options as specialised imaging programs.

I like the free Seagate DiskWizard. For licensing reasons, it only runs if at least one of the connected hard disks is either Seagate or Maxtor brand.

Otherwise you could consider the best known one: Acronis TrueImage Home v11 for $50.

Actually DiskWizard is a slightly reduced edition of AcronisTI, which has a few more features. I have used both and did not find any features in AcronisTI which I really needed and which aren't in the free DiskWizard.
AcronisTI adds the Secure Zone idea, which I avoid using because you don't need it when saving images onto a separate disk, and in forums I've seen more problems reported about the secure zone than any other aspect of Acronis TI.

You would only get DiskWizard or AcronisTI as well as a partition manager because of long term considerations. They are the best program to use for your ongoing backup needs - much better than the shadow and imaging feature you get with Vista Ultimate and Business.

One nice feature in DiskWizard and TI is that you can mount any of your images. Then it becomes a drive letter in Windows, so you can copy individual files out of it using Explorer instead of only being able to restore an entire partition as all or nothing.

Edit added:
There's a lot of overlap between the imagers and the partitioning programs. The imaging apps can copy a partition or clone a whole disk, as well as saving images.

'Old Boy', this really won't do, you know - you're a real undisguised blessing!

Well, actually meanwhile my own web research brought me to Acronis Migrate Easy 7.0, and it appears to have all the functionality I'd want for the whole process, at a very reasonable price ($40), though it looks not to be a drive image archiving utility, so for that purpose (i.e. for once-in a while whole system backups rather than the current task, which is effectively a double migration) I'd want an additional utility - though that is really a different matter from the issue I've raised in this topic.

Are you aware of any likely downside for me of using Acronis Migrate Easy for my transfer?

...Later:
Actually I think you can ignore this one, as on looking very carefully at what the programs do and what my current and possible future requirements are, I've settled on the Acronis Disk Director Suite. I'll probably get True Image very soon as well.

Philip Goddard said:

Are you aware of any likely downside for me of using Acronis Migrate Easy for my transfer?

Click to expand...

No I can't.
I'm not familiar with Migrate easy, so I'll leave it to you to compare features between the various Acronis products. There is a huge amount of overlap. I mean if you listed all the features from 1 to 50, their Disk Director might cover items 1 to 30, TrueImage can do items 10 to 40, and Migrate Easy can do items 20 to 50. For example all three of them can copy a partition from one disk to another.

Paragon put buyers in the same predicament as Acronis does - too many similar programs with too much overlap and nothing which quite covers the lot.

I think this job could be done with any of those tools, especially as you will have a new spare HD for shuffling space.

Personally, I wouldn't buy a program to do just one job, without considering future usefulness, such as being able to repair accidentally deleted partitions, do backups and restores, etc.

So I would just get Paragon Partition Manager Pro (or Acronis Disk Director) because it's so multi-purpose -- plus the free Seagate DiskWizard (or maybe Acronis TrueImage) because it's convenient for regular backups. That would be a good toolkit for every partitioning and imaging job you might face in the future, as well as being able to do your current job.

Edit:
I wrote the above, then saw your added last paragraph. Seems we reached the same conclusion

Right, now it's report-back time, when all is revealed! :D

Well, I spent all of Saturday until late, and a few hours from very early on Sunday, preparing for and then carrying out the dreaded deed. I'd had a last minute hunch and purchased a copy of True Image in addition to Disk Director which I'd already just got. As it happened, on reading True Image's help file I found that I should be able easily to carry out the whole process with True Image alone.

Much of my preparation time was in doing full disk integrity checks (including full surface scan to be absolutely sure that everything was okay) from the bootable CD, and when I did the image copy 'for real', again I did it from the bootable CD, to ensure that Windows wouldn't get in the way and cause important files to get missed out.

According to the True Image help file (the user guide is completely unavailable), when copying an image file to a non-empty disk, True Image actually deletes all the partitions there, then enabling you to set the size and position of each of the new target partitions. However, it didn't work quite like that, for it became clear that True Image was going to try to write my system into the extant partitions on the internal drive. So, I didn't really mind, because all I had to do was to back out of that and go over to Disk Director (also on the same bootable CD) and delete all the partitions on the target drive. Then True Image did enable me to set the partition sizes that I wanted, and the restoration went ahead, with the Vista partition now being written to C:, my first primary partition.

According to the help file, when writing an operating system to an active primary partition, True Image would automatically enable the OS to boot. Great - this really was going to be a piece of cake! -- Except that actually I was very, very nervous about this because while the preparations had been under way I'd researched more on the Internet and found that although some users had absolutely no problems with True Image, a disturbingly high proportion of user reviews and posts in forums were from people who'd had very major trouble with True Image.

Anyway, when 'crunch time' came and I restarted without the CD in the drive, I got a nice little message - "NTLDR is missing".

Okay, I shrugged my shoulders and ran the startup repair from my Vista DVD. Indeed I had to run that twice more before Windows would start - but start, it did! Hooray! Alleluia! -- Except that my custom boot and welcome screen photos didn't appear, and instead the standard Vista backgrounds displayed, and then I had to wait a little while Windows told me it was preparing my desktop - as though this was a new installation, which of course it wasn't at all. And I waited and waited...

Eventually a nasty-looking message box came up, telling me that Windows couldn't access some file, allegedly because it probably didn't have permission to do so. Barmy! So I rebooted and tried again. The same, except I got no error message and eventually tried a Ctl-Alt-Del. That actually brought up the Ctl-Alt-Del screen including the Swich User option, so I was able to logon. Great! -- Exept that then the screen was just a pale blue with nothing there.

Being a little stressed by then, I omitted to try one obvious thing - see if I could start Windows properly in safe mode - and went back to the Vista DVD. Time for an upgrade / repair reinstallation! No real problem! -- Except that on the screen where Vista Install offers the choice of an upgrade / repair installation and a completely new installation the former option was disabled, with an explanation that that type of installation was not available when starting from the booted Vista DVD; it had to be initiated within the running Windows installation to be upgraded / repaired. Ouch.

Reminds me of that song, "There's a hole in my bucket"!

So, that's why I'm now slowly and progressively now rebuilding my whole software installation within a completely new Vista installation. True Image had clearly, despite all my precautions, failed to produce a competely faithful "true image" of my original Vista installation, despite its having done the copy outside of Windows. So-called verification of the image file was actually of limited use, because it was clear that only readability of files was being checked - they were not being compared with anything. I can say that with confidence, because during 'verification' only the external drive containing the disk image was busy.

However, despite that fiasco, I do feel that for me True Image is an excellent program for a wide range of backup jobs, and, as far as I can tell, it copied all my data partitions perfectly - but I'd never trust a disk image copying program again for transfer of a whole working OS - and I'd say that Acronis are being extremely irresponsible in encouraging people to put their trust in such software for such a critical operation (albeit with a caution to backup everything before proceeding).

One little plus point in this not-completely-unexpected outcome is that my original Vista installation was slightly 'broken' in a few small ways, and so far those malfunctions have not reappeared.

Anyway, many thanks, 'Old Bloke' for your assistance.

Kind regards,

I'm sorry to hear you've had such a hard time Philip

"but I'd never trust a disk image copying program again for transfer of a whole working OS"

Transferring a system to a new hard disk is supposed to be one of the core features of DiskWizard or AcronisTI, so it should be able to do it.

You were trying to do a different kind of job from the usual transfer, changing your Vista OS from being in a logical drive to being in a primary partition at the start of the disk. Also changing from an arrangement where Vista is booted indirectly via boot files on a different partition to booting directly from boot files on its own partition.

Perhaps TI should be programmed to cope with such an unusual kind of restore from the image on your external drive, but from your experience it seems it isn't.

At the stage where you discovered the system restored to the internal disk with changes to partitioning wasn't working, you could have tried a less challenging kind of restore from the image on the external -- just restoring the internal disk to the state it was in originally so you would be back to square one with a working system. Then you could have tried an alternative method, using Disk Director instead of TrueImage.
There's not much point going into different ways you could have done it now (with benefit of hind sight) because you are into setting up a fresh OS.

At least you should be able to retrieve useful stuff from your old system in the new one, by mounting the image which is on the external disk using TrueImage. That way you can copy individual files from it in Explorer, such as your mailbox.

I hope your new OS goes well
Alan

Thank you, Alan, for your kind words. Actually, as one could deduce from what's on my Self Realization website, I'm very much one to see any glass of water as being part full rather than part empty, so I myself have no real regrets about how things have worked out, and am now quite enjoying rebuilding the whole setup (it'll probably take a week or more to complete). I've learnt a lot, and actually appear to have Vista operating less buggily than before. Yes, if things had gone as I'd intended, I'd have time at the moment for other things, but at least now I have a greatly superior backup system and, with all this experience behind me, would almost certainly manage any future system transfer much more effectively.