Tips on creating bootable backup of Vista

Disk backup and restore, partition imaging and cloning, and drive copy using R-Drive Image.
Forum rules
Discussion on the R-Drive Image software
traycer
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed Nov 26, 2008 5:15 pm

Tips on creating bootable backup of Vista

Post by traycer » Wed Nov 26, 2008 5:36 pm

Hi all,

I've been a very satisfied user of R-Drive Image for over a year now. I recently upgraded to 4.4, and had also recently switched from a WD Raptor 74GB boot drive to a WD 640GB boot drive (using just the outer 80 GB or so). So far so good.

What I've done in the past was clone my boot partition to another drive, fiddled with Vista's bootrec.exe /fixmbr and /fixboot to get the cloned drive bootable, and was happy with that. Now, however, I can't see to get the same procedure to work.

My 640GB drive is divided into three partitions: 16GB, 80GB and 500GB. The first partition (16GB) is actually configured to be drive D: under Windows Vista, and where Vista puts its pagefile. Nothing else is on that partition. The second partition (80GB) is C:, where the usual OS and apps live. The third partition (500GB) is used for whatever miscellaneous files I don't have a place for elsewhere.

If I attempt to clone just the second 80GB partition over to the 74GB Raptor drive (resizing the partition in the process... there are only about 30 GB of files), I cannot get the Raptor to boot. Normally, I would expect an error about "disk read failure" or "unable to read ntldr", etc. But even after a /fixmbr and /fixboot from the Vista install DVD, nothing happens when I try to boot from the Raptor. The PC's BIOS screen shows up, the usual device probes happen, and then when it would be time for the boot loader to kick in... nothing happens. The screen does not update, there is no further drive activity, nothing. The systems is not locked up, however... it seems that it is waiting for something to happen.

In theory, this should work. I should be able to clone the files from my live boot drive onto a backup drive, and boot from that. I'm wondering whether it is the size difference (going from larger to smaller), or the non-standard partition order (D: first, then C:), or that the OS partition isn't first on the drive (although that works fine on the 640GB drive), or what...

Anyone have any ideas?

traycer
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed Nov 26, 2008 5:15 pm

Re: Tips on creating bootable backup of Vista

Post by traycer » Sat Dec 13, 2008 12:55 pm

So, nobody else does this? Am I the only person who uses Drive Image to backup just the boot partition, rather than the entire boot drive? Or am I the only person who expects that a backup of their boot drive is actually bootable? :D

Post Reply