Char Jackson wrote:
On Tue, 20 Mar 2012 20:59:32 -0600, "Bill in Co"
wrote:

Let's suppose you have a disk with 4 partitions on it. AFAIK, you can
either clone the disk (the entire disk), or choose which partitions to
image, but not image the whole disk in one image, and one simple operation,
unless I'm missing something.

Yes, you're missing something. When you choose to create an image, you
can select one partition, multiple partitions, all partitions, or the
entire disk.


Some irrelevant trivia. (This is for CHS compliant hard drives,
rather than a layout for an SSD. A good SSD layout, doesn't use
multiples of 63.)

MBR GRUB Boot Stage First Partition Starts
Sector 0 Sector 1..62 Sector 63... etc.

If you back up an operating system partition, that misses the MBR,
which has an initial element used for booting. There is 440 bytes
of code in there. For WinXP (this group), it can be put back
with "fixmbr c:" from the recovery console.

There might be other things hiding in sector 1 to 62, so you
have to be careful about those as well. If some OS needs something
from there, then again, failure to back that up, may require a
"repair" procedure to put it back. I understand one of the two
versions of GRUB for Linux, puts something in there. A tool
like "dd", for either Windows or Linux, can surgically back up
chunks like that, if you need it done.

Some OSes, have geometry or offset information stored in the
OS partition. The result of moving the partition, like offsetting
it a different amount on the new hard drive, may be a failure to boot.

So while you can fool around at the single partition level, you need
a good understanding if any other dependencies.

*******

Some partitioning or cloning software, is pretty clever. Let us
say WinXP is on the third partition on the disk. In boot.ini,
is an ARC, a specification of where the OS is located. If the
partition is restored into a different numbered partition
on the new disk, then boot.ini needs to be repaired.

I've experienced a case, where the partitioning tool knows it
needs to match the partition number, to avoid grief. But, in
the process of meeting that requirement, it swaps position.
It puts the third partition, in the second partition table
slot, and the second partition, in the third partition table
slot. Normally, most people expect the physical order of the
disk (partition 1,2,3,4) to be stored in order in the table
as well (slot 1,2,3,4). I got a rude surprise, when that was
no longer true. Fortunately, after recognizing why the stupid
tool did it that way, I was able to undo it with PTEDIT32 and
some editing of boot.ini. I put the entries back in order,
as well as changing the ARC in the boot.ini, and all was
"linear" again. The reason "linear" is important, is being
able to easily identify which partition is which, and not
delete or format the wrong one.

*******

So, if you didn't want any "rotten" experiences, there are
certain reasons for cloning an entire disk, from sector 0 to n.
If the new disk is larger than the old disk, no problem, you
can simply expand the fourth partition to use the slack space
at the end. I always put my "big file storage" area down the
end, and if the disk is cloned to a bigger drive (160, 250, 500
is the progression so far), it just means the junk storage area
down near the end gets bigger. Which suits me fine (as a junk
collector).

Paul