Problems with cloning, and the different disk-id's forcing new reactivation

On 11/15/2010 3:08 PM, bobster wrote:

I have been following this item for several days and am amazed at all
the "stuff" that is being proposed to solve the simple problem of
cloning one bootable hard disk to another.
If your only task is to clone one HD to another, Casper 6.0
(http://www.fssdev.com/products/casper/) does it quickly and flawlessly
every time, at least that has been my experience from V.4 to the current
V.6.0. It copies the total contents of the donor disk to the target disk
exactly and precisely.

Exactly and precisely? Not quite! Casper does not clone the disk
signature, it gives the clone a new signature and it modifies the values
at the clone's HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices key to reflect
the changes and assign the same drive letters to the new clone. So
Bill's problems of programs needing reactivation because of the
signature change would not have been resolved by Casper.

John

?================================================= ==============================================

Touche'

For my use, Casper has always provided a clone that would boot and provide
all of my apps exactly as on the donor HD. I confess to ignorance on the
detailed inner workings of Caspar, just know that it has worked flawlessly
for me in my situation. I obviously don't understand the reactivation issue
as I have never encountered it nor do I expect to in my usage.

Cheers

================================================== ===============================================


"John John - MVP" wrote in message ...

On 11/15/2010 3:08 PM, bobster wrote:

I have been following this item for several days and am amazed at all
the "stuff" that is being proposed to solve the simple problem of
cloning one bootable hard disk to another.
If your only task is to clone one HD to another, Casper 6.0
(http://www.fssdev.com/products/casper/) does it quickly and flawlessly
every time, at least that has been my experience from V.4 to the current
V.6.0. It copies the total contents of the donor disk to the target disk
exactly and precisely.

Exactly and precisely? Not quite! Casper does not clone the disk
signature, it gives the clone a new signature and it modifies the values
at the clone's HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices key to reflect
the changes and assign the same drive letters to the new clone. So
Bill's problems of programs needing reactivation because of the
signature change would not have been resolved by Casper.

John

bobster wrote:
?================================================= ==============================================


Touche'

For my use, Casper has always provided a clone that would boot and
provide all of my apps exactly as on the donor HD. I confess to
ignorance on the detailed inner workings of Caspar, just know that it
has worked flawlessly for me in my situation. I obviously don't
understand the reactivation issue as I have never encountered it nor do
I expect to in my usage.


I have used Acronis True Image Home (up to 2010) and Norton/Symantec
Ghost (later since the bad old days of DOS to 15) and I have yet to see
any of my HDs fail to boot up or that any my Microsoft Applications and
Adobe Applications fail to activate! I have used these images on
existing HDs as well as new replacement HDs and no problems found as yet!.

There is something odd about the OPs system (or that the images haven't
been done properly) if it has such problems resulting in all
applications requiring re-activations. It defeats the purpose of
"backups" of system drives. After all these cloning packages are mainly
for such things and such things only.

Tester wrote:
bobster wrote:
?================================================= ==============================================


Touche'

For my use, Casper has always provided a clone that would boot and
provide all of my apps exactly as on the donor HD. I confess to
ignorance on the detailed inner workings of Caspar, just know that it
has worked flawlessly for me in my situation. I obviously don't
understand the reactivation issue as I have never encountered it nor do
I expect to in my usage.


I have used Acronis True Image Home (up to 2010) and Norton/Symantec
Ghost (later since the bad old days of DOS to 15) and I have yet to see
any of my HDs fail to boot up or that any my Microsoft Applications and
Adobe Applications fail to activate! I have used these images on
existing HDs as well as new replacement HDs and no problems found as yet!.

There is something odd about the OPs system (or that the images haven't
been done properly) if it has such problems resulting in all
applications requiring re-activations. It defeats the purpose of
"backups" of system drives. After all these cloning packages are mainly
for such things and such things only.

Nothing odd about it, in retrospect.
As I said, a few (and only a few) applications make use of the disk-id (I've
only encountered a handful so far). So out of the hundreds I've got
installed, it's a relatively small number.

Well, I'm just saying my cloning util (clonemaxx) does copy the DiskID....

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)




"John John - MVP" wrote in message
...
On 11/15/2010 7:27 AM, Tim Meddick wrote:

I don't see why the software shouldn't copy the DiskID - it's just a
random number, as far as I can tell, that's assigned by the OS for
future reference. It's not like it's taken from the physical disk like
it's serial number, is it?

Windows NT operating systems cannot access disks without signatures, they
use signatures to identify disks and the Mount Manager uses signatures to
assign persistent drive letters. If a disk has no signature Windows will
write one to the disk. No two disks can have identical signatures, if
two disks have identical signatures Windows will change the signature on
one of them, this can lead to booting problems when the signature on the
boot disk is changed as the Mount Manager may assign a different letter
to the drive.

In view of the fact that no two disks can have the same signature it is
not unusual for cloning utilities to not copy the signature to the newly
cloned disk, different cloning utilities handle this differently in their
default settings and most of the better utilities have switches to copy
or not copy the signature, just like they have switches to copy or not
copy volatile files like the pagefile or hibernation file.

John

But how do you know that for sure (we're not talking about the volume id
here).

I forgot - is clonemax the one you mentioned before (the older basic one
that doesn't work with SATA drives?

Tim Meddick wrote:
Well, I'm just saying my cloning util (clonemaxx) does copy the DiskID....

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)




"John John - MVP" wrote in message
...
On 11/15/2010 7:27 AM, Tim Meddick wrote:

I don't see why the software shouldn't copy the DiskID - it's just a
random number, as far as I can tell, that's assigned by the OS for
future reference. It's not like it's taken from the physical disk like
it's serial number, is it?

Windows NT operating systems cannot access disks without signatures, they
use signatures to identify disks and the Mount Manager uses signatures to
assign persistent drive letters. If a disk has no signature Windows will
write one to the disk. No two disks can have identical signatures, if
two disks have identical signatures Windows will change the signature on
one of them, this can lead to booting problems when the signature on the
boot disk is changed as the Mount Manager may assign a different letter
to the drive.

In view of the fact that no two disks can have the same signature it is
not unusual for cloning utilities to not copy the signature to the newly
cloned disk, different cloning utilities handle this differently in their
default settings and most of the better utilities have switches to copy
or not copy the signature, just like they have switches to copy or not
copy volatile files like the pagefile or hibernation file.

John

Because every time I restart my PC, after cloning one drive to the other,
XP flashes an errormessage saying that settings have been updated and do I
want to re-start my computer - I take this to be a sign that Windows has
discovered two IDE fixed disks with the exact same DiskID and duly re-sets
the one that was recently changed!

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)




"Bill in Co" wrote in message
m...
But how do you know that for sure (we're not talking about the volume id
here).

I forgot - is clonemax the one you mentioned before (the older basic one
that doesn't work with SATA drives?

Tim Meddick wrote:
Well, I'm just saying my cloning util (clonemaxx) does copy the
DiskID....

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)




"John John - MVP" wrote in message
...
On 11/15/2010 7:27 AM, Tim Meddick wrote:

I don't see why the software shouldn't copy the DiskID - it's just a
random number, as far as I can tell, that's assigned by the OS for
future reference. It's not like it's taken from the physical disk like
it's serial number, is it?

Windows NT operating systems cannot access disks without signatures,
they
use signatures to identify disks and the Mount Manager uses signatures
to
assign persistent drive letters. If a disk has no signature Windows
will
write one to the disk. No two disks can have identical signatures, if
two disks have identical signatures Windows will change the signature
on
one of them, this can lead to booting problems when the signature on
the
boot disk is changed as the Mount Manager may assign a different letter
to the drive.

In view of the fact that no two disks can have the same signature it is
not unusual for cloning utilities to not copy the signature to the
newly
cloned disk, different cloning utilities handle this differently in
their
default settings and most of the better utilities have switches to copy
or not copy the signature, just like they have switches to copy or not
copy volatile files like the pagefile or hibernation file.

John

Well, and that *may* indeed be the case, but I guess I don't know for a fact
that that means (or proves) that the disk-id was necessarily cloned.

Tim Meddick wrote:
Because every time I restart my PC, after cloning one drive to the other,
XP flashes an errormessage saying that settings have been updated and do I
want to re-start my computer - I take this to be a sign that Windows has
discovered two IDE fixed disks with the exact same DiskID and duly re-sets
the one that was recently changed!

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)




"Bill in Co" wrote in message
m...
But how do you know that for sure (we're not talking about the volume id
here).

I forgot - is clonemax the one you mentioned before (the older basic one
that doesn't work with SATA drives?

Tim Meddick wrote:
Well, I'm just saying my cloning util (clonemaxx) does copy the
DiskID....

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)




"John John - MVP" wrote in message
...
On 11/15/2010 7:27 AM, Tim Meddick wrote:

I don't see why the software shouldn't copy the DiskID - it's just a
random number, as far as I can tell, that's assigned by the OS for
future reference. It's not like it's taken from the physical disk like
it's serial number, is it?

Windows NT operating systems cannot access disks without signatures,
they
use signatures to identify disks and the Mount Manager uses signatures
to
assign persistent drive letters. If a disk has no signature Windows
will
write one to the disk. No two disks can have identical signatures, if
two disks have identical signatures Windows will change the signature
on
one of them, this can lead to booting problems when the signature on
the
boot disk is changed as the Mount Manager may assign a different letter
to the drive.

In view of the fact that no two disks can have the same signature it is
not unusual for cloning utilities to not copy the signature to the
newly
cloned disk, different cloning utilities handle this differently in
their
default settings and most of the better utilities have switches to copy
or not copy the signature, just like they have switches to copy or not
copy volatile files like the pagefile or hibernation file.

John

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On Nov 15, 8:14*pm, John John - MVP wrote:
On 11/15/2010 3:08 PM, bobster wrote: