Partition Fustration

"Dave" wrote in message
om...
Partition Fustration

I'm ready to pull my hair out, trying to figure out how to partation a
disk into 3 bootable partions. Any help would be appreciated. Here's
my config:

Drive 1 Primary Part 1 XP Home (NTFS) (fresh install, no other OS on
system)
Drive 1 Primary Part 2 Empty
Drive 1 Primary Part 3 Empty
Drive 1 Primary Part 4 Not configured

Drive 2 Primary Part 1 D: (Data files) (NTFS)
Drive 2 Primary Part 2 Not configured
Drive 2 Primary Part 3 Not configured
Drive 2 Primary Part 4 Not configured


I want to be able to

(1) backup my primary XP Home Partition to a file at any time to a
compressed file (to save space)

(2) be able to restore the compressed partition data to the original
partition, as well as to either of the two empty partitions on Drive 1

(3) be able to boot to any of the XP Home partitions I have available
on Drive 1, but keep the other XP Home partitions hidden, while being
able to access D: regardless of which partition I booted from.

Questions:

(A) Is there a program that will do what I want (Partition Magic?)
(DriveImage?)?

BootItNG from www.terabyteunlimited.com

(B) I understand the purpose of the boot.ini file, but what is not
clear is if, after restoring the XP home partition to Drive1/Part2, do
I have to change the boot.ini in THAT partition, or just the boot.ini
in the Drive1/Part1 partition???

You should be able to setup your boot.ini files once you configure
BootItNG.

I'm amy tring to avoid the problem of using the XP boot manager and
getting to the instance of XP on Drive 1/Partition 2, but the two
other partitions with XP are active and are assigned drive letters!

You can't avoid the XP boot manager but you can simplify it using BING.
You can hide the other OS partitions using BING so that they are not
seen when you boot a particular partition. BING also includes partition
imaging capability.

It all seemed so simple in Win 98.......

Excuse me? When did any 9x OS have a multi-boot loader like XP has? Of
course a multi-OS boot loader like the NTloader is going to be a little
more complicated than 9x, but that is what happens when you add
features.

--
Kent W. England, Microsoft MVP for Windows

"Kent W. England [MVP]" wrote in message ...

(B) I understand the purpose of the boot.ini file, but what is not
clear is if, after restoring the XP home partition to Drive1/Part2, do
I have to change the boot.ini in THAT partition, or just the boot.ini
in the Drive1/Part1 partition???

You should be able to setup your boot.ini files once you configure
BootItNG.


I'll give it a try. Are you saying that I'll be able to use BING to
hide partition 1 and boot to partition 2, THEN I will be able to
change the boot.ini of Partition 2 partition so it appears as C:
(since it is a duplicate of Partition 1), or will BING handle changing
the boot.ini for me?

Dave

You'll have to edit boot.ini for yourself. If you use BING to setup the
partitions and do the hiding and *then* install XP, boot.ini will be
correctly created by the XP installer to fit what BING is doing.

If you have any trouble, post back with your BING configuration and a
copy of the boot.ini file that isn't working and we'll work it out. Note
that BING can't really hide partition space from XP. XP can see all the
disk sectors, but hidden partitions will simply appear as unallocated
disk space, since there is no entry in the partition table.

--
Kent W. England, Microsoft MVP for Windows



"Dave" wrote in message
om...
"Kent W. England [MVP]" wrote in message
...

(B) I understand the purpose of the boot.ini file, but what is not
clear is if, after restoring the XP home partition to
Drive1/Part2, do
I have to change the boot.ini in THAT partition, or just the
boot.ini
in the Drive1/Part1 partition???

You should be able to setup your boot.ini files once you configure
BootItNG.


I'll give it a try. Are you saying that I'll be able to use BING to
hide partition 1 and boot to partition 2, THEN I will be able to
change the boot.ini of Partition 2 partition so it appears as C:
(since it is a duplicate of Partition 1), or will BING handle changing
the boot.ini for me?

Dave

"Dave" wrote:
I'm ready to pull my hair out, trying to figure out how to
partation a disk into 3 bootable partions. Any help would
be appreciated. Here's my config:

Drive 1 Primary Part 1 XP Home (NTFS) (fresh install,
no other OS on system)
Drive 1 Primary Part 2 Empty
Drive 1 Primary Part 3 Empty
Drive 1 Primary Part 4 Not configured

Drive 2 Primary Part 1 D: (Data files) (NTFS)
Drive 2 Primary Part 2 Not configured
Drive 2 Primary Part 3 Not configured
Drive 2 Primary Part 4 Not configured


I want to be able to

(1) backup my primary XP Home Partition to a file at any
time to a compressed file (to save space)

(2) be able to restore the compressed partition data to the
original partition, as well as to either of the two empty
partitions on Drive 1

(3) be able to boot to any of the XP Home partitions I
have available on Drive 1, but keep the other XP Home
partitions hidden, while being able to access D: regardless
of which partition I booted from.


Dave,

For objective (1), you want a partition imaging program. Suitable choices
include PowerQuest's DriveImage, Norton's Ghost, or Terabyte's Image (which
is also a function in BootitNG).

For objective (3), you need a third-party boot manager to hide the alternate
OS's from each other -- the MS boot loader won't do it. Suitable choices
include PowerQuest's BootMagic (bundled with PartitionMagic), V-Com's System
Commander, Terabyte's Bootit NG, and XOSL.

For objective (2), I recommend you create a small DOS partition on drive 1.
Not only would this be a good place to install a third-party boot manager,
but you could also install the DOS version of Ghost or DriveImage there. In
your third-party boot manager you would setup an option to boot to the DOS
partition, then you could boot to DOS to run Ghost or DriveImage, which is a
great way to perform (1) and (2), which really need to be done outside of
Windows.

Depending on your technical level, you may find my webpage at
www.goodells.net/multiboot useful to understanding where you're trying to
get to. Please make sure you understand the information about the boot.ini
file and the [MountedDevices] registry key, as those issues have a
significant bearing on your plan to restore the partition image "to either
of the two empty partitions..."