XP and partitioner

If I mentioned this before forgive me but I am not getting something
here. Maybe someone knows what's going on.

I have 3 partitions a large one formatted with ntfs, a 30 GB one with
ext2, and a 3rd 30 GB formatted with fat32. OK I wanted to remove some stale
files so I used XP x64's installation disk to load up the installer and
reformatted a ntfs filessystem and copied XP x64 files. On reboot of course
I go a disk error.

Oh by not again I thought. Well my backup was on the fat32 partition. So
to reinstall a fresh copy I had to remove the ntfsw partition and
re-partition. So it's the partitioner here. And formatted with ntfs and re
installed. Well it worked this time. But looking at the raw parition table
data in the MBR I saw that ntfs which was in the 1st partition was now the
3rd. All boots from the fat32 partition, the now active partition. And the
ext/2 well I don't think anything was done there.

What's going on here. Is MS just giving us a hard time. Is there a
reason for this and is it the partitioner?

Thanks all.

Bill Cunningham wrote:
If I mentioned this before forgive me but I am not getting something
here. Maybe someone knows what's going on.

I have 3 partitions a large one formatted with ntfs, a 30 GB one with
ext2, and a 3rd 30 GB formatted with fat32. OK I wanted to remove some stale
files so I used XP x64's installation disk to load up the installer and
reformatted a ntfs filessystem and copied XP x64 files. On reboot of course
I go a disk error.

Oh by not again I thought. Well my backup was on the fat32 partition. So
to reinstall a fresh copy I had to remove the ntfsw partition and
re-partition. So it's the partitioner here. And formatted with ntfs and re
installed. Well it worked this time. But looking at the raw parition table
data in the MBR I saw that ntfs which was in the 1st partition was now the
3rd. All boots from the fat32 partition, the now active partition. And the
ext/2 well I don't think anything was done there.

What's going on here. Is MS just giving us a hard time. Is there a
reason for this and is it the partitioner?

Thanks all.

You don't generally store your only backup, on the same
hard drive you're trying to trash. That's just asking for trouble.
Store the backup on a second disk.

In the old days, some software would manipulate partition
slot numbers, if it thought this would preserve boot-ability
of an existing OS. If a tool sees WinXP on Partition 0, then
it knows the boot.ini contains the ARC path that points
at Partition0. If the slot number were to change, then that
OS would no longer boot. If you change the slot number of
an OS, you need to edit the boot.ini, before it can boot again.

If Partition Magic was asked to clone Partition 0 of Disk1
to Disk2, and Disk2 had some data in its Partition 0, then
Partition Magic would change the slot number of the existing
partition, making room in slot 0 for the cloning it was about
to do. With the objective, that the boot.ini in the cloned
C: would still have a valid ARC path pointing at Partition 0.
This could cause unexpected or annoying changes to the
slot numbering.

So that's a reason why a utility does stuff like that.

The other way to do it technically, is for a tool to
edit the boot.ini or the BCD file, and make all necessary
changes to preserve boot-ability. By doing that, slot order
can be preserved. That's the approach Macrium Reflect Free uses
for some of the things it does.

*******

If you need to create partitions, use a partition manager. You could
use GParted from Linux for example. Or, have two hard drives in the
computer, a "maintenance" OS you boot to do work on your "good" drive
for example. You can have two copies of WinXP on the same computer,
on two different disks, as only one is booting at a time. (The same
license key can be used for both.) And use one of them to do
maintenance on the other. This requires selecting the boot drive
from the BIOS, at boot time. When installing OSes for a scenario like
that, only a single drive is in the computer during the install step,
to ensure there is no "entanglement" between the drives, like having
"boot" on one drive, and "system" on the other drive (as seen by
Disk Management).

This is my setup, a simplified view of the machine I'm typing
this on. If I need to make any modifications to the WinXP hard
drive, I boot the Win2K OS and use Disk Management from there.
I can copy random files to the WinXP drive letter if I need to.

+-----+------------+---------------------- - - -
| MBR | WinXP | (Win2K backup image)
+-----+------------+---------------------- - - -

+-----+------------+---------------------- - - -
| MBR | Win2K | (WinXP backup image)
+-----+------------+---------------------- - - -

Notice how the backups are stored on a different drive
than the actual thing itself. If the WinXP hard drive fails,
the backup for WinXP is on the second drive. If the Win2K
drive fails, the backup for it is on the first drive. When
doing maintenance work or quick experiments, I might use
local disks.

I have larger external disks for real backups. It takes me
all day to image the whole machine, and the last run was a
couple months ago. That drive is stored on a shelf, and
is not powered right now.

And I do sometimes boot a Linux LiveCD and do stuff. So
if I needed GParted, I have a Linux Mint USB stick and
a Ubuntu USB stick, which I can use to boot the computer.
The sticks read out at 30MB/sec at least, on a USB2 port,
so they boot pretty fast. Much faster than booting
an actual DVD with the software on it.

*******

You can correct partition slot numbers if you want to.
As long as you know what you're doing.

PTEDIT32 exposes all the necessary info. You write down
or otherwise carefully record the initial information.
Or even, make a copy of the MBR for later. Then make
the changes. In the case of WinXP, if I expected it to
boot, I'd have to

1) Do PTEDIT32 to exchange two slots in the MBR.
2) Shut down WinXP. (Now, at this point in time, WinXP cannot boot.)
3) Boot Linux Mint. All the partitions on the hard drive are
still accessible. Reach into the WinXP disk, edit boot.ini
with a text editor, being careful of line endings when doing
the save. Correct the ARC path. Save.
4) Now, when you boot from the hard drive again, it should work.
Because the ARC path was corrected offline.

You could probably correct the ARC path while the system is running.
And that procedure just illustrates how you can sneak in and
correct mistakes you've made, from another OS.

There are a few procedures, that really need the WinXP
installer disc. As it has your "fixboot" and "fixmbr" commands
in the Command Prompt window of the CD. So if you just
destroyed your WinXP partition by formatting it from your
"maintenance" OS, you may need to use the installer CD
to issue the "fixboot" to put the partition boot
sector back. And fixboot will only install a PBS if it
sees actual OS files (NTLDR) on the partition. So you would
format the WinXP partition, copy the files back, *then*
use the installer CD to issue a "fixboot" of the partition.

Any time I'm doing a "fixboot" or "fixmbr" procedure, I
disconnect all hard drives except the target. When the installer
CD asks me to "log into" the OS I want to work on, there
is then only one item in the menu, and so typing "1"
to select the one and only entry in the menu, is
unambiguously correct. The login procedure does not
label the OSes in any useful way, so without disconnecting
some drives, it can be a crap-shoot. Another trick I use,
is each OS has a different login password for the administrator,
and if I did have two OSes in the menu, I know the password
on each OS, and if the password is rejected, I know I'm accessing
the wrong disk. But rather than go through that annoyance,
I've modified my operating procedure, to just leave one
disk connected, so it's "always the right disk" :-)

Paul

"Paul" wrote in message
news
You don't generally store your only backup, on the same
hard drive you're trying to trash. That's just asking for trouble.
Store the backup on a second disk.

Hum. Good point.

In the old days, some software would manipulate partition
slot numbers, if it thought this would preserve boot-ability
of an existing OS. If a tool sees WinXP on Partition 0, then
it knows the boot.ini contains the ARC path that points
at Partition0. If the slot number were to change, then that
OS would no longer boot. If you change the slot number of
an OS, you need to edit the boot.ini, before it can boot again.

OK I see. The reinstall placed ntldr boot.ini and another file in the
fat32 partition. The rest in the ntfs one holding xp x64.

If Partition Magic was asked to clone Partition 0 of Disk1
to Disk2, and Disk2 had some data in its Partition 0, then
Partition Magic would change the slot number of the existing
partition, making room in slot 0 for the cloning it was about
to do. With the objective, that the boot.ini in the cloned
C: would still have a valid ARC path pointing at Partition 0.
This could cause unexpected or annoying changes to the
slot numbering.

So that's a reason why a utility does stuff like that.

The other way to do it technically, is for a tool to
edit the boot.ini or the BCD file, and make all necessary
changes to preserve boot-ability. By doing that, slot order
can be preserved. That's the approach Macrium Reflect Free uses
for some of the things it does.

*******

If you need to create partitions, use a partition manager. You could
use GParted from Linux for example. Or, have two hard drives in the
computer, a "maintenance" OS you boot to do work on your "good" drive
for example. You can have two copies of WinXP on the same computer,
on two different disks, as only one is booting at a time. (The same
license key can be used for both.) And use one of them to do
maintenance on the other. This requires selecting the boot drive
from the BIOS, at boot time. When installing OSes for a scenario like
that, only a single drive is in the computer during the install step,
to ensure there is no "entanglement" between the drives, like having
"boot" on one drive, and "system" on the other drive (as seen by
Disk Management).

This is my setup, a simplified view of the machine I'm typing
this on. If I need to make any modifications to the WinXP hard
drive, I boot the Win2K OS and use Disk Management from there.
I can copy random files to the WinXP drive letter if I need to.

+-----+------------+---------------------- - - -
| MBR | WinXP | (Win2K backup image)
+-----+------------+---------------------- - - -

+-----+------------+---------------------- - - -
| MBR | Win2K | (WinXP backup image)
+-----+------------+---------------------- - - -

Notice how the backups are stored on a different drive
than the actual thing itself. If the WinXP hard drive fails,
the backup for WinXP is on the second drive. If the Win2K
drive fails, the backup for it is on the first drive. When
doing maintenance work or quick experiments, I might use
local disks.

I have larger external disks for real backups. It takes me
all day to image the whole machine, and the last run was a
couple months ago. That drive is stored on a shelf, and
is not powered right now.

And I do sometimes boot a Linux LiveCD and do stuff. So
if I needed GParted, I have a Linux Mint USB stick and
a Ubuntu USB stick, which I can use to boot the computer.
The sticks read out at 30MB/sec at least, on a USB2 port,
so they boot pretty fast. Much faster than booting
an actual DVD with the software on it.

*******

You can correct partition slot numbers if you want to.
As long as you know what you're doing.

PTEDIT32 exposes all the necessary info. You write down
or otherwise carefully record the initial information.
Or even, make a copy of the MBR for later. Then make
the changes. In the case of WinXP, if I expected it to
boot, I'd have to

1) Do PTEDIT32 to exchange two slots in the MBR.
2) Shut down WinXP. (Now, at this point in time, WinXP cannot boot.)
3) Boot Linux Mint. All the partitions on the hard drive are
still accessible. Reach into the WinXP disk, edit boot.ini
with a text editor, being careful of line endings when doing
the save. Correct the ARC path. Save.
4) Now, when you boot from the hard drive again, it should work.
Because the ARC path was corrected offline.

You could probably correct the ARC path while the system is running.
And that procedure just illustrates how you can sneak in and
correct mistakes you've made, from another OS.

There are a few procedures, that really need the WinXP
installer disc. As it has your "fixboot" and "fixmbr" commands
in the Command Prompt window of the CD. So if you just
destroyed your WinXP partition by formatting it from your
"maintenance" OS, you may need to use the installer CD
to issue the "fixboot" to put the partition boot
sector back. And fixboot will only install a PBS if it
sees actual OS files (NTLDR) on the partition. So you would
format the WinXP partition, copy the files back, *then*
use the installer CD to issue a "fixboot" of the partition.

Any time I'm doing a "fixboot" or "fixmbr" procedure, I
disconnect all hard drives except the target. When the installer
CD asks me to "log into" the OS I want to work on, there
is then only one item in the menu, and so typing "1"
to select the one and only entry in the menu, is
unambiguously correct. The login procedure does not
label the OSes in any useful way, so without disconnecting
some drives, it can be a crap-shoot. Another trick I use,
is each OS has a different login password for the administrator,
and if I did have two OSes in the menu, I know the password
on each OS, and if the password is rejected, I know I'm accessing
the wrong disk. But rather than go through that annoyance,
I've modified my operating procedure, to just leave one
disk connected, so it's "always the right disk" :-)

Paul you've helped me so much I can't express how much I appreciate it.
BTW, If it's possible could you use a USB stick as that 2nd drive? Or does
it not work like that.

Bill

"Paul" wrote in message
news
Bill Cunningham wrote:
If I mentioned this before forgive me but I am not getting something
here. Maybe someone knows what's going on.

I have 3 partitions a large one formatted with ntfs, a 30 GB one with
ext2, and a 3rd 30 GB formatted with fat32. OK I wanted to remove some
stale files so I used XP x64's installation disk to load up the installer
and reformatted a ntfs filessystem and copied XP x64 files. On reboot of
course I go a disk error.

Oh by not again I thought. Well my backup was on the fat32 partition.
So to reinstall a fresh copy I had to remove the ntfsw partition and
re-partition. So it's the partitioner here. And formatted with ntfs and
re installed. Well it worked this time. But looking at the raw parition
table data in the MBR I saw that ntfs which was in the 1st partition was
now the 3rd. All boots from the fat32 partition, the now active
partition. And the ext/2 well I don't think anything was done there.

What's going on here. Is MS just giving us a hard time. Is there a
reason for this and is it the partitioner?

Thanks all.

You don't generally store your only backup, on the same
hard drive you're trying to trash. That's just asking for trouble.
Store the backup on a second disk.

In the old days, some software would manipulate partition
slot numbers, if it thought this would preserve boot-ability
of an existing OS. If a tool sees WinXP on Partition 0, then
it knows the boot.ini contains the ARC path that points
at Partition0. If the slot number were to change, then that
OS would no longer boot. If you change the slot number of
an OS, you need to edit the boot.ini, before it can boot again.

I didn't change those slots. Evidently the partitioner did. The MBR's
partition table has been all changed around. Evidently by the XP installer's
partitioner. As you say there must've been something from the old days left
over here.

[...]

Bill

Bill Cunningham wrote:


Paul you've helped me so much I can't express how much I appreciate it.
BTW, If it's possible could you use a USB stick as that 2nd drive? Or does
it not work like that.

Bill

One thing you have to keep in mind about USB Flash
sticks, is they vary a lot in quality.

I have two newer 32GB sticks, that have failed on me.

I have an older 8GB stick, which some research shows
has SLC chips in it, and I've had that and used it for
years. It's received a lot more writes than either of
the 32GB ones have received.

I think you would be quite upset, if you placed a backup
on one of the newer sticks, and it was inaccessible the
next time you reached for the stick.

I recommend USB sticks for "transport" or "sneakernet".
If you need to carry some files to work with you, a
USB stick is perfect for that. But for archival purposes,
a hard drive is still a bit more reliable than the
USB flash sticks they're selling today.

It's not clear if any of the fabs are still making SLC
("the good stuff"). Yet, I keep seeing references to it,
like there is one hard drive that uses SLC for a
caching function. So the evidence is, there are chips
out there, but you're not likely to see them in a USB
flash stick. A company tried a couple years ago, to
bring back USB SLC flash, but that company has
disappeared from the web. They wanted a bit more
than $100 for one of their sticks. You can buy
a hard drive for that much :-(

Paul

"Paul" wrote in message
news
Bill Cunningham wrote:


Paul you've helped me so much I can't express how much I appreciate it.
BTW, If it's possible could you use a USB stick as that 2nd drive? Or
does it not work like that.

Bill

One thing you have to keep in mind about USB Flash
sticks, is they vary a lot in quality.

I have two newer 32GB sticks, that have failed on me.

I have an older 8GB stick, which some research shows
has SLC chips in it, and I've had that and used it for
years. It's received a lot more writes than either of
the 32GB ones have received.

I think you would be quite upset, if you placed a backup
on one of the newer sticks, and it was inaccessible the
next time you reached for the stick.

I recommend USB sticks for "transport" or "sneakernet".
If you need to carry some files to work with you, a
USB stick is perfect for that. But for archival purposes,
a hard drive is still a bit more reliable than the
USB flash sticks they're selling today.

It's not clear if any of the fabs are still making SLC
("the good stuff"). Yet, I keep seeing references to it,
like there is one hard drive that uses SLC for a
caching function. So the evidence is, there are chips
out there, but you're not likely to see them in a USB
flash stick. A company tried a couple years ago, to
bring back USB SLC flash, but that company has
disappeared from the web. They wanted a bit more
than $100 for one of their sticks. You can buy
a hard drive for that much :-(

Indeed. And they have these SSD drives. I have yet to try that. I have 2
or 3 Sandisk USBs. All I use them for is backup data. And I also have onine
backup.

Bill

"Bill Cunningham" wrote in message
news

"Paul" wrote in message
news
Bill Cunningham wrote:

[...]

You know you mention the term "ARC" I have never came across that term. I
understand though now what's going on. I am assuming that Win 10 and the
later systems wouldn't do this would they? After all our XP's have been
around for sometime now. I'm keeping mine with this old computer. I got it
in 204. And the old seagate IDE is still going. Things seem to say
"prefailure". IDK if that's a warning that something is eminent or just
aging.

Bill

"Bill Cunningham" wrote in message
news

"Bill Cunningham" wrote in message
news

"Paul" wrote in message
news
Bill Cunningham wrote:

[...]

You know you mention the term "ARC" I have never came across that term. I
understand though now what's going on. I am assuming that Win 10 and the
later systems wouldn't do this would they? After all our XP's have been
around for sometime now. I'm keeping mine with this old computer. I got it
in 204. And the old seagate IDE is still going. Things seem to say
"prefailure". IDK if that's a warning that something is eminent or just
aging.

Bill

Sorry 2004.

Bill Cunningham wrote:
"Bill Cunningham" wrote in message
news
"Paul" wrote in message
news
Bill Cunningham wrote:

[...]

You know you mention the term "ARC" I have never came across that term. I
understand though now what's going on. I am assuming that Win 10 and the
later systems wouldn't do this would they? After all our XP's have been
around for sometime now. I'm keeping mine with this old computer. I got it
in 204. And the old seagate IDE is still going. Things seem to say
"prefailure". IDK if that's a warning that something is eminent or just
aging.

Bill



You need a utility which can read the disk drive SMART report.
Check the Health tab on this application, and see if SMART is
present, and what indicator is going bad.

http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

If you're in pre-failure, you want a backup stored somewhere safe.
I.e. Don't store the backup on that disk drive :-)

I would be scouting out a replacement hard drive.

*******

Boot.ini and the ARC path, is a WinXP technology. It was
used on Win98/Win2K/WinME/WinXP. When Vista came out, they
switched to BCD files instead. Those use GUID identifiers,
which means the operating system partitions can actually
be on multiple disks (what I call entanglement, because
of what happens if just one disk is unplugged). So the
BCD file is more capable, and also loads of fun
to research, when you need a settings change. Vista
and later are different animals. No more text editing
the boot.ini on Vista. You have to craft commands
using bcdedit, or, use the EasyBCD third party program.

Paul