Backing up XP before new OS install; software recommendations?

X

xrintrahx

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 13, 2008
Messages
258
Currently, I am running a dual boot setup with XP SP3 on WD 7k 320G hard drive and Windows 7 RC on a partition of a Samsung 1.5T HD. I have ordered the student upgrade deal for W7. Because I am not entirely prepared for the upgrade yet (still using XP and some XP specific programs), I'd like to keep running a dual boot. However, here is the catch, I want to install the new W7 on the WD hard drive (over XP), as I like to have the main OS on a dedicated drive, not on a partition. So, in order to keep XP, I'll need to copy (or "ghost") the OS onto another partition of the Samsung drive (or I could just format and overwrite the RC). Do I understand that correctly? If so, here is what I need to know, what are some good software recommendations for performing such a cross-drive OS copying of XP? Any freeware? From searching google, I've seen "Norton Ghost" and "Acronis True Image", but those recommendations were from 2003-2006, so I'm not sure what is available now-a-days. Keep in mind, I'd like the "backup" or "ghost" to be fully bootable on it's own partition.

Thanks!
 
Acronis program should be able to take a full snapshot of your system state and all of it's files and move it to another drive. That's as much as I know about that, not sure how the dual boot would work with 2 PDs.
 
WD offers a free version of TrueImage that would do the trick. ou won't need to run a dual boot, thanks to XP Mode, or other free virtual apps. Windows 7 doesn't need to be feared. People need to let Vista go fade to the past, and embrace Windows 7.
 
Thanks for the replies. Cmustang87, I'm currently running dual boot XP and Win7, so unless something has changed since the RC, I don't think there should be a problem dual booting from two physical drives. DeaconFrost, I'll look into that! Yeah, I plan on abandoning XP once I fully get Windows 7 set up and tweaked, but I may have the need to access certain programs/files on XP before that is accomplished.
 
Yea that's why I didn't chime in on the dual boot. Thanks for the info though. Good luck to ya!
 
Definitely Acronis. I'd guess newer is better for OS support, etc.
 
"Acronis True Image WD edition" does not allow you to copy one partition to another partition. you must have an entirely wiped/empty drive to proceed with the cloning operation. I have a 1.5TB drive that has 4 partitions. 3 are basically empty, but one has W7 RC. I guess I could just delete everything on that drive, and it wouldn't be a big loss, but I don't want to go through repartitioning the 4 all over again. I'd rather have a program that can simply clone one partition over to another partition. I'm downloading the trial of the full version of Acronis True Image to see if it allows me to do it from there.
 
Heres how I'm doing it:

Downloading the 30-day trial of Norton Ghost 14.
Imaging (Ghosting) my current XP Hard drive onto a USB Drive.
Formatting my HD, installing Win 7.
Create a virtual Windows XP Box with a program like Virtualbox on my new Windows 7 machine.
Using the Ghost Image of XP, restore to the virtual box XP machine running on my new clean Win7.

That way, if I ever need to get something off my old hard drive, or need to run some program that only works in XP, I can do it on the 'Virtual' machine. Just boot up the virtual, copy whatever files I need/want, and shut it back down.
 
Last edited:
That might not be a bad idea. I've just never worked with a virtual box before, so I'm drawn to what I'm used to (dual boot).

Anyway I deleted the WD version of Acronis, and downloaded the trial (full version), and ran into the same issue. Ends up the problem is trying to "clone" a drive (which can only be done on a "drive" level, not a "partition" level). What you can do instead is make a backup image, and then "recover" it to a new partition. So I did that. When I recovered, I didn't select the option about restoring track 0 and MBR, and now I am thinking that maybe I should have? Because I have no idea how to boot into that backup/recovered copy. I tried to disable the primary drive with the original XP in BIOS, but I got a boot error which of course I didn't write down (pretty sure it was "NTLDR is missing" and then another line which was probably "Press Ctrl Alt Del to Restart"). You think if I put in my XP system disk and tried to repair the new/copied partition of XP, it could restore the boot files? Or should I have restored the MBR and track 0 stuff on the new partition?

I think another issue is that Win7 RC currently has control of the booting (but has kept that information on the main drive with the original XP). So if I turn off that drive in order to test the new XP partition, the Win7 boot info is turned off as well, even though the system files for Win7 are on another drive. And if I leave the drive on, it only gives me the dual boot options of loading Win7 or the "earlier version of windows" (which is the original XP, not the new/copied XP). Windows 7 doesn't know that I've added another copy of XP, so it doesn't give me that boot option in the menu. I guess I need to see if there is a way to edit or added to the Win7 boot menu, so that it recognizes the new copied version of XP. I guess that would be a triple boot scenerio. However, I don't need triple boot. I just need one working version of XP, and that should be the copied/restored version, as I plan on overwriting the original XP with the official release of 7. Yeah, it's pretty stupid. The virtual box is sounding much better.

At least at this point, I do have an 10GB image of my XP system (and a restored, but possibly non-bootable copy on another partition, 15GB) and I've moved my documents and files to another, non-system drive, so I don't have to worry about permanently deleting XP when I install windows 7 over it. At this point, worse comes to worst, I can always restore the XP image over the windows 7 install.
 
anyone know if it is possible to "Using the Ghost Image of XP, restore to the virtual box XP machine running on my new clean Win7." Only, instead of a norton Ghost image, it's a acronis trueimage backup archive, and instead of Virtualbox, it's Windows Virtual PC? Any idea how I would do that?

Alternatively, I have not been able to boot into my imaged and restored XP. I'm currently getting a "invalid boot.ini file" error. I followed these instructions "http://www.kombitz.com/2009/01/13/how-to-add-windows-xp-to-windows-7-boot-manager/". I'm going to follow "http://www.proposedsolution.com/solutions/error-invalid-boot-ini-or-missing-windowssystem32hal-dll/" now.

I just want to be able to boot into my old XP, and that seems very problematic. I don't care if it's an actual dual boot or a virtual machine at this point. I'm about to give up and restore the XP in it's original location (as I've currently written over the old XP with Win7)
 
DeaconFrost said:
WD offers a free version of TrueImage that would do the trick. ou won't need to run a dual boot, thanks to XP Mode, or other free virtual apps. Windows 7 doesn't need to be feared. People need to let Vista go fade to the past, and embrace Windows 7.
Click to expand...

I seen someone online demonstrate a legacy scanner working in XP compatability mode, any idea if it will work for printers as well ?
 
I have used both Virtual Box and Virtual PC. IMHO, I believe that Virtual Box is above and beyond anything else out there when dealing with simple virtualization. VB runs Windows XP with DX9 support no less!!! I can play my games from my old Windows XP install that I had some years back. Microsoft shifted focus of Virtual PC to Windows 7 emulation mode and its own virtual server product. VM Ware is a lot more universally accepted as well. We use fusion at work for all of our mac's. It is a solid product. VM Ware can also read many disk images and ISO's of old OS's.
 
I used VMWare's converter to take my Norton Ghost image and convert it directly to a Virtual Machine. Then, loaded it up in VMWare's free VMWare Player software. It booted RIGHT up and worked like a charm :).
 
Thanks Direwolf20, looks like Acronis images are supported by the VMW converter. I'll give that a shot since it is free. I guess using the Windows Virtual PC isn't a requirement (but I was leaning towards that since it is free and already installed). Thanks again. I'll post again if it works or not. Still haven't been able to boot into the recovered XP partition yet though (and doing a Acronis restore in XP mode crashed it).
 
Acronis TrueImage Home 2010 (Emergency disk can be used for other cloning purposes - an excellent program and I <3 it)
Acronis True Image WD Edition (free)
Drive Image XML (free)
Clonezilla (free)
 
Ok, tried the VMware COnverter Standalone, and when I chose to convert my backup image in the wizard (my .tib file) I received and error "The source virtual machine is not recognized". I then read that you can convert a .tib to a .vhd in Acronis 2010, so I tried that (in my trial version). I then tried to create a virtual machine from that file in Windows "Use an existing virtual hard disk", but when I hit "Create" I get "Cannot attach the virtual hard disk to the virtual machine. Check the values provided and try again". I'm thinking either my Acronis file is messed up, or I didn't create the backup image properly, which would explain why I cannot boot into the copied partition of XP, but doesn't explain why all my files and folders were recovered. It must be something fairly basic if all the data is there except something is preventing it from booting.

I believe this is probably an Acronis issue, so I may try to trouble shoot from that direction in another forum.
 
Try using VMWare Player (Free) and see if that will load up the Virtual Machine that the Converter made. That'll tell us if the Virtual is bad versus Windows Virtual can't read VMWare files.
 
Ok, I tried to open the .tib file (as that was an option) in VMware Player 3, and got an error "Failed to open virtual machine: Failed to query source for information." The Player cannot open .vhd files. but must import them. I tried that, and it also didn't work ("Error while opening the virtual machine: File XXXXXX.vhd" line 1: Syntax error."). Pretty sure there is no way to boot from either of those files, as is. which probably explains why the recovery won't boot. Not sure how this happened, or what went wrong.
 
Yea, sorry not sure whats causing it. VMWare's converter did a clean convert for me from my Norton Ghost image.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top