Can't backup...

Priapus · 15 Jul 2008 at 21:26

Howzit guys.

I wanted to create a image of my Vista drive onto another drive, so I could change over to a 200Gb HDD without too much hassle. Easy, I thought.

Evedently, not.

I opened up Vista's back up and restore application and it see's the vista drive + a storeage drive as the main os = 300 odd gigs. The drive I have vista on is 160gb that I want to back up. Not the 250gb.

Reason it is doing this is because, for some reason, Vista's boot files, (bootmgr, ect) is stored on the 250GB. :confused:

Is there anyway I can move it over to the 160GB drive so Vista can only back up the one drive and not both of them?

Any help would be great!

Thanks all!
:cool:

eXor · 16 Jul 2008 at 08:04

You probably installed with that 250GB plugged in, Vista picked it up and dumped the boot files there.

You will probably want to test this before you image, by unplugging the 250GB and seeing if it can boot up.

Below is a guide to moving boot files from C: to a new partition ( for BitLocker ). So, you have to adapt it to your needs. Pretty straightforward.

Next you need the boot files. To copy the boot files over you actually have to boot into a neutral installation. The operating system holds the files open while the machine is running so you cannot copy them. The easiest way to resolve this is to boot into the Windows Vista Recovery Console:

1. Put the Windows Vista DVD into the drive and reboot the computer. Select to start from the DVD. On many computers you have to hit F12 to get the boot menu
2. When the Windows Vista locale selection screen comes up pick your locale
3. When the Windows Vista installation screen comes up, select “Repair your computer”. It may not be broken yet, but we are working on that.
4. Select your Windows Vista partition and click “Next >”
5. Select “Command Prompt”
6. In the resulting command prompt, figure out which drives are which. Most likely your boot partition (the one with the OS) is C: and the new one you just created is D:. You can use diskpart to figure it out. Launch diskpart and type “list volume”
7. Copy the boot directory. Use this command
xcopy c:\boot d:\boot /h /e
This will copy the whole directory structure and all the hidden files, which they are all hidden. You will probably get a prompt asking whether boot is a directory or a file on the target. It is a directory
8. Copy the boot manager using this command:
xcopy c:\bootmgr d:\bootmgr /h
In the prompt whether bootmgr is a directory or a file on the target, select file
9. Finally, we need to set the new partition active. To do so launch diskpart again. Select your disk. It is probably disk 0, but you can always list the disk to be sure
10. List your partitions to determine which partition is the new boot partition. Then type select it using “select partition 2”, where 2 is the number of your partition
11. Make it active by typing “active”
12. Exit diskpart and reboot the system. To do so, type exit twice

bledd · 16 Jul 2008 at 08:13

best way to install a ms os..

only have one hard drive in, with only one partition created at the time of install

Priapus · 16 Jul 2008 at 08:43

bledd. said:
best way to install a ms os..

only have one hard drive in, with only one partition created at the time of install

Seem to have learnt this the hard way.

Thanks guys, will give it a try!

Priapus · 16 Jul 2008 at 20:42

Well I got lazy and really didn't feel like doing the above as it meant I had to write all that information down.

So, what I did was unplugged all my hard drives ( yes, all 6 of them) and only left the main OS drive plugged in. Obviously, Windows would now not boot, due to a missing BOOTMGR file.

I then decided to use the Windows Vista recovery on the DVD. Loaded it up, selected repair then selected "Fix start up issues".

Once this was done..wahla! She now boots up and I am able to do the back up. ( Doing it now)

I must just find out how to delete the files off the old HDD. The bootmgr ones...

Anyone got any suggestions?

Thanks! :cool: