Disk Clone

[Twinpeaksr]

So I got my Vista Upgrade (The Free one when I bought XP) and I wanted to install and try it out. However since it is an upgrade, I have to install it over XP (if you got a way around this I am open). I have 2 identical hard drives so I thought "Hey, I will just duplicate the hard drive, creating 2 copies, install Vista on one and if all goes bad, just plug the other one back in".

After trying many utilities I found, what I learned was that since my hard drive is Dynamic, I can't clone it! Every duplication utilities says they do not support cloning Dynamic drives!

So my question is, do any of you know how to duplicate a hard drive to an identical one that will not cost me a bunch of money (IE I don't want to buy a duplication machine)?

For those Inquiring I have tried:
- XP does not support mirrors, at least that is what Microsoft said, and I have not found a way
- I have hardware RAID, but it formats the drive first
- Paragon Drive Backup does not support Dynamic Disks
- I can't get Ghost 2001 to find the SATA drives, infact I can't get it to boot at all (Crashes)
- Drive Clone 2 - Fails to load
- True Image 10 - Does not support Dynamic Disks
- MigrateEasy 7 - Does not support Dynamic Disks

Thanks!

 

[corkyg]

Have you considered converting your dynamic drive back to basic? LDM was a W2k thingy - and it was fairly buggy. Why do you use LDM? It is usually only found in corporate and enterprise servers. And, the 9.1 versions of those Acronis packages do support dynamic drives - but - now you're talking serious dinero.

LDM

Convert

 

[Twinpeaksr]

I might try the convertion to basic disk, but I do have an extended partition and that may be tricky. I am not sure why I have it set as Dynamic, I know I did it for a reason, but forgot what that was and now wish I had not. We shall see it is works, I am not back in a few hours, you will know the answer!

Thanks!

 

[Twinpeaksr]

Converting to Basic worked, just had to change each of the partitions to x07 to make it work. Thanks!