How To "Untwin" Duplicated Hard Drives

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aussieboykie
Posts: 15
Joined: Sat Oct 29, 2011 3:58 am

How To "Untwin" Duplicated Hard Drives

Post by aussieboykie »

My brother used Copywipe to create a sector by sector duplicate of his hard drive which contains System, Windows7, Data, and Recovery partitions as well as Bootit Bare Metal. "System" is the Windows 100MB installation partition. Windows7 is his day to day system. Source and target disks are each 1TB.

The outcome is two (initially) identical drives with the same disk signature. Each is bootable, but having booted Windows from either one, the other can't be mounted because of the disk signature duplication. What's the safest and quickest way of getting to the point where either can still be booted but both can coexist with Windows up and running?

Regards, AB

P.S. In order to avoid this happening again, what's the recommended method of cloning a whole drive so that the target is both bootable as an emergency backup, and mountable in tandem with the original drive? He has the full Image/Bootit suite.
DrTeeth
Posts: 1289
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 6:58 pm

Re: How To "Untwin" Duplicated Hard Drives

Post by DrTeeth »

Google "change disk signature"?
TeraByte Support
Posts: 3598
Joined: Thu May 05, 2011 10:37 pm

Re: How To "Untwin" Duplicated Hard Drives

Post by TeraByte Support »

Use Image for DOS/Linux/Windows instead and use the "Change Disk Signature"
option.


"aussieboykie" wrote in message news:4613@public.bootitbm...

My brother used Copywipe to create a sector by sector duplicate of his hard
drive which contains System, Windows7, Data, and Recovery partitions as well
as Bootit Bare Metal. "System" is the Windows 100MB installation partition.
Windows7 is his day to day system. Source and target disks are each 1TB.

The outcome is two (initially) identical drives with the same disk
signature. Each is bootable, but having booted Windows from either one, the
other can't be mounted because of the disk signature duplication. What's the
safest and quickest way of getting to the point where either can still be
booted but both can coexist with Windows up and running?

Regards, AB

P.S. In order to avoid this happening again, what's the recommended method
of cloning a whole drive so that the target is both bootable as an emergency
backup, and mountable in tandem with the original drive? He has the full
Image/Bootit suite.

aussieboykie
Posts: 15
Joined: Sat Oct 29, 2011 3:58 am

Re: How To "Untwin" Duplicated Hard Drives

Post by aussieboykie »

TeraByte Support wrote:
> Use Image for DOS/Linux/Windows instead and use the "Change Disk Signature"
> option.

Thanks for the suggestion. Can you please explain in more detail. Do you mean.....?

1. Full disk backup of HDD-1 using IFD/IFL/IFW.
2. Full disk restore to HDD-2 using IFD/IFL/IFW with the Change Disk ID option.

We have been through the Russinovich stuff at http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinov ... 63572.aspx and just changing the signature on HDD-2 causes the dreaded 0xc000000e Boot Selection failure message because Windows and the signature are misaligned.

Regards, AB
TeraByte Support
Posts: 3598
Joined: Thu May 05, 2011 10:37 pm

Re: How To "Untwin" Duplicated Hard Drives

Post by TeraByte Support »

You can either do a "copy" or a "backup"/"restore".

"aussieboykie" wrote in message news:4616@public.bootitbm...

TeraByte Support wrote:
> Use Image for DOS/Linux/Windows instead and use the "Change Disk
> Signature"
> option.

Thanks for the suggestion. Can you please explain in more detail. Do you
mean.....?

1. Full disk backup of HDD-1 using IFD/IFL/IFW.
2. Full disk restore to HDD-2 using IFD/IFL/IFW with the Change Disk ID
option.

We have been through the Russinovich stuff at

[
http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinov ... 63572.aspx
](http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2011/11/08/3463572.aspx)

and just changing the signature on HDD-2 causes the dreaded 0xc000000e Boot
Selection failure message because Windows and the signature are misaligned.

Regards, AB

Bob Coleman
Posts: 785
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 5:58 pm

Re: How To "Untwin" Duplicated Hard Drives

Post by Bob Coleman »

aussieboykie,

Note that IFD (and probably the other image programs, I don't know) has a Copy function if hadn't noticed that.
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