TeraByte Unlimited

1. I'd like to use the copy function to make a clone of a hard drive (with 4 partitions including the (active) XP bootable partition (F:), a Vista bootable partition (C:) and EasyBCD for Boot Selection) and wonder if IFW (using VSS to copy system and other files in use on the active partition) is actually identical in its reliability and end result as running IFD off a bootable CD. Of course, it's marginally more convenient running from Windows directly, but I don't really care about that since it's something I'll do only about once every 3 months.

2. Does the aforementioned copy function (either IFD or IFW) have the option to clear the archive attribute (on the source only) for every file that it copies? I want to use this copy as a full-backup proxy (and do differential backups after that which, of course, would require that the archive attribute be properly cleared during the previous full copy operation). Naturally, this would have to be an option (and probably a non-default one at that) since it would probably be an undesired side-effect in other uses.

Thanks!

Shahrukh

1. It will try to get a clean snapshot. You would end up with the same thing as if you created a backup image from Windows and then restored that to the new drive. Note that a lot of people that clone prefer to do it from the boot media so Windows doesn't interfere. This also helps avoid problems with duplicate disk signatures if the drive is disconnected before booting back into Windows (I assume you wouldn't be changing the signature if you want an identical drive).

2. The archive attribute is not used and there is no option to clear it. The differential backup changes are based on the sectors, not the files.

Thanks Paul, for (1), I'll take that as somewhat of a recommendation to clone using IFD off a bootable CD.

For (2), it's unfortunately what I suspected. I'm actually doing file-based differential backup (using other file-based software) since that's what I need for my data files and was trying to kill 2 birds with one stone by using my clone drive operation (which I use for full system recovery purposes) as a snapshot full data backup as well. I guess I can emulate this by doing an
attrib -a * /s
on my source root after the clone, though that doesn't work on system and hidden files, so that's not a real solution either. Unless one of your utilities (or another you know of) can do a one-step recursive clearing of the archive bit INCLUDING system and hidden files. Any ideas?

shahrukh wrote:
> Unless one of your
> utilities (or another you know of) can do a one-step recursive clearing of
> the archive bit INCLUDING system and hidden files. Any ideas?
xxcopy can do that, but it works under Windows.
Otherwise, you can use tbosdt (from the OSD Tool Suite) and create your own script.

Thanks, xxcopy seems to be good for this. For completeness, the command line (from the manual--I didn't actually try it yet) should be:
xxcopy /az /s source
where /az clears the attribute bit without actually copying anything (and implicitly includes the /h option which forces action on system and hidden files as well), /s recursively traverses sub-directories and "source" would be replaced by the top level of the directory for which I wanted all files' attribute bit cleared (e.g., C: if I wanted the entire C: drive's files' attribute bit cleared).

Yes, that should work. Or maybe set it like this:
xxcopy C:\ /AZ /S