It's that time of year again when I clone all my drives, convinced that *this time* I'm creating enough space.
I've got Norton 14 (seems to be the most up to date in the UK) and I'm running a 750GB drive in three partitions: 2 x Vista 64 bootable drives (for gaming and for everything else) + a data drive. These are called C & D (depending on what one I select on boot up) & E.
I'm trying to clone these to a new 2TB drive, which is in a drive caddy connected to the mobo by an eSATA port. I have read that you can't use an external drive buy I didn't think that applied to eSATA connected drives.
I tried to clone the gaming boot drive to the new drive, with a simple unformatted partition in place (RAW). I selected 'set active' & MBR and got a 'Set Active Not Supported' error. I formatted the drive, tried again, got the same error. I read the forum and am trying again without 'set active' and 'MBR' selected as I'm told that I can 'set active' later using Windows. I don't hold out a lot of hope with this one. In the mean time, and to prevent me pulling my hair out and screaming when I get home later to discover I haven't created a bootable drive, could I get some advice on the whole procedure?
I think the questions are these: In order to clone my old drive with it's three partitions and two dual boot drives:
- Do I format the new drive?
- Do I partition the new drive?
- Can you clone to an external drive that is connected by eSATA or do I need to go inside?
- Do I name these new partitions or do I let Windows handle it?
- Is it going to create a dual boot system (by doing the drives one at a time) or am I wasting my time?
- Presumably each bootable drive has to be created from it's install?
Think that covers it. Any help avoiding the screaming-so-god-help-me-I'm-losing-my-mind phase or the week long trial and error thing would be gratfeully received.
Matt x