Windows 7 - Updating a clone without recloning?

I am wondering if it is possible to update a bootable clone with some file
update copying, but without potentially impacting it is "bootability".

Let me explain:

Suppose we make a clone of the main system drive, which may or may not have
several partitions, but never actually plug it in as the boot drive to
cloning programs (and apparently not required using Acronis to make the
clone).

OK.  So that is fine and dandy so far.   And the clone is just sitting on the
shelf as a backup.

Now let us suppose we just want to update it with just a few updated personal
and non system files, rather than go through the whole cloning process  all
over again (which takes considerable time)

IF we now connect this cloned drive as an external drive (through either USB
or SATA connectors) and then boot up in windows with it in (in addition to
the normal boot drive), will that mess anythin up, like its future
bootability (since the first time its being used here is when it is
connected as an external secondary drive (and is NOT the boot drive)?

That's the key question here.    Because if doing so will mess up the clone,
then one cannot simply update the clone, as I have suggested (and one would
always have to make a brand new clone).

I think this whole thing has to do with the active partition byte being set
correctly, and not being potentially reset, by doing such a thing.

Does anyone know what I am talking about?  Or can clarify this for me?

As you mentioned, the drive (actually a partition on the drive) has to
be marked Active in order to boot.  Usually when you make a clone, you
are replacing your old drive and at the beginning of the cloning
operation, so the clone is marked Active so it can boot.  As long as all
you are adding or replacing are data files.... documents, pictures and
so forth, not system or program files... this will not affect the
ability of the clone to boot.

Attaching the clone to your computer as an external USB or eSata drive
(or as an internal second drive for that matter) will not change the Active
setting, any more than attaching a bootable drive from another computer
externally, or internally as a second or slave drive, will affect its
Active setting.

Just make sure if it is connected via USB or eSATA that you do NOT have
those interfaces selected in the BIOS setup as the first boot device or
before the internal hard drive, so they do not try to boot your system.
In other words, make sure your BIOS boot order is either hard drive
first, or CD/DVD first, hard drive second, and that USB and eSATA are
not listed or are listed after the hard drive.

In the case of a cloned drive being connected as an internal drive (PATA
or SATA), make sure the BIOS is still set to boot from your Primary hard
drive, not the second or slave drive.

Connecting an Active bootable drive from another computer to my computer
is something I do often, to copy some data off the drive for someone, or
to scan for malware on the drive while it is not booted.  Your clone
should act the same way.... it is a bootable drive.
--
Glen Ventura
MS MVP  Oct. 2002 - Sept. 2009
CompTIA A+

That should read:
As you mentioned, the drive (actually a partition on the drive) has to
be marked Active in order to boot.  Usually when you make a clone, you
are replacing your old drive, and at the beginning of the cloning
operation may be asked if you are switching the drives, so the clone is
marked Active so it can boot.

--
Glen Ventura
MS MVP  Oct. 2002 - Sept. 2009
CompTIA A+

Well, when I made the clone with Acronis, I do not remember being asked if
I'd be switching the drives, but I am pretty sure it set the flag, so that if
and when it was ever substituted, the flag would already be set and the
clone would be ready to go.  (Otherwise I do not think it could ever work
(i.e. to replace the original and yet be bootable).  What I do remember is
after I made the clone, it finished the operation and prompted to shut down
the system (which implies it did not want both connected at a first time
reboot, which I guess makes sense).

More below...


That is good to know!


I will have to check this.   Hopefully it is as you said.  Heck, it sure
SHOULD be that way!  (why would it ever be reversed?)


OK, so if I understand this Glen, the ONLY time there might (or would) be a
problem is IF the system ever assumed that the connected clone was THE drive
to boot up on at first boot (i.e. as the first bootable BIOS device).  And
that THAT is the danger.

But then again, I do not see how that could ever happen (even with an
externally connected bootable drive), since normally the internal drives
would be listed as first priority in BIOS, right?

Wouldn't it be a pretty weird BIOS sequence to attempt to boot from an
external drive, assuming the main internal one (bootable) was already in
there?  That seems to me to be a backwards sequence for BIOS to even
consider, but maybe it can happen?

However, IF the main bootable drive were not also in the computer at the time
the other bootable external clone drive was connected, then I can see a
problem arising, if I understand this correctly.

Most systems I have worked on had a floppy drive (on older systems) or CD/DVD
drive as the first boot device. Then the second device was usually the
internal  HDD. That could always be changed, and some of the options were
External USB/eSATA/Firewire Device (could be a HDD or flash drive), and Boot
from LAN. I would think it would be very unusual to have your internal HDD
set as the the first boot device unless you set it that way.
--
SC Tom

Windows does not mind having a partition set active on non-boot drives.
However if your clone has the same disk signature as the original, to
avoid conflict, Windows will change the signature of the currently
non-booting clone. That in effect could render the clone unable to boot
into Windows.

I say "could" because it depends on how Acronis handles the disk
signature when cloning. This page http://kb.acronis.com/content/6323
suggest that you have to tell Acronis specifically to copy the sig.

XP will boot with a blank sig, and fix it (the sig).
XP will boot with an incorrect sig, and fix that.
XP will not boot if its sig matches a sig in the registry of a
previously online non-booting volume.

It gets even hairier for Vista and later.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2011/11/08/3463572.aspx

replies inline...



Yes, that option checkbox was added in True Image 10 and later... it is
unchecked by default, so the signature should not be a problem unless you
manually checked the box.  True Image 9 and earler did not have that
checkbox, and I do not know what its default behavior was regarding the
signature of the clone.




Oh boy... woo hoo... more fun......not.  Thanks for the link, Bill!

--
Glen Ventura
MS MVP  Oct. 2002 - Sept. 2009
CompTIA A+

Ooops, you are right, and I forgot about some of that, and the reasons for
it.

First is indeed floppy, which makes sense.  But in my case, the two internal
SATA HDs are next, followed by the CD drive.   I can see where it might make
more sense to move the CD drive up to just follow the floppy.

If I connect an eSATA drive I expect it will be picked up with the other
HDs, and enumerated in the order of the ports (SATA-0, SATA-1, SATA-2,
SATA-3), unless I override that.

So I guess the bottom line is that if I dared to leave the system clone
connected at bootup, the system would still boot up on the regular boot
drive, and I'd be ok (and not affect the clone's bootability).  Again, the
clone was made with ATI version 11, and I never set the disk signature
option.  It sounds like that is a pretty dangerous option (to copy the disk
signature).   I am not sure why that would even be necessary (even after
reading the ATI link on this).

Well, thanks for this info and the ATI link (although I think that only
applies to the server edition(??) of ATI, unless you are using the newest
versions of ATI, perhaps with the Plus Packs, as I cannot find any mention of
it in the PDF help file for my ATI Home version 11.

I am not sure why one would ever want to check that checkbox (it seems a lot
safer to NOT copy the disk signature).

Well, ok, I found one link at ATI mentioning that (for Acronis True Image
Home 2011 Plus Pack, under "Restoring to Dissimilar Hardware with Acronis
Universal Restore":

http://kb.acronis.com/content/13671

which says:
both the old and the new hard disks in the machine. Enable the checkbox if
you are planning to use only the new disk and would like to keep Windows
Restore Points."

You do not really still have a floppy drive, do you?

I most certainly do.   And I have found it pretty indispensible, on a few
occasions.

What occasions?

Oh, say when I needed to install a particular driver on my older Win98
computer that was designed for a floppy install (one of those self executing
exe files).

OR for running BING (Boot It NG or BM) in Maintenance Mode for partition
work (using a bootable BING floppy), since I cannot boot to a USB stick on
this older Win98 computer, last time I checked.

Regarding this discussion, I discovered one potential *advantage* of using
USB over SATA in at least one case:

If you want to update some files on an external SATA drive, evidently that
SATA drive is not going to be picked up unless you booted with it already
connected.

Whereas with USB, after you have already booted up, if you then connect a
USB drive, it will be instantly picked up in Windows, unlike SATA (at least
over here).

I think I recall reading something about this "hot swapable" (or not) stuff
somewhere before.  And that SATA normally is not, as I recall.   Perhaps the
newer BIOS's or OS's have eliminated this issue.

I do not know about him, but I do (even though I have not used it in
several years).

Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP

Well, me being a "devout Luddite", you should know!  I will never give it up.
It has come in handy, however (although not particularly often, anymore)

Your system would boot up to the regular drive as long as that is the first
HDD in the HDD Boot Priority List. I have a bootable XP drive (SATA1) in my
Win7 computer that I am copying things from for my (somewhat) fresh install
of Win7 on SATA0. But, by moving SATA1 ahead of SATA0 in the HDD subcategory
in BIOS, I can boot into XP, and the Win7 drive becomes a second drive.

And I have a floppy drive, too, but it is on a shelf, not installed. I
have not had to use it in years, but I keep it just in case. You never know.
. .
--
SC Tom

I have got an internal floppy drive on every computer I own, except of
course the laptops.
--
Glen Ventura
MS MVP  Oct. 2002 - Sept. 2009
CompTIA A+

SATA is hot-pluggable.

You just need the right flavor of driver.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahci

and native command queuing) such that host systems can utilize them."

The Intel AHCI/RAID driver should help, if you have an Intel Southbridge.

Hot-swapping *was* supported, before the AHCI spec was written.
A user discovered quite by accident, that some Silicon Image chip
was doing it, many eons ago. The guy broke the SATA connector on a
hard drive, and by holding the cable up against the shard of the
connector that was left, managed to get his files off. And at the
same time, discovered a working "hot plug" solution. it is a hell of
a way to discover it.

Paul

I was just yanking Bill's chain a bit, in a friendly way. :)

I think I pulled out my last floppy drive in about 1998, and at that
time I had gone quite a few years without using it.

Not sure exactly what to look for, considering my Dell system is a bit older
and is running WinXP (which does not natively support AHCI), but I gather
that is the whole point of installing such a driver.  (If I can find one that
is compatible with this Dell Inspiron 530).

I do not recall seeing such a thing listed at the Dell support site as a
driver upgrade for my system, however.  But maybe it would not normally be
shown there, or maybe Dell did not make one customized for their Intel MB.

I gather if such a driver exists, it would somehow be automatically loaded
into memory each and every time before windows boots up as part of all the
other regularly required drivers.  I guess I will have to research this and
look around a bit more as it might be worth pursuing.

Hey look, at least I *finally* let go of having a 5.25 floppy drive.
Well, not by choice; that is just the way the newer one came (i.e. that
option was not there).   I am not sure, but maybe now the option to have a
floppy pre-installed is not there either (with a Dell or HP, or what have
you).

Addended below:


For anyone who is still using an XP computer and is interested in getting
ACHI (hot swappable) SATA capability, this also might prove enlightening.
Or not.   :-)    Brief summary as follows:

Hmmm, this appears to be a LOT more complicated than I thought.  I found one
site (at msfn) mentioning some folks trying to do this with some specific
Intel driver updates, but in some cases, it caused some real issues (like
BSODs).  One fix even required having to modify the INF files and having to
go into the registry and add a whole section of code just to get this thing
to work (with the older Intel ICH9 storage controllers) - IF you are lucky.

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/109450-enable-intel-ahci-under-xp%3B-case-closed-read-second-last-post/
for just the first page of this discussion,

AND (for the final page)

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/109450-enable-intel-ahci-under-xp%3B-case-closed-read-second-last-post/page__st__240
(for the last page on it)

Also interestingly, most of the specific links to the Intel site (for the
specific drivers required) are dead now (i.e. out of date).   What a hassle.

In retrospect I wonder if it is really worth the risk.   Suppose you install
the driver and end up with a BSOD.   Hopefully just restoring an image
backup would cover all such bases, but if BIOS was also modified in anyway
(by that floppy installer), we'd be up the creek.  (I guess that should not
be the case however, unless one flashes the BIOS for an update).

If you install WinXP from scratch, then you press F6 near the beginning,
and offer a floppy with the AHCI driver on it. That's one way to do it.
That is what Intel wants you to do.

What you have probably been researching, is the "chicken versus egg" solution,
where you look for a way to edit something, such that the driver is changed
on the fly. The driver is set up in such a way, that it cannot be installed
on the fly. If you switch BIOS mode first, the computer will not boot (you would
get an "Inaccessible boot volume"). If you try to install the AHCI driver
without the BIOS mode changed, the driver will not install (because the PNP
information does not match). There are "recipes for editing stuff", which
get around the problem, and jam in the driver. It sounds like that is the
route you are looking at.

There is a third way. It would involve adding another storage
controller to the machine, such that the C: drive is moved to
another controller. At that point, the system is no longer
dependent on the Southbridge driver for booting. Then, you can
change the BIOS setting to AHCI, reboot (now, rebooting from some other
hard drive controller), install the AHCI driver, reboot, then
shut down and move the disk back to the now-AHCI-equipped port.
I call that a "bounce install" for lack of some other term for it.
Because you bounce the hard drive around from port to port, until
the problem is solved.

I think I have done that in the past, with a separate Promise card.
As part of moving an OS from one machine to another. The card traveled
with the disk, so some bootable hardware that was the same on both
machines, would be present so it could be booted.

Perhaps in this case, a Silicon Image SIL3112 card could be used,
until the Intel driver is changed.

The BIOS setting just changes the Plug and Play number returned,
when the new hardware wizard checks. The BIOS is hardly affected
by all of this. The only time the BIOS can be an issue, is on
some pre-built machines that do not have all the settings they
should. My laptop for example, has a pretty empty BIOS, and I
think in fact, the only setting inside it, may actually be
to switch from AHCI to vanilla IDE flavor of SATA. And that
is for cases where you might have installed an OS that did not
have an AHCI solution.

In the case of Windows 7, it is not like WinXP in this regard.
On Windows 7, you re-arm the driver detection with some registry
settings, shut down, change BIOS settings, and Windows 7 figures
it all out on the next reboot. So it is not nearly as traumatic,
except for the need to work in regedit. They did not make an
easy button in the OS like "driver re-arm" or anything. In
Windows 7, a number of default drivers are present, which is
what is used at driver sniffing time. MSAHCI, IASTORV, and the
like. People mess around with that stuff, while trying to get
TRIM support for a new SSD replacement.

I bet there is at least one backup solution, that supports
moving a backup to a different hardware setup, and that
may be yet another solution. Some backup software, promises
to allow restoring to different hardware, which might be
another way around the chicken versus egg part.

Paul

I do not see why it is necessarily better to have to do this before
installing WinXP, but I guess it makes things a lot less complicated later
on, for some reason.  More below.


Yes, that seems to be the essence of it.


Thanks for all this info, Paul.   To be perfectly honest, making this change
sounds like it is a lot more effort (and risk) than its worth, at least for
me.  It would be nice to have for some occasions, but not essential.

What I still find a bit mystifying is why this kind of driver update
(relating to giving SATA that added AHCI capability) is so difficult to do,
compared to so many other drivers..  I guess the simple explanation is as
you said above:  the BIOS and Windows updates trying to be simultaneously
recognized and updated on the fly, which is not the case for most driver
updates.