The caution I gave was:
"Don't use Gparted to add or delete logical drives to/from a Vista-
created Extended partition, though."
As the "multibooters" site explained, Vista can deal with partitions
created under the "old rules", but adding to or removing logical
drives (i.e. logical partitions) from an Extended partition involves
offsets within the Extended partition, and mixing the "rules" by
using different partition managers to do so may lead to the apparent
"disappearance" of a partition. If you look in the Google archives
of this very NG, there are moans by people who say that their
precious partition has simply disappeared. So the conservative
and safe thing to do would be to do *all* partition management
under the same set of rules. And since "restoring" an image of
a partition is related in some of its processes to creating a
partition, one should do that under the same set of rules that
were used to create the original partition. But since Vista can
access partitions created under the old rules, my guess is that
restoring an image or copying back a clone is safe as long as one
is not creating a new logical drive within an Extended partition.
Why partitions made by VistaBootPro may not be affected, I
don't know. Perhaps it was not tested for creation and deletion
of logical drives within an Extended partition that contained
Vista-created logical drives. To add to the confusion, there are
cloning utilities with recent versions that claim compatibility with
Vista new offset rules. BootItNG and Casper are a couple that
make that claim. They may or may not work in all scenarios.
The safest thing to do would to just use something like Gparted
to create all the partitions because all partitioning utilities can
deal with the old rules. In the case of my Dell laptop with Vista
pre-installed, Vista was on a Primary partition with the old offset,
and a proprietary app was on a logical drive in an Extended partition
that had the new internal offset. I nuked the entire Extended partition
and kept the Primary partition, and I've cloned and restored Vista
several times using an old-rules Casper with no problems. If you
can't tell whether your pre-installed Vista has the old offset or the
new 2,048-sector offset, and you are willing to re-install Vista, I'd
say to just re-install Vista in a partition created under the old rules.
*TimDaniels*
"Daave" wroote:
Quote:
> Now I am thoroughly confused, Timothy!
>
> In another post, you listed these links:
>
> Here's an explanation of the problem:
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931854
> Here's the reference that explaines Vista's new partitioning
> format: http://www.multibooters.co.uk/partitions.html
> Here's just one How-To that uses VistaBootPro:
> http://vistasupport.mvps.org/install...ning_vista.htm
> Here's a How-To that uses Vista's own "bcdedit" command:
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919529
>
> The multibooters link states:
>
> <quote>
> If you only have Vista on your computer and don't mess with
> imaging or cloning then you have nothing to worry about. However
> if you do image or clone your drive or have a dual/multiboot
> configuration with OSes other than Vista, then there are various
> serious problems that can arise. For now the best solution is to
> not let Vista create partitions, but do it with previous Windows
> OSes or with third-party tools.
> </quote>
>
> Okay. Since it's a very good idea to either image or clone one's hard drive,
> it seems that using Vista to repartition the hard drive is not a good idea.
>
> Furthermore, it states:
>
> <quote>
> When installing Vista you should create the partition yourself beforehand and
> point the Vista install to that partition. Vista is perfectly happy to follow
> the standard conventions and I have
> not seen any issues when everything has been done by the old
> rules using XP compatible tools. Many current apps that worked
> with XP can be used with Vista, however many might not install
> inside Vista but they can be used from inside another OS or
> boot disk. When there have not been any Vista created partitions
> on the drives I have successfully used several non-Vista versions
> of partitioning and imaging/cloning tools.
> </quote>
>
> So, it appears that a tool like Gparted might fit the bill. However, you state
> that doing so may result in other problems! Or perhaps the idea is to let
> Gparted partition the drive from the get-go, and *then* install the OSes (that
> is, not to have it do repartitoning after the fact that Vista had already been
> installed). Am I correct?
>
> In the John Barnett link, he advocates using VistaBootPro. But this involves
> using Vista to repartition the hard drive. So, if the multibooters link is
> correct, again, problems could arise when imaging or cloning the hard drive!
>
> So, is there anything definitive as to the best practices procedure?
>
>
> "Timothy Daniels" wrote: Quote:
>> Here's my reply to another posting in this NG on using
>> Gparted to create partitions for both Vista and other OSes::
>>
>> On my Dell laptop with pre-installed Vista, I had good luck using
>> Gparted - a Linux partition manager which runs on a bare-bones
>> version of Linux (which disappears when you exit Gparted).
>> Gparted will shrink Vista's partition much further than will Vista's
>> Disk Management, and it's just as intuitive to use. You can
>> download a free .zip file to make a live USB stick (as I did) or you
>> can download a free .iso file to make a live CD. These free files are
>> are both available from http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php .
>> Here's some user documentation:
>> http://gparted.sourceforge.net/larry/livecd/livecd.htm
>> (For the live USB, I take all the defaults at startup, except that
>> I choose "1" - for the "Medium" level of expertise - and then I
>> tell it NOT to let the startup routine select the graphic driver auto-
>> matically, but then I accept its selection and the rest of the defaults.)
>>
>> Don't use Gparted to add or delete logical drives to/from a Vista-
>> created Extended partition, though. Vista uses a new 2,048-sector
>> offset from the beginning of its partitions, and the feature can cause
>> problems for other partition managers in Extended partitions.
>>
>> *TimDaniels*
>>
>>
>> "GrahamH" wrote: Quote:
>>> Hi,
>>> Could be that when you used vista to do the partitioning and formatting XP
>>> didnt like it. There is i believe something different in the structure of
>>> Vista`s partitioning and formating. It may not be backward compatible, at
>>> least with 3rd party partitoning software. Cant rememeber what the
>>> difference is but a search on the web
>>> will find it.
>>> I guess you installed XP on an extended partition/logical drive in which
>>> case the mbr would have been overwritten by the o/s and
>>> also system files.
>>> This is the way i did it, as it then isolates each o/s from each other.
>>>
>>> I have installed XP home and Vista premium on same drive and
>>> the way i did it was to create two Primary partitions and format
>>> ntfs using paragon hard disk manager.
>>> I installed XP on the second primary and Vista on the first.
>>> Just make the partition you want to install O/S on active first.
>>> I also created on the second primary an extended partition and logical drive
>>> and installed XP again for testing software purposes.
>>> So i can boot to Vista / Xp / and Xp test.
>>> You need to use a boot manager like paragon that can select and
>>> make active either partition depending on o/s selection at boot.
>>>
>>> Good luck
>>> Graham....
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> "john p murphy" <jm920@xxxxxx> wrote in message
>>> news:t8ip94l7ub6ach921ofse3qcv3rjfnd880@xxxxxx
>>>> Ok, so i am bored last weekend, i am presently running Vista Ultimate,
>>>> and figured i would install XP HOme editon, i create a partition using
>>>> vista disk management, format it, put some files on it, partiton was
>>>> just fine, so i put in the xp disk, reboot, does the standard XP thing
>>>> copying windows files, now time to reboot, after reboot, i get this
>>>> message, missing operating system, well i tried to reinstall again and
>>>> again, so i put in the vista dvd, boot, go to repair, repair fails
>>>> miserably, so i just figure, new vista install, so i do, get to the
>>>> part to partiton, etc, what i notice is now i have 3 partitions, C,D,
>>>> and an unallocated space, small, so i remove all the partitions, and
>>>> just install vista, no problems, running fine now, what i am curious
>>>> about is what the hell just went on,????? years ago, i never had
>>>> problems doing dual boots, xp and 98 , its killing me not knowing what
>>>> the hell was going on and what happened?? thanks for any help with
>>>> this, i am losing sleep on this one LOL
>>>
>>
>> >
>