DISK CLONING - for one oscilloscope

[bozidarms]

Hi,
i cloned a hard drive with Acronis, all went well.
The only problem is, that the partitions letters were L, M and K, instead of C,D and E.
I could change all letters, but not C.
How to create a new partition with the letter C?

[tv84]

Hi,
i cloned a hard drive with Acronis, all went well.
The only problem is, that the partitions letters were L, M and K, instead of C,D and E.
I could change all letters, but not C.
How to create a new partition with the letter C?

  This is a Test Equipment forum, right?

[bozidarms]

Right - and that disk is from one oscilloscope.
One spare disk, from HDD to SSD.

By the way, you are very polite and your comment is splendid, please continue!

[Fungus]

Have tried it to see if it works?

[bozidarms]

I have, but SSD was not recognized in BIOS.
I assume that new SSD must have the same C and D named partitions.
Boot part originally is on C partition.

[Fungus]

I have, but SSD was not recognized in BIOS.

That's not because of the drive letters.

[PushUp]

You may try to "burn" Ubuntu on an USB via Rufus, boot it as if you want to install it, choose "try" and you have a virtual linux system with gParted, thus you should be able to change the drive letters the way you want.

https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop


In addition to that here in germany we have "knoppix", which is a collection of helpful tools within a linux environment running on nearly any pc configuration - this should also work:

KNOPPIX is a bootable Live system on CD, DVD or USB flash drives, consisting of a representative collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. KNOPPIX can be used as a productive Linux system for the desktop, educational CD, rescue system, or adapted and used as a platform for commercial software product demos. It is not necessary to install anything on a hard disk. Due to on-the-fly decompression, the CD can have up to 2 GB of executable software installed on it (over 9GB on the DVD "Maxi" edition).

https://www.knopper.net/knoppix/

https://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

You don't need the latest version, which costs money, one of the older versions should also do the trick! There are several universities doing the host for the ISO-file in any country of the world to download and use for free!

https://www.knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html


Cheers!

[wasedadoc]

Drive letters are purely a function of the individual Windows system.  They are not stored in the disc's partition table.

[bozidarms]

PushUp and wasedadoc, tnx for all info's.
First I have to understand all this correctly, haven't done to many software-PC things.

In short, what i have done already:
Have create a SSD clone - is one Crucial MX500 SSD with USB adapter.
Than, have tried this SSD, but only over USB.
In that configuration, BIOS has recognized SSD but only as storage disk.
There was not a possibility to boot from them.

I haven't try to swap original HDD with this one cloned, because i must than whole scope take apart.
That's exactly what I wanted to avoid, because it is about one costly instrument.

[berke]

Drive letters are purely a function of the individual Windows system.  They are not stored in the disc's partition table.

This.  Also I don't know about Acros, but here are a few reasons why your cloned SSD might not be working :
- The SSD is too large for your scope's BIOS
- Imperfect clone, such as wrong partition table kind (your scope probably expects an MS-DOS table; make sure the clone doesn't have a GPT table)
- Your scope might check the drive's manufacturer strings, size, serial number or other properties to prevent the user from replacing the drive without cash flowing into the manufacturer's pockets
- Your scope might be expecting data at fixed block positions on the drive, either as a protection measure, or beacuse it has low-level boot code that is too simple to deal with a file system

It would be helpful if you provided details about your scope.

Also dealing with raw disks and partitions under Windows is painful.  If you can boot a Linux as suggested, you can use simple and reliable tools such as fdisk/parted/mkfs/dd/etc. to operate on the disks.

[bozidarms]

It would be helpful if you provided details about your scope.

It is one LeCroy HDO6104-MS
I think is very reasonable that i wont to avoid to take apart this scope

[berke]

It would be helpful if you provided details about your scope.

It is one LeCroy HDO6104-MS
I think is very reasonable that i wont to avoid to take apart this scope

I really don't know if that Acronis sets those things up properly.  Windows experts might chime in.

There is a "bootable flag" on partitions in MS-DOS partition tables, as well as a partition field type, and the bootloader (MBR).  Make sure Acronis can and does clone those properly.

A low-level clone using the dd command from Linux for example might work.  It should work provided the SSD is larger than the original disk, and assuming no particular protection measures have been implemented by LeCroy.

This is the scope's internal HDD, right?  And you decided to replace it with an SSD for a particular reason?  Does it still work with the orignal disk?  What exactly happens during the boot process, what do you see?

Does that scope run Windows?

Assuming the original drive works, I would first run fdisk on both and dump the partition table info for both.  Post your results here.  Then I would check the contents of the MBR with dd and xxd for example.

[nctnico]

The first step is to make sure the SSD is detected properly by the BIOS. I'm pretty sure the HDO6104 is just a Windows PC with a scope bolted on so nothing special going on. What interface does the SSD have? Is it properly configured for master / slave? If it is a Sata device, is the sata port enabled?

From my experience with a Lecroy WavePro 7k series: you can also opt to install Windows and Lecroy's software from scratch.

[switchabl]

I have seen USB-SATA adapters that translate the sector size (4k vs 512) of the drive. If you format the drive through USB and then later connect it natively via SATA, the partition table will be broken.

[nctnico]

I have seen USB-SATA adapters that translate the sector size (4k vs 512) of the drive. If you format the drive through USB and then later connect it natively via SATA, the partition table will be broken.

And some BIOSses also use their own block translation. When I clone a disk, I always do this with the machine that the original disk is in and the 'new' disk should work with. Transplanting a hard drive from one PC to the other (with a different BIOS / motherboard) is not guaranteed to work in my experience.

[bozidarms]

First of all, many thanks to all for taking the time to help me.

The scope is at best shape and everything work es it should.
It is Windows 7 Platform with i5 4x2,5 GHz and 16GB RAM on 500GB HDD.
I just wonted to create a clone, to have a beck up.

In the next days will all that info's carefully study, seems that i have to many deficits in IT sector for so one serious task.
I don't want something to screw up.

[_pat_]

bozidarms,

If I am understanding correctly, you attached an SSD to a USB adapter and then booted the DSO into its OS and copied the contents of the HDD onto the SSD. You were then hoping to be able to boot the DSO from the USB (change BIOS boot order permanently or just once), but when it did boot, you found that the drive letters were "wrong" - the OS was likely still seeing the original HDD and hence using that.

I would suggest, if it is possible to boot the DSO from a USB stick, that you grab yourself a copy of Ventoy to make a bootable USB stick that can boot multiple images and also a recent Clonezilla image... you'll want to be able to boot the DSO into Clonezilla. You'll want to make sure that the original HDD, the SSD (via its USB adapter) and the USBBoot stick are all present, then boot into Clonezilla. Use Clonezilla to copy the original HDD onto the SSD. The fact the normal DSO OS is not running and Clonezilla is running from a RAM disk means it should be possible to make a perfect copy.

If you only need a clone of the DSO's disk / OS then you are done at this point. If you want it to boot from the SSD then read on :

Once you have copied the HDD onto the SSD (outside of the DSO OS), you can then try to boot from it, but beware that the OS may spit its dummy out with a USB HDD. You need to "hide" the HDD from the OS - it should be possible in the BIOS to deconfigure the HDD (that will prevent it from BIOS booting, but the OS may still see it). If the OS still sees it then you'll need to disable the drive controller in the BIOS.

At this point, if you are lucky, then you'll have a system booting and running off the USB SSD, with its drive letters where they should be, without needing to open up the DSO.

It should be noted that this is ugly as it gets, and a FAR better option is to open the DSO and swap out the HDD for the SSD - you don't need to mess about with BIOS settings and you don't need an external device to boot the DSO. There is one gotcha here, depending on the BIOS it may barf at the new disk (if it is too big, for example).

If that happens then it's time to dig out your Ventoy USB boot stick again. You'll need to download a bootable HDAT2 image and pop that on the stick too, because you're going to need to tell the SSD to lie. Note that this almost certainly will not work using the USB adapter - it will need to be directly connected to a "real" disk controller. You'll need to query the total number of sectors / disk geometry from the original HDD, so boot one time with Ventoy with the HDD connected so you can get that info using HDAT2. Once you have that info it's time to reboot to Ventoy / HDAT2 again, this time with the SSD directly attached so you can update the SSD.

If the BIOS won't even POST with the SSD plugged in then don't worry - with the SSD unplugged, allow the system to boot to Ventoy to get past the POST, then (hot) plug in the SSD. Fire up HDAT2 again and use that to change the reported disk size. It doesn't matter that the BIOS hasn't seen the SSD, HDAT2 will do a fresh scan.

Finally, with the disk reporting the same geometry as the original HDD, it's time to reboot, one last time.... into the DSO's own OS, nice and quickly with no spinning rust, from the now-internal SSD

Hope this helps,

Pat.

[bozidarms]

My dear Pat,
with all that information, i am just overloaded

If I am understanding correctly, you attached an SSD to a USB adapter and then booted the DSO into its OS and copied the contents of the HDD onto the SSD. You were then hoping to be able to boot the DSO from the USB (change BIOS boot order permanently or just once), but when it did boot, you found that the drive letters were "wrong" - the OS was likely still seeing the original HDD and hence using that.

Everything correct till change BIOS - i haven't change yet anything.
I have put that cloned disk on my PC, and than i have seen that partitions have wrong letters, so i have conclude that this wrong letters caused a problem - BIOS see that SDD only as a storage device.
But as i said before, this conclusion is probably wrong due to my limited IT knowledge.

Anyways, thanks a lot for efforts, i need some time to learn more about this things.

[AndyBeez]

I have no idea how you are connecting your SSD to the scope, but your clone of the C: drive needs to be a bootable active primary partion. Any other partition type, such as extended or logical, will not boot.

Not assigning a C letter to that clone partition should not be a problem as the "C" letter just means, this is the active partition from where Windows (or Dos) has booted from. The other partitions can be re-assigned a drive letter using the disk management tool in Windows.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/disk-management/change-a-drive-letter

[Fungus]

"Drive letters" are a red herring, that's not how a BIOS works. Ignore them.

If it doesn't boot from the disk then the boot sector is wrong or the boot partition isn't marked as active.

[PatrickB]

I have used acronis often and I NEVER had a problem.
Acronis is recorded on one of my bootable DVDs (or CDRoms) so the OS on the main disk (C:) is not loaded.
It is a software to clone a disk or one or several partitions on another disk or to make a copy sector by sector.
It can't therefore modify the letters assigned to the drives nor change the active partition. It is not possible.
Start your PC with the bootable Acronis disk and do the cloning. It can't not work.
The only thing to check is the software version of Acronis. Some older version does not work with all hard disk interfaces.

[bozidarms]

Hi again,

i have managed that BIOS now see both disk:
1-original HD
2-USB clone

but, when i changed a boot to USB clone, i received massage: BOOTMGR is missing

any ideas?

Thanks

[J-R]

Booting from USB may not be supported.  USB booting adds an additional layer of problems particularly on older hardware.

Typically when cloning a disk, you have two methods, either a bit for bit copy of the disk which requires the destination be the same size or larger than the source, or a partition and file based clone, where the cloning software reconstructs the source layout on the destination by creating identical partitions and file systems and copies the files one by one.  This second method allows adjusting the partition sizes or restoring specific partitions (for a dual-boot system, for example).  Typically you would not want to adjust the boot and OS partition start locations, or change the number or order of the partitions.

The second is typically the default as it is faster since only occupied portions of the disk are copied.  Furthermore, the cloning software may try to be helpful by adjusting some aspects of the clone, such as setting it as the default boot device or making it the only active partition, or even modifying the boot filesystem.

Without knowing exactly how your cloning software is set up, if you are using the scope itself to do the clone, I would connect the SSD where the HDD is currently, and then connect the HDD to another spare interface.  Then perform the clone with the cloning software using the filesystem clone.  If it decides to manipulate the destination filesystem (SSD), it should be OK since it will be in the correct orientation for being the boot device.  After the clone is complete, remove the HDD and attempt to boot from the SSD.

If you are using another computer to perform the clone, such as two USB interfaces, you could try the partition method but if that doesn't work try the bit for bit copy.

Personally, I have used Macrium for many clones and it has worked well.  I normally don't do direct cloning since it can be a tiny bit risky if you make a mistake.  I make a backup image of the source disk, remove it, attach the destination, then apply the image.  This also proves the backup image is good, at which point I can archive it for safekeeping.

[hpw]

1) The new cloned device MUST be connected on the target or final HDD Port IDE / SATA port. NO deals connected on USB.

2) depending on underlying OS, a required Clone SW is required as for W2k / XP as a 32 bit SW.

 for this purpose I used the free version of RDriveImage and burned a CD-R as using the build RDriveImage-ISO to boot from.
So no opened files!

[bozidarms]

Thanks a loot for all that useful Info`s.

I am not shy to say it - obviously, all that stuff is over my reach/understanding now,
so i think is better for me (and scope) not to do anything
It was only intended as a backup anyway.