Moving a Win XP raw partition to another HD

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ribes
Posts: 6
Joined: 3. Oct 2007, 02:46

Moving a Win XP raw partition to another HD

Post by ribes »

I created a vmdk using one partition and installed WinXP on it. Life was good.

Now I need that hard disk for another project. I need to move that partition to another HD.

I tried ntfsclone and that seems to move the files just great. I can mount the new partition, look at the files (from the host) but I can't boot it from VB. I get a grub err 17.

Ideas on moving raw partitions between hard disks?
ribes
Posts: 6
Joined: 3. Oct 2007, 02:46

Post by ribes »

Ok I thought about it some more.

How about setting up a vdi, slaving it to the vmdk and then cloning the vmdk to the vdi using norton ghost?

Anyone ever do something like that?
ribes
Posts: 6
Joined: 3. Oct 2007, 02:46

Post by ribes »

Ok I figured it out. Remember the goal is to move a raw disk partition/vmdk containing Windows XP from one physical hard disk to another. I needed the hard disk where the raw partition was located.

I used the procedure documented here:

http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=1966

refer to section 3. Instead of using VDI's, I used VMDK's.

I did this twice. The first time it froze about 5 or 10 minutes into the Windows repair procedure. I booted back into the source VMDK and removed the VBox Guest Additions. Then I was successful. When I got to about the same place where it froze the last time, XP prompted me for a disk with the driver VBoxGuest.sys. I mounted the Guest additions and the repair continued to a successful conclusion.

Downside: VBox will not boot the new VMDK without help. I mount a grub floppy image and I boot the new partition with that.

Can anyone help me fix this last part?
Ingo
Volunteer
Posts: 731
Joined: 22. Aug 2007, 10:13
Location: Germany

Post by Ingo »

You are booting WinXP within a Virtual Machine, right?
Have you tried to repair booting with fixmbr and fixboot with the repair console on the XP installation CD?
Is the boot flag set on the boot partition?
ribes
Posts: 6
Joined: 3. Oct 2007, 02:46

Post by ribes »

Yes I'm booting within a virtual machine.

I'll sum it up again. This started with a fresh install of WinXP within a VBOX rawdisk vmdk. I chose the fourth partition on the HD.The windows booter worked great. It showed a WinXP option and "everthing else" with the WinXP option being the default. There was no stomping on the Linux installs in the other partitions. Fantastic!

But then I needed the hard disk for another project. So I followed your procedure but used another VMDK on another HD. I got it to work but I can't boot without using a grub floppy image.

Ok I'll try fixmbr and fixboot. In what order? What are the parameters?

Is the boot flag set from the host?

Another problem. It's minor. XP sees the hard drive as "E:" instead of "C:". This hasn't caused any problems for me but I'm just curious how this is fixed or if I should mess with this. I can't remember if the original installation saw it as something other than "C:".
Ingo
Volunteer
Posts: 731
Joined: 22. Aug 2007, 10:13
Location: Germany

Post by Ingo »

First fixmbr then fixboot. I don't remember the parameters. I always have to look myself with help fixmbr | fixboot.

There may also be a problem with your E:\boot.ini. Look into it and correct the system partition if necessary.

You can try to change the drive letter E: into C: thru disk manager. But WinXP will not let you do it if it is the system partition. You can change most entries "E:" to "C:" in the registry. But I think it isn't worth the trouble.
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