The program provides the ability to clone hard disks of any file system. During the hard disk copying process, the program moves controlling records of used partitioning scheme is a set of rules, constraints and format of the on-disk structures to keep information on partitions located on a hard disk. There are known several partitioning schemes. The most popular of them is the so-called DOS partitioning scheme. It was introduced by IBM and Microsoft to use multiple partitions in the disk subsystems on IBM PC compatible computers. Another popular partitioning scheme is the so-called Logical Disks Model (
LDM) that originates from the UNIX mainframe systems. Veritas Executive accommodates a simplified version of LDM to the Windows 2000 operating system. Windows 2000 and XP support two quite different partitioning schemes: the old DOS partitioning scheme and the new Dynamic Disk Management (
DDM). The problem is that earlier versions of Windows do not support DDM. In addition, most hard disk utilities do not support it as well., the bootstrap code and on-disk partitions. This operation cannot be substituted by simply copying all on-disk partitions.
The operation can be accomplished with the
Copy Hard Disk Wizard. The wizard is so well designed that the user simply needs to follow its easy instructions to make an exact copy of the disk.
Starting
There are several ways to start the Copy Hard Disk Wizard:
- In the Main menu: select Wizards > Copy Hard Disk…
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On the Common Tasks bar: click the Copy Hard Disk item of the Wizards menu.
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In the Toolbar: click the Copy Hard Disk button.
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Select a disk on the Disk map and click the Copy Hard Disk item on the page that appears in the Explorer bar.
After following one of the above mentioned actions, the Welcome page of the wizard is displayed.
Settings
The Copy Hard Disk Wizard allows the user to configure the settings and then start the operation in accordance with the entered parameters. Here the user sets the parameters of the operation defining:
- The hard disk to copy. Select a hard disk you want to copy
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Copy parameters. The Copy Hard Disk Wizard allows the user to specify the following options:
- Copy options. This section enables to switch between two options:
HDD raw copy (
allows to copy a hard disk in the sector-by-sector mode to successfully process unknown file systems).
Partition raw copy (
allows to copy a partition in the sector-by-sector mode to successfully process unknown file systems).
Perform incremental copy (once the complete copy of a hard disk is created, it can be used as a base for the incremental copy. Mark the option to make the program perform the exact bit-wise comparison of the previous data (
saved in the parental copy) with the current data (
that is actually the hard disk itself). After that only most recent information will be processed. It considerably decreases the amount of data written).
- Resize options. This section enables to switch between two options:
Remove free blocks between partitions. If this option is activated, the program does not keep blocks of free space between partitions on the targeted hard disk.
Copy data and resize partitions proportionally. If this option is activated, the program proportionally changes the size of partitions keeping their relative order intact. The option can be useful when upgrading the hard disk to a larger one.
- Verification options. This section allows the user to define whether the Surface test and/or the Writing Verification test will be accomplished during the operation.
Results
Depending on the user's choice the Copy Hard Disk Wizard:
- starts the operation
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reconsiders it
After the operation is completed the user receives a fully functional duplicate of the existing hard disk.