[Solved] Cloning a disk with PLoP to another disk with different size

[connard]

Hey !

Is it possible to Clone a disk which has PLoP on it to a different size disk ? If yes, how can I do it? It seems that PloP doesn't like when the disk is not exactly the same.. ?

Thanks !

[Elmar]

hi,
it should be no problem. if you don't use partitions in the profiles, then the boot manager takes the values from the mbr. if you use partitions in the last booted profile, then the boot manager checks the old values with the new ones in the mbr. if they are different, then you can either import the new values or ignore them ( depending on the situation).

happened anything bad?

regards
elmar

[connard]

Wow thanks for the fast answer!

I do use partitions in the profiles (part 1 for maintenance with part 2 visible, and part 2 for windows with part 1 invisible).
Actually, I tried cloning the full disk with ghost (using the -ib switch for boot sector) to another disk and it seems this last one is not bootable, and when i check integrity with ghost I get a bad cluster error message. Maybe it's on my side and I do not use the tool properly ?

[Elmar]

i don't understand

part 1 for maintenance with part 2 visible, and part 2 for windows with part 1 invisible

[connard]

I mean that we use two profiles

First profile boots on the first partition, and the second partition is visible.
Second profile boots on the second partition, and the first one is set as hidden.

It seems to me that cloning does not work if disk are different, I really get a funky result. On a pc, I can see the plop loading and proposing the two profiles, when I boot on first partition (Bartpe), I get a blue screen of death with "unmountable boot volume". If i boot on a cd rom then try to see the local disk, it proposes me to format it... I'm getting crazy   

[Elmar]

i don't know how ghost is cloning, but i assume it takes only data from valid partition. so you have to create a profile with all partitions activated. use the key "w" in the main menu on the new profile to write the data to the mbr.  then clone again.

if it doesn't work with the "w" key then boot the profile to get all partitions written to the mbr (doesn't matter if the system can boot or not).

[connard]

thanks for the answer.

Hmm maybe it's because i use "cleared" and not "hidden". I will try with hidden...

[Elmar]

yes, cleared is really cleared. thats why it exists.

[connard]

Hey Elmar,

I think I found the problem, ghost changes the partitions table because of resizing partitions and PloP seems to not be able to detect it all the time.

I will try to first do the clone without the boot sector, then execute a post configuration that install Plop on the hard drive with custome profiles,  using your plpcfgbt tool.

Edit: Is there a way to hide a partition in one of the two profiles I want to create using the plpcfgbt tool ? And also put an administrator password ?

[Elmar]

you cannot configure the hard disk installation with plpcfgbt.

you can hide a partition when you go to partitions, choose an empty place, import the required partition entry and give it the hidden version of the partition id. then use this partition in the profile where you want to hide it.

[connard]

Yes sorry, I just figured out it was not the proper tool. Is there a way to configure a hard disk installation in text mode (i'm afraid of the answer) ? 

[Elmar]

currently not. i wrote a few special tools for some companies. they use it for automatic restoring  pcs.

[connard]

We finally resolved it by telling ghost to not resize the partitions but keep the original size, and on the target PC, PLoP detects the changes of HD structure and ask for importing the new partitions then all is running fine. Thanks for your advices Elmar.