Paul wrote:

Robert Baer wrote:

  I have a number of hard drives: Win2K,WinXP,Win7,multiOS(XP,7a,7b).
  I would like to COPY (not image) each one onto a partition of a new
terrorbyte hard drive.
  I have Parted Magic and Macrium as resources for this.

  AFAIK they use the whole destination drive like it or not.

  Ideas?
  I may have to image that multiOS HD to a partition, then have a way
to access that as if it was the original HD.

  Thanks.

In Macrium clone mode, you can "drag and drop" partitions from the top (source)
drive layout block, into the bottom (destination) layout block. Then,
click the Next button, click the Back button, to see what it looks like. Then, drag and drop another if you want, click the Next, click the Back
etc. You can also select a dropped partition and "resize it" to a different size.

Now, the problem with this, is the "boot logic" is not applied when
doing drag and drop clone mode. So if these were partitions that
you expected a miracle to happen, and "every bootable thing, boots",
that's not going to happen. You can do the d&d clone operation, then
use the Macrium boot CD and select the "Boot Repair" from the menu,
but this too assumes what you're doing makes logical sense. If
you take twelve generations of OS and expect the "Boot Repair" to
glue them back together, you will be sadly mistaken. Only the
simplest of scenarios will be handled with skill and grace.
Don't try to do stupid stuff.

So yes, you can *easily* clone partitions from one disk onto another.
If you meant to clean off the destination disk first, it's probably
better to do that before opening Macrium, so there's no question
about what is to be zapped.

In Command Prompt "diskpart", you can "select disk 1", then
do "clean" to remove the MBR, or do "clean all" to wipe every
sector on the drive. That's one way to prepare a destination
drive, if you want it to be as clean as possible first. The
Linux "sudo gdisk /dev/sda" also has some sort of option to
remove GPT, something I used yesterday before doing an
experiment for someone. Otherwise, careless removal of GPT,
leaves enough "sniffable materials" for some utilities
to become confused about what you intended. And this
leads to unexpected outcomes, if you're not careful.
You want to hone your GPT removal skills, before dabbling
with GPT.

Let's take an example. This was yesterdays d&d clone op.
I copied the GPT ESP on the left, and the Windows 7 install,
and it boots because I repaired it to make it boot. Part of
the experiment was to install Windows 10 over top, which is
why an extra (System Reserved) partition was gained afterwards.

https://i.postimg.cc/pXy1zJbz/clones.gif

   Paul

Thanks.

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