No. You do nothing. You boot MaxBlast. You follow the prompts to Clone.

There are no other options at this point.

The clone will copy your old drive exactly and add all additional space to partition 3.

Now its clear as mud. Thanks.

I have an unexpected problem. Disk 2 my new WD is no longer recognized by XP. It shows up in disk managment as "foreign" so I can't access my documents in XP. By right clicking on it I found an option to import foreign disks however when I tried to do that I got the error "the operation didn't complete. check system event log...". I check the system event log and find "INTERNAL Error - A disk group with the specified name already exists (C100007A)." The 250 gb drive had been named the same thing so I renamed the 250 gb drive after creating a partition on it, rebooted and still the same problem. I've tried to roll back the driver on the new drive [which didn't work], uninstalled the new drive, uninstalled the 250, & I still have the same problem. I have even removed the 250 from the system and yet I still get the same error. I have yet to clone the drive. This drive worked just fine in Vista and still works in Vista. Could Vista be the problem?

A dynamic disk's status is Foreign.

Cause: The Foreign status occurs when you move a dynamic disk to the local computer from another computer running Windows 2000, Windows XP Professional, Windows XP 64-bit Edition (Itanium), or the Windows Server 2003 family of operating systems. A warning icon appears on disks that display the Foreign status.

In some cases, a disk that was previously connected to the system can display the Foreign status. Configuration data for dynamic disks is stored on all dynamic disks, so the information about which disks are owned by the system is lost when all dynamic disks fail.

Solution: Add the disk to your computer's system configuration so that you can access data on the disk. To add a disk to your computer's system configuration, import the foreign disk (right-click the disk and then click Import Foreign Disks). Any existing volumes on the foreign disk become visible and accessible when you import the disk.

Troubleshooting Disk Management: Storage Services; File and Storage Services

I see a possible work around if you accept the registry risk:

To work around this issue, we need to modify registry.
If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause
serious problems that may require you to reinstall your
operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can
solve problems that result from using Registry Editor
incorrectly.

If your system/boot drive is still a basic disk, follow
these steps to correct this
condition:

1. Start Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe).

2. Click the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic
es\dmio\Boot Info

3. Under the Boot Info key, delete the "Primary Disk
Group" key.

4. Quit Registry Editor, and then reboot the computer.

5. After the reboot, try to import the foreign disks
again.

If you don't already use ERUNT it is a great Registry Backup & Optimizer:

ERUNT and NTREGOPT

Well that worked. I didn't even have to import the drive. So is it possible that Vista caused this? I've never experienced nor seen that problem before. Now its time to clone the drive. I'll let you know how that goes.

Ok I have been able to copy the partitions. This version includes the option to resize the partitions either manually or automatically when the drive is cloned. Both systems seem to be running correctly with no problems so far. Is there anyway to test to see if anything has been damaged?

I don't know anything specifically beyond just try all your programs etc.

Glad it worked.

MaxBlast has always been a great tool. The last version I used was #4.

It used to be just a Maxtor tool but now Seagate has bought Maxtor.

It is a good reason to buy Seagate drives in my opinion.

Ok I've now got a strange annoyance. I decided to use up the extra space on the 250 gb drive to install windows 2003 & windows 2008 because I got both for free and I want to experiment with them. First I install 2003 & that goes off without a hitch. The bootloader is changed & the only entries are windows 2003 & XP Pro. I expected this to happen because Vista is too new for XP or 2003 to sense. When I reinstalled XP in the past I had to find a way to restore the Vista bootloader for that very reason. Next I installed 2008 because when it comes to windows the newest OS should be installed last. The Vista bootloader is restored with the following entries: Windows 2008 server [or something like that; this is new entry 1], "earlier version of windows" [what I got for XP the very first time I installed Vista; new entry 2], Vista, & XP, both of which where there before I installed the new OSs. So I decide to try to boot everything up one by one to make sure there are no problems with the boot manager. The Vista entry loads Vista without a problem. I try the XP entry thinking that this would boot me into XP but it doesn't. Instead I get the previously mentioned bootloader that 2003 created. Now the "earlier version of windows" causes an ntlrd error when I thought that this would load 2003. In the 2003 bootloader accessed by selecting "XP" both XP and 2003 are accessible but the annoyance is in having to go through 2 menus to load 2003 or XP. I've decided for now not to mess with the bootloader at all because I don't want to screw the bootloader up but I would like to know if anyone has experienced a similar situation or knows if/how I can set it up so that all of the OSs can be accessed directly through the Vista bootloader.

If you are going to shuffle that many OS I'd suggest getting a boot manager:

boot managers - Google Search

Windows was not designed to do this. Dual boot OK. Quad boot .....

.....


Also on a more personal note if you could split up your paragraph(s) it would make for much easier reading.

Originally Posted by jephree

If you are going to shuffle that many OS I'd suggest getting a boot manager:

Is there one in particular that you recommend? I'll probably leave it as is for now considering I don't have the time this week & that I can access all of them.