Windows 7 Multi-boot license question

[Puddin Man]

I'm still trying to get used to my new Win7 desktop system. I've found many, many surprises in what MS has/has-not engineered into the product.

In the past I've run weekly full-image backups of pre-Vista Windows systems by booting one partition of a multi-boot system to backup another partition, using mon-MS products like Partition Wizard. Would like to do something similar with Win7.

I am running Win7-64 Home Premium OEM. Am I legal to propagate multiple Win7 installs on the same (fully authorized) hardware?

And, can anyone supply or point to a simple explanation of the 100 mb partition that Win7 install created on my HD?

Any/all info much appreciated.

Puddin

 

[Mike]

I am running Win7-64 Home Premium OEM. Am I legal to propagate multiple Win7 installs on the same (fully authorized) hardware?

This is a gray area. OEM licenses are tied to the original motherboard it is installed on. Retail licenses can be installed on 1 computer at a time, but are transferable. It is unclear what the story on this is - since Windows Vista, Microsoft has allowed up to 4 license activations for virtual machines on the same machine. Whether or not you can conclude that multiple installations on multiple partitions constitutes multiple license usage is something you would surely have to take up with Microsoft. One thing in certain: You will be required to activate again unless the partition is cloned.

And, can anyone supply or point to a simple explanation of the 100 mb partition that Win7 install created on my HD?

The 100MB partition contains recovery files, information, and data necessary for launching a successful System Recovery Environment or Startup Recovery.

 

[Puddin Man]

This is a gray area. OEM licenses are tied to the original motherboard it is installed on. Retail licenses can be installed on 1 computer at a time, but are transferable. It is unclear what the story on this is - since Windows Vista, Microsoft has allowed up to 4 license activations for virtual machines on the same machine. Whether or not you can conclude that multiple installations on multiple partitions constitutes multiple license usage is something you would surely have to take up with Microsoft. One thing in certain: You will be required to activate again unless the partition is cloned.

Thanks, that is helpful info.

I will assume that 4 are OK until I have evidence to the contrary.

Do you know of any inexpensive or free cloning software out there?

The 100MB partition contains recovery files, information, and data necessary for launching a successful System Recovery Environment or Startup Recovery.

And if I implement a non-M$ backup/recovery strategy, I could investigate deletion/re-claiming the 100mb partition?

What do I need to know to use, say, Partition Wizard to create full-image backups? In particular, what Win7 headaches would I encounter from UAC, access permissions, etc. I am, of course, the admin, no-one else uses my pc.

Thanks,
Puddin

 

[fjgold]

An excellent free cloning tool is Clonezilla Live.
It runs from a CD.
That is once the downloaded .iso image is burned to a blank CD the CD becomes bootable
and you run it by booting to it.
It can also be installed and run from a USB Flash drive.

This means you run it from outside Windows.

The image file created is only created from the used space on the partition and uses a compression scheme, by default,
that keep the resulting image relatively small.

It's quick to use, dependent on the size of the used space that is to be cloned and the level of compression.

It is a linux based tool but quite easy to use.

I've posted a tutorial at another forum detailing it's use that should help using this great tool.

Link Removed due to 404 Error

Clonezilla-Live 1.2.6-40-i686.iso is the very latest download.
It's optimized for multicore processors and will work on 64 bit hardware.

Clonezilla

The main page above has links to documentation with screenshots, this plus my tutorial should help
with learning how to use Clonezilla.

A guide to using Clonezilla - Scot's Newsletter Forums

Above a link to my tutorial.

This is an excellent tool, one I use frequently.

Give it a try, it's free.

 

[Puddin Man]

how do i clone windows 7 or move it to a new harddrive? - Overclock.net - Overclocking.net

Thanks, but I don't want compression, and I *do* want to clone used+unused space, and I don't know that limitations such as:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: a limitation of Clonezilla and most other cloning tools relates to the actual size of the partition that is cloned.

The image can only be restored to a partition that is exactly the same size as the source partition. It also must use the same filesystem and have the same sda* or hda* (* being a number).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

defines a robust cloning program.

I've just discovered evidence that Win7 ItsOwnSelf will produce a viable clone:

how do i clone windows 7 or move it to a new harddrive? - Overclock.net - Overclocking.net

I'll continue to investigate, but if anyone is using Partition Wizard to manipulate Win7 partitions, I'd appreciate mention of it.

Thanks,
Puddin

 

[fjgold]

Why would you want to clone the unused space?
The compression is completely lossless.

Good luck with the builtin MS solution, it doesn't work for me.

A common limitation of all clone programs it that the partition you clone to must be the same size, down the last bit or larger
as the partition you create the clone image from.
Even the MS solution.
This does not constitute a less robust program.
On the contrary Clonezilla is very robust and easy to use.

Am I understanding your original question to be that you want to create another instance(s) of your Win 7 install on other partitions of your hard drive as backups?

If so that is totally unnecessary.

An image created by clonezillacan be stored on a separate storage partition
or external drive for safe keeping.

In the event of disaster the image can be restored from that location in minutes
bringing you back to the point the image was created.

Carefully read the guide I created and also the documentation on the Clonezilla web site
to see how this is done.

I backup my WIN 7 install frequently with Clonezilla and it only takes minutes and doesn't
waste disk space as mentioned in my guide


As to cloning the empty space it creates an unnecessarily large image.

For example if you clone a 70 GB partition including free space the resulting image will be 70 GB.

If for example you only use 20 GB of that 70 GB then a tool like clonezilla will only create an image from 20 GB of used space
producing a final image of 20 GB.

The compression is optional (user defined) but using the default compression level in clonezilla would further reduce the image size to ~10 GB.
Again the compression is lossless.

Of course you would save this image to another partition or an external HDD or thumb drive to be used to restore a borked system.

An of course you can not create and save an image to the same partition it's created from.

BTW, there are great free Partition managers available that can perform partitioning chores such as shrink or move partitions.

Two of note are both Live CD's and are GUI based.

The first is Parted Magic, a complete Live Linux distro that has Gparted as it's Partition manager.

News


The other is a standalone Live version of Gparted.

GParted -- About

Both tools support NTFS, Fat32, ReiserFS and all the linux filesystems and work great.

Both tools run in Live mode, that is you boot to them and won't mess with your hard drive unless you
instruct them to ie: making changes to a partition\drive.

BTW, you shouldn't need to mess with the 100 MB partition.

Here's the scenario you run Clonezilla and tell it to make an image of your C: partition and instruct it to save the image to another
HDD (external), partition or USB flash device.
Of course the storage device needs to be large enough to hold the image.
It sits there until disaster strikes.
Run Clonezilla again and instruct it to restore using the image previously created.

When done you are back in business.
In minutes.

 

[Puddin Man]

There are all kinds of considerations, here. I am new to "cloning" per se. There may be semantic issues.

Say you have 2 hard drives, with your normal usage bootable partition on disk 1. You clone that system to disk 2 using Clonezilla. Then disk 1 suffers a head crash, becomes a total loss.

Is your clone bootable in place (where it is stored)? With compressed system folders?? And zero free space???

Etc, etc.

Puddin

 

[Puddin Man]

The 100MB partition contains recovery files, information, and data necessary for launching a successful System Recovery Environment or Startup Recovery.

How can I peruse the 100MB partition to see what they've done with it?

Can one make Explorer display the 100MB partition??

Thx,
P