It…could…work!
One of the things that more took my time, in all these days of guilty and unforgivable absence from the blog, was tinkering with hard disk cloning programs and tools to work with partitions. Actually it would have been better, considering my latest misadventure with magnetic HDDs, to deal with the matter way before - for instance at the beginning of the reinstallation process of my software after having purchased the new laptop. Anyway the fact is that I spent the last week (excluding the weekend) trying backup and partitions manipulation tools, and the previous one integrating the useful documentation already collected about the subject.
Who already practiced with partitioning and cloning know well how much things can get complicated and scattered with obstacles, and if to this you add the fact that I like to do things with methodic stubbornness being unsatisfied by the obvious things here is explained why I spent so much time on the matter. To put it short my main target was to renew at least two of the three fundamental components of the cloning and partitioning strategy I use since some years now, that is a multi-platform bootloader/boot manager, a software to work with partitions and the essential backup tool for the aforementioned partitions.
Let’s set aside the bootloader issue for the moment (note to self: test EasyBCD and GRUB4DOS asap) and focus on the other two: the old PartitionMagic (partitioning tool) which did well with Windows XP is outdated by now and Symantec “Apocalypse” Corporation clarified that the program will not be updated anymore, while trying the latest version of Norton Ghost (cloning tool) was out of the question because in these years Symantec did nothing but worsening, in the quality of products as like as in its predatorial approach to the utility software market.
Obviously I had plenty of choices, and to cut down the test phases I focused my attention on programs like Acronis True Image & Disk Director, Clonezilla and Parted Magic. I encountered the first difficulty when I discovered that the software from Acronis, a so well renowned brand, weren’t even able to detect the HD after the installation. When I was almost resigned to use a Live-CD for the backup too I stumbled upon the free version of Macrium Reflect, a program that is as much pleasant to use as it is reliable in the execution that in the end it became my choice for the disk backup.
I spent some nights on this to verify that everything worked properly both during backup and restoration, fighting with the Linux-based restore disk (it works only when it decides so) and the as much problematic one created with BartPE (I’m currently with Vista and BartPE needs XP, the CD created on another computer doesn’t work if I don’t activate the SATA controller IDE emulation in the BIOS etcetera…) but in the end I obtained exactly what I wanted and so long to Norton Ghost 
Still on the cloning matter, I’ve found that Clonezilla is an interesting product (it’s open source, it’s Linux-based, it’s simple to use and yet it offers a full-fledged set of features) and is worth of being tested more thoroughly in the future. Closed the backup question, the choice for the partitioning tool was much less complicated: GParted does all I will ever need, and Parted Magic (whose cloning features don’t work on my system and I really haven’t understood why) is the best Live-CD I’ve tried in years (GParted, Testdisk, Internet connection via Wi-Fi too and much more!).
Now I finally can say that I have the total control of my PC: I’ve resolved my doubts about the presence of an EFI partition on the HD (the BIOS is of UEFI type, the Master Boot Record is luckily a standard one), I’ve deleted the two partitions stealing space from the main one (one hosted the initial installation recovery, while for the other one I never realised what it was useful for), I’ve started again to make disk backups as much often as I can, I’ve returned to experience rather unorthodox things like accessing the Vista partition via DOS by using an NTFS driver designed for XP, restoring the system registry backup created by ERUNT from a Live-CD too (after three months I still didn’t know if it would have worked) and much more.
A last positive note: my guilty absence from the blog should be over, or at least I hope to spend more time on it hereafter. Who then hadn’t caught the quote from the title, is asked to watch the most comical 15 seconds of the history of cinema pronto. All the others enjoy the four pages of Don Zauker I’m attaching in a completely random manner because I want so. The post is over, levatevi da’ coglioni (quote)
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