"John" wrote in message
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philo wrote:
"John" wrote in message
...
philo wrote:
"John" wrote in message
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I have a Vista and also a cloned vista for backup.

After about 4 days something happened so I booted from the old vista.
About 50% of the files on the new vista got copied over by the old
vista. Why does this happen?

Strangest thing was my email (thunderbird). The email files got
SWITCHED! The old went to the new and vice versa. That isn't easy to
do.

I also lost my nice new desktop and several new files and
organizational
things I'd done on the new vista.

Is there a way to prevent this? I guess I could just unplug the new
drive when booting from the old but it defeats the purpose of backup.

John

It seems more like you lost sight of which disk was which


I just booted up and ran a couple things. Now I'm thinking I should have
switched the cables on the disks. Probably all the pointers are to the
particular disks rather than to disk C: and D:.
John

I don't know what happened but....

If you make a clone, the first time you boot from it,
it needs to be put in place of the original drive
so that both drives, if used singly will be assigned the drive letter C:

(or whatever it was originally)

Once you have booted from a cloned drive,
if you use it as a second drive, it will get assigned a different letter,
but should revert to C: again if put back in the original
position...singly.

If you can get one of your drives all sorted out and working 100%
I'd reclone it.

Then remove the drive and replace it with the clone...
and confirm the clone is good.

Once the cloned drive is confirmed good...
remove it at set it aside in case of an emergency.

Then use a third drive as a backup for just your data.

(Or whatever scheme best suits you)
Makes sense. I just want to be sure I can boot and be operational right
away.

John


Well as soon as you make the clone.

turn the machine off and put it in the place of your original drive...
that way the proper drive letter will be assigned
and you can be sure that it's ok