A question regarding Norton Ghost...

[Kaczor]

A question regarding Norton Ghost...

I have been using using Ghost for backup of my WinXP installs for quite a while now.

My setup:
HD1, 30GB split into 3 equal partitions, one of them WinXP
HD2, 40GB used for audio/video.

I would keep an image of my WinXP (and programs) and once in a while when things got really messy I would simply dump the image onto the partition...

But the other day I notice my HD1 (IBM) has started to act funny and fearing complete disaster, I decided to swap my HDs. So I split the 40GB into 3 partitions, one being 10GB and attempted to put my WinXP clone onto it.

However after Ghosting, I am not able to boot from that partition. (I did double check the obvious settings (Master/Slave etc).

My question is, can I only use the Ghost Images on the exact same partitions that it was made from?

If not, any suggestions as to why I am not able to boot?

Thanks a lot for all the help,
Pawel

 

[Heisenberg]

No, you can ghost to/from any partition you want. It would help if you would post the exact error message. It's probably a Windows problem. Did you do a "fdisk /mbr" on the 40GB drive? It could also be that Windows doesn't like the change in hard drives.

 

[Shagga]

As far as I know you can change drives and restore the image as normal. I don't think I've had the problem you are having. Make sure the Partition is set to active.

 

[Kaczor]

That might be the problem...

sorry for the dumb question, but how do I do that?

 

[Kaczor]

ok, i set the partition on the new hd as active (did it from disk manager in winXP).
After this i can *almost* boot from the new clone, but it hangs on the XP welcome screen

 

[Kaczor]

Here is what the problem is right now:
Whenever I re-image using any of the clones that I had made from my old drive the Windows hangs at boot. Instead of the Welcome screen I get a WinXP logo and it just hangs there.

I did a clean WinXP install on the new HD and made a image of that. I have no problems dumping that image at all, all boots fine...

For some reason any of the ghost images of the old HD don't work...

?

 

[Kaczor]

morning bump

 

[Muse]

I assume you swapped the position of the HDs, so the one you want to boot from is now the Primary Master. I wonder if it has to do with XP's additional "security". That is, Microsoft's quest to make sure you don't reinstall the OS more than X number of times without calling them up or something to make sure you're not getting more than you contracted for. That "feature" :frown: is one reason I'm happy to be using Windows 2000 still. I don't see a ball and chain on my Windows 2000 CD.

 

[Mitzi]

What version of Ghost are you using? As far as I am aware you have to have Ghost 2002 or higher if you are running WinXP, also do you have all the updates to Ghost before making the image file?

I Ghosted my old 27Gb drive onto my new 80Gb drive a couple of days ago and the image boots perfectly and thats XP (using Ghost 2003).

 

[Whitedog]

Mitzi is right... you need at LEAST version 2002 or better or it doesn't work when you try to image the file to a new disk.

 

[SUOrangeman]

Let's not forget that you are actually changing hardware. The setup accounts for one particular drive that WinXP may have internally labelled in its own special way.

What you've done is just copied that information (which knows all about the former drive) onto a new drive that XP hasn't seen. While a sane person would think it is OK, you never know what MS relies on for its form of stability. If you were using two identical drives, this swap may not be an issue.

Try booting into safe mode. Oh, and read the AnandTech FAQs on this matter.

-SUO

 

[Thor86]

Originally posted by: Mitzi
What version of Ghost are you using? As far as I am aware you have to have Ghost 2002 or higher if you are running WinXP, also do you have all the updates to Ghost before making the image file?

I Ghosted my old 27Gb drive onto my new 80Gb drive a couple of days ago and the image boots perfectly and thats XP (using Ghost 2003).

Agreed, version 2002 should work with the ntfs and fat32 partition types.

 

[Kaczor]

I am using Ghost 2002.

Just to make this clear....this is the setup:
HD1 (dying IBM) 30GB: 3 NTFS partitions of 10GB
HD2 40GB, 3 10GB NTFS partitions + 10GB FAT32 with images

The clones are made from the first IBM partition and stored on the FAT32 partition on D2 . If I restore them (i tried a few) onto partition 1 of HD2, power off, disconnect HD1 and try to reboot, it does not work. It *boots* but hangs on the welcome screen. I did a clean install on HD2, created an image, restored it - no problem at all.

There is also something weird happening....When windows hangs after reboot at the blue screen, it also writes the 'program files' directory to the adjacent partition of HD2. To me this seems a bit bizarre...

pawel

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: Kaczor
I am using Ghost 2002.

Just to make this clear....this is the setup:
HD1 (dying IBM) 30GB: 3 NTFS partitions of 10GB
HD2 40GB, 3 10GB NTFS partitions + 10GB FAT32 with images

The clones are made from the first IBM partition and stored on the FAT32 partition on D2 . If I restore them (i tried a few) onto partition 1 of HD2, power off, disconnect HD1 and try to reboot, it does not work. It *boots* but hangs on the welcome screen. I did a clean install on HD2, created an image, restored it - no problem at all.

There is also something weird happening....When windows hangs after reboot at the blue screen, it also writes the 'program files' directory to the adjacent partition of HD2. To me this seems a bit bizarre...

pawel

Your partition you're trying to boot from is set to Primary? I would try swapping positions of the HDs: Make your HD2 Primary Master and see what happens. Windows hardcodes drive letters and directory paths in the registry. If any of the pathing that matters changes and the registry doesn't know about it, blowup.

 

[Kaczor]

After cloning I swapped the drives and so my HD2 is now Primary Master and HD1 Slave. Now it boots fine.
Thing is that the drive letters stick to the actual drives, so c:\ is no on the Slave drive.

But as soon as I remover my old HD1 (that one that I need to RMA) and try to boot just from HD2 set as Master it don't work, again, hangs on welcome screen.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: Kaczor
After cloning I swapped the drives and so my HD2 is now Primary Master and HD1 Slave. Now it boots fine.
Thing is that the drive letters stick to the actual drives, so c:\ is no on the Slave drive.

But as soon as I remover my old HD1 (that one that I need to RMA) and try to boot just from HD2 set as Master it don't work, again, hangs on welcome screen.

Hmm. Is it booting to the primary partition on the slave drive? Is C: your boot partition? You know, I wouldn't think that your C: partition would be the primary partition on your secondary master drive. I think it should be the primary master's first partition. Is that partition set to "Active"? You can do this with FDISK.EXE on a boot disk. I don't tinker with these things often, but that's what I'm thinking.

 

[Kaczor]

Sorry, I don't think I was clear on this...

Both drives are on the same controller. Let me call the drives hdA and hdB, rather than numbering them. Originally I had hdA set as Master (split 3 partitions of 10GB, C:, D:, E: ), hdB set as slave (F: G: J: 10GB each, and K: 10GB(FAT32) ). I made an image of C: and stored it on a K:. F: has the same number of *bytes* as C:.

hdA is dying so I dumped the image onto F, powered off and make hdB Master, hdA slave. Still on the same controller. Now, the primary partition of hdB (F: ) is set to active. I can boot to it but *only* if hdA is still connected as a slave. The drive letters (as shown in disk manager in XP) are the same as before the clone, ie hdA (slave) still has C, D, E etc...that is it is booting from what winXP refers to as F. C: also is labelled as 'Swap', and I don't understand why...

And if I disconnect hdA (the new slave drive), winXP hangs on the welcome screen.

 

[Kaczor]

one more last bump

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: Kaczor
Sorry, I don't think I was clear on this...

Both drives are on the same controller. Let me call the drives hdA and hdB, rather than numbering them. Originally I had hdA set as Master (split 3 partitions of 10GB, C:, D:, E: ), hdB set as slave (F: G: J: 10GB each, and K: 10GB(FAT32) ). I made an image of C: and stored it on a K:. F: has the same number of *bytes* as C:.

hdA is dying so I dumped the image onto F, powered off and make hdB Master, hdA slave. Still on the same controller. Now, the primary partition of hdB (F: ) is set to active. I can boot to it but *only* if hdA is still connected as a slave. The drive letters (as shown in disk manager in XP) are the same as before the clone, ie hdA (slave) still has C, D, E etc...that is it is booting from what winXP refers to as F. C: also is labelled as 'Swap', and I don't understand why...

And if I disconnect hdA (the new slave drive), winXP hangs on the welcome screen.

How do you know that the machine is booting from F:? The way you describe it here is the way I understood it. How do you know that the system is not booting from the first partition of hdA? That would explain why the system no longer boots when you remove it. When you open Explorer, which partition is expanded? I've never used XP, but in Win2000, when you open Explorer, one partition is expanded - the partition with the operating system being used.

 

[Muse]

I also had a problem using Ghost to more to another HD. Around 2-3 months ago I bought a new 80 GB HD and a 120 GB HD and decided to pull my 40 GB 2nd HD and replace it with the 120 GB. That was easy, and then I decided to replace my 60 GB boot drive with the 80 GB drive. That was a problem. The 60 GB boot drive has 7 partitions, 3 of them bootable - Win2000, Win98SE, WinNT 4. My Win2000, after cloning the 60 GB --> 80 GB would not boot. It would reload Personal Settings around 6 times/second indefinitely. I started a thread and got some ideas but dropped it because it was no big deal for me to stick with the 60 GB drive since I had a new 120 GB drive - lots of HD space. I had other things to do and using the 80 Gb wasn't a priority. I've now got it in the system as a 3rd HD, since I have a HD controller card. In case you want to look at that thread I mention, it's here.

 

[Muse]

I was wrong. That might be an interesting thread, but the one I meant is this now-archived thread.

 

[Kaczor]

Thanks for the help, Muse.

At this point I have spent too much time trying to figure this out. It would take me less time to do a clean install!
That is what I am going to do...

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: Kaczor
Thanks for the help, Muse.

At this point I have spent too much time trying to figure this out. It would take me less time to do a clean install!
That is what I am going to do...

I figured and I was thinking of saying this but you already knew that. You WILL have the benefit of having a clean install. I have to do the same thing because my Win2000 is so messed up, so that's two of us! I should really do it today. I've been putting it off. I have almost 70 programs in Add/Remove programs. I think it'll be a couple days work at least... kinda complicated. I have all the programs but, man, I just thought of my Mailwasher program in which I have scads and scads of filters. Those are all kept in the registry, I believe. I'm trying to think of a way I can restore those. I think I may have to make a copy of each filter in a text file and then recreate them from that one by one... lots of work ahead. Good luck with your system. How do you know your HD1 is dieing?

 

[Kaczor]

HD1 is making these 'funny grinding noises'...plus has bad sectors....plus its an IBM Deskstar,

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: Kaczor
HD1 is making these 'funny grinding noises'...plus has bad sectors....plus its an IBM Deskstar,

If it's in warranty, then definitely RMA it. I RMAed one HD, a Maxtor, that was getting bad sectors and it was only a few months old - shouldn't do that. I have 3 IBM Deskstars and so far no failures, but the 40 GB is a loud SOB and I'm not using it right now. I think I will install it as a 3rd HD in one of my systems and make it a lightly used drive and then I won't have to deal with the noise. If it bugs me too much for audio and video I'll use it strictly for backing up data. My 60 GB Deskstar seems OK, and it's my boot drive on my number one machine right now. I tried to replace it with my new 80 GB WD, but couldn't as I said. If I buy any more HDs soon, I doubt I'd consider an IBM unless I hear good things about them. I have 3 WD drives with 8 MB cache and so far so good.