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Can I Ghost a hard drive image to a larger hard drive?

M

mshan

Diamond Member
I am thinking about replacing the 2 MB cache, 160 GB IDE Seagate 7200.9 in my dad's eMachines T6528 with another hard drive because Windows seems to take forever to load.

If I create a Norton Ghost image, can I then replace the hard drive and restore the image to the new hard drive if I put something like a 320 GB hard drive in it.

Or does the hard drive I restore a Ghost image to have to be the same capacity as the original?

(and vice versa: if the actual disk image is small enough, could I actually restore the Ghost image to something such as an 80 GB hard drive?)
 
Is this automatically done by Ghost (I've got Norton Ghost 2003) when you select target partition / drive?

And is it the same procedure for an imaged partition or whole hard drive?


EDIT: if I imaged from an IDE connected hard drive and replaced and restored image to a SATA hard drive, should this work in Ghost and Windows (mobo is MSI K8MGM2-FID, which recognizes SATA hard drives without drivers on floppy)
 
I can't speak to the question of changing drives AND changing drive interfaces (IDE -> SATA) but I can speak to using Ghost to migrate a computer from a small hard drive to a larger one. Ghost will do it, but it won't change your partition size for you.

So if you Ghost a 160GB drive to a 320GB drive you will find, at least I did, that the 320GB drive works just fine but thye partition is still the same 160GB partition size as was on the original drive.

To get around this I then used Partition Magic to expand the partition. It worked flawlessly, but did require two software packages. That was 1 year ago, today's software may be different.

Also, to answer the question about goinf the other direction, large drive to small drive, it will work but you need to first down-size the partion on the large drive before you make a ghost image of it. Then restore the ghost image on the smaller drive and use partition magic (or other) to expand the partition to occupy as much of the smaller drive as you like.
 
My dad's current 160 GB hard drive has an approximately 145 GB C: drive and a 5 GB D: restore drive.

Sounds like I should partition the hard drive first (can I put it into an external USB enclosure, connect it up to another hard drive, and just use diskmgmt.msc to partition and format?), then replace the drive and restore Ghost images of each individual partition (system C: drive would probably be expanded into a much larger C: drive)
 
I don't know about Ghost - but Acronis TrueImage will clone a smaller drive to a larger drive or vice versa when you select "proportional." And that would include any partitions as well. I have never understood the strange affinity to using Ghost. 🙂
 
Yeah I use TrueImage and it will let you change the partition size. It will even shrink the size for you if you're going from larger to smaller.
 
Ghost works fine.

Most N00Bs shy away from the non gui interface but it will do exactly what you want. 🙂
 
Originally posted by: MS Dawn
Ghost works fine.

Most N00Bs shy away from the non gui interface but it will do exactly what you want. 🙂
Click to expand...

i now like acronis more but for the longest time i used ghost corporate 7.5(?) via a floppy. worked perfect every time. it seems as ghost matured it did less.
 
Originally posted by: bob4432
i now like acronis more but for the longest time i used ghost corporate 7.5(?) via a floppy. worked perfect every time. it seems as ghost matured it did less.
Click to expand...

All the machines here on the network have a boot option that calls the ghost server onboard (superqueen) and is fully automated for recovery. Works great. I'd hate to set that up though. :Q

We also have bootable DVD's for standalone machines that the MIS folks made. Again, fully automated but can be started in a mode that allows various switches to be run. Neat stuff. 🙂

It seems that Ghost hangs on some machines using SATA drives ported to IDE, etc. Takes some BIOS changes to get those working. Some of the IBM servers with Mylex HBA's don't like Ghost at all but they use a different process on those anyhow.

 
you should be able to. although if windows is taking long to load, why not just reinstall windows instead of creating and image? it would definently solve the problem of IDE to SATA.

anyway, Ghost won't create the bigger partition. but you can expand the partition using tools built into windows.

once you've backed up the image and loaded it on the new drive, right click my computer and select manage. then go to disk management and you can enlarge the partition from there.

good luck!
 
Ghost will definitely make the original partition fit the full size of the new target. The key is to make an IMAGE not copy the drive.
 
anyway, Ghost won't create the bigger partition. but you can expand the partition using tools built into windows.
Click to expand...

Ghost will fill the entire hard disk with a smaller image as far as I know, there are no tools built into Windows XP that will expand the partition.

pcgeek11
 
In spite of all the technobabble, TrueImage beats Ghost any day - and TI-10 is faster than 9. And if you just make an image, it may not be immediately bootable. Think CLONING proportionally either way. It is all done with a bootable CD using a Linux GUI that does not involve any Windows OS at all.
 
Yes you can make a image of the original and load the image onto a newer larger drive. Just as long as the new drive is larger then the image.

You can also clone a drive to make life easier. Just install it as a slave drive and then clone C - D. Take out old C and boot up off the new drive done.

I do this all the time. I perfer True Image over Ghost any day of the week. Pick up True Image and call it a day.
 
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