Do I have to format a new hard drive before loading a Ghost image to it?

[Felecha]

My first hard drive died a week ago. I've had 2 IBM DeskStar 75GXP 30GB drives (I know - they have a terrible reputation but they lasted 4 and a half years). It was the backup drive. The day before it died I had made a Ghost image of my C drive, storing it on the backup drive and then burning it to a DVD on my brand new DVD burner.

When the backup drive died I bought a replacement, a Seagate 80GB ATA100, and the plan was to put the image on that, and reformat the current C drive and use as a backup for now.

The day the Seagate arrived, the C drive died. So now I have a blank hard drive and a Ghost image on a DVD. I have my data separately backed up so I COULD just reinstall XP and reinstall everything and what a pain. I sure would like to restore the image.

2 questions - I can't seem to get Ghost to see my DVD drive when I load it. I can boot from the DVD using the WindowsXP disk, but in the Ghost GUI it does not show in the dropdown where you select what drive to load the image from. I've tried all the Ghost boot disk possibilities and cant make it work (I still have my laptop to work with).

And - if I CAN get to the image on the DVD, won't it load all the 1's and 0's right onto the new hard drive without formatting it first?

Thanks

 

[BlueWeasel]

You shouldn't have to format the drive - the newer imaging programs should do it on the fly as you are restoring the image.

 

[Navid]

I don't know what is wrong with Ghost that does not let you see the DVD drive.
But, I confirm that you do not need to format. In fact, if you restore an image of an OS that was on an NTFS drive onto a FAT-formatted drive, the result will be the OS on an NTFS drive. In other words, the formatting is a part of the image.

 

[pcgeek11]

Originally posted by: Felecha
My first hard drive died a week ago. I've had 2 IBM DeskStar 75GXP 30GB drives (I know - they have a terrible reputation but they lasted 4 and a half years). It was the backup drive. The day before it died I had made a Ghost image of my C drive, storing it on the backup drive and then burning it to a DVD on my brand new DVD burner.

When the backup drive died I bought a replacement, a Seagate 80GB ATA100, and the plan was to put the image on that, and reformat the current C drive and use as a backup for now.

The day the Seagate arrived, the C drive died. So now I have a blank hard drive and a Ghost image on a DVD. I have my data separately backed up so I COULD just reinstall XP and reinstall everything and what a pain. I sure would like to restore the image.

2 questions - I can't seem to get Ghost to see my DVD drive when I load it. I can boot from the DVD using the WindowsXP disk, but in the Ghost GUI it does not show in the dropdown where you select what drive to load the image from. I've tried all the Ghost boot disk possibilities and cant make it work (I still have my laptop to work with).

And - if I CAN get to the image on the DVD, won't it load all the 1's and 0's right onto the new hard drive without formatting it first?

Thanks

Actually Ghost will delete the partition on the drive where you are putting the image and start with free space. I'm not sure why it will not see the dvd drive, but if you have a laptop you can network the two pcs and do the ghost over the network.

pcgeek11

 

[Felecha]

oh? how?

 

[Felecha]

and what about the image being like 15GB and the new drive is 80GB.

Will it just leave the last space "unallocated"?

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: Felecha
oh? how?

!!!!!

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: Felecha
and what about the image being like 15GB and the new drive is 80GB.

Will it just leave the last space "unallocated"?

It will give you the choice of leaving it empty or resizing the partition to fill the unallocated space.

 

[Felecha]

I finally got it to see the DVD, although I have no idea why. But then it refused to recognize the .gho files on the disks. I guess I finally have to give up and just install XP all over, and all my apps, and at least I do have fairly recent data backups. Big pain.

Thanks all