Ghosting a clean install?

[Burtie21]

I have 2 80 gig hard drive, one maxtor diamond max plus 9 and a samsung spin point. I use the samsung as a backup(files, games, documents, etc.....). Anyways back to my question, I've been hearing alot about keeping a clean image file of a clean install. I got a copy of Norton Ghsot when I bought my mobo.

Back to my question again, if I create a ghost file, and put it on my second hard drive, then when I want to use it, then how do I go about making it work, do I just drag and drop then select yes to overwrite?

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated, since I'm definetly considering doing this.

Thanks, Graeme

 

[robtk3]

Just make a boot cd with ghost and test it. You won't have to go through the whole restore process, just make sure you can see the image.

 

[Burtie21]

im sorry maybe you misunderstood, say i make the image file, and it's on my storage drive, how do i go about removing my old install, and putting the ghosted one on?

 

[Insidious]

I know you can copy one drive to another very easily using the bootable floppy (or CD) you make with the boot disk wizzard of Ghost, but I have not tried to take an image file from one drive and restore it to another.

I would recommend creating a partition on your backup drive for the image (use the bootable floppy or CD to copy DISK to PARTITION). then when it is time to restore, use the bootable floppy or CD to copy PARTITION to DISK

-Sid

(I just keep my second HD unplugged (power connector) and plug it in and copy main HD to it every week or so for a back-up. Then if I ever have a problem I just copy the back-up to the main.... never loose more than a week if things go south on me.... of course, if I put something 'important' on the main, I do a back-up asap.)

I don't use image files because I would prefer a single partition on my drives

Did you take a look at the help/toutorial docs that came with Ghost... they are pretty thorough.

 

[robtk3]

That's how my ghost image is setup. On a partition. I just did a restore from my D: (storage) to my C: (os) all of which is on my Seagate 200Gb (along with E: (programs)) I had no problems aside from a few program links I had to fix. Ghost was able to see the whole logical drive.

 

[Burtie21]

so insidious, the documentation on the disk will tell me how to make this boot disk you were talking about? And this boot disk will allow me to take the disk image from my drive D:/(storage) and put it on C:/(os)?, or am I misunderstanding?

 

[Burtie21]

bump

 

[Insidious]

The part I am not sure of is that you started with a ghost image file. I am assuming you created this image file by running ghost under windows. I have never done that.

but yes, if you look in the docs under creating an image of a drive or partition, it will lead you through the process of making the bootable floppy disk and using it to copy drives and partitions.

but I really don't know how the bootable floppy deals with image files created otherwise.

basically, you run the ghost boot wizzard. (start-all programs-symantec-boot wizzard). it will give you choices of what kind of disk to create. (I don't have it installed atm, so I don't know the exact wording.)

then you boot to that floppy and follow the menus and tell it if you are copying from a disk or partition and then to a disk or partition. next it will show you a listing of the disks/partitiions and let you select which one is the source and which one is the destination. that is how I make my image. then when you want to recover it, you just do the same but reverse the source and destination choices.

-Sid

edit: the documentation I mentioned will be included with the install of ghost. I don't know if you can just read it directly from the installation cd or not.

 

[Burtie21]

thanks, i think ill try it out sometime, prolly next time i reformat