Ghosting new hard drive

[Racer7201]

I'm planning on getting a new "big" hard drive soon and would like to know a couple things. Currently I have 3 partitions on my 6.4g drive, (2.2, 2.3, 1.9g). If I put the new (30g) in as slave and use disk to disk to clone, shutdown, change jumper to master and reboot, what will the partitions be like. Or do I need to fdisk, format the new drive to the size partition I want first. I've used ghost several times to make an image for backup, but not disk to disk clone. Thanks, Jerry

 

[Ulysses]

I've never found it necessary to use Ghost, but many people realy do like it. If, as I did, you buy a retail version of your drive instead of the OEM version, it may come with a floppy disk utility program for setting up your drives. My Western Digital Expert HDD came with something called Data Life Guard, that has a number of different functions. You install the drives, boot from the floppy and then set up the drives. I even use it for backups to my old HDD
.

 

[hominid skull]

I just done a ghost clone for a friend that had a 8 gig hard disk with 3 partitions(3,3,2.5gig) and i used ghost to do a disk to disk clone, it worked perfectly. You can resize the partitions in ghost on the new drive before you copy the information, you don't have to use fdisk first to make the partitions, so there's nothing to worry about.

Just remember to check the harddisk out before you wipe the old one, you always have got the original harddisk to try agian if you don't get it right the first time..

 

[Bglad]

Yes, Ghost works great within a few limitations. You can resize the partitions any way you want but you will have to still have 3 partitions. You won't be able to copy your 3 partitions to one on the new drive for example.

 

[Racer7201]

Thanks for the info everyone. Was planning on picking a new drive up this week, but I think my video card is starting to act up, so that may take priority. Always something.
Thanks, Jerry

 

[Mday]

you are better off using your existing system for fdisk and format your new drive, then make images of each partition.

start with your booting partition. you can just make a image or do a direct partition to partition (that's partition to partition, not disk disk) copy after fdisk and format of your new drive. the partitions do not have to be the same, but the new drive's partition must be larger.

ghost is pretty flexible as is a dual HDD system. you can have partitions up the wazoo...

you don't necessarily have to have 3 partitions on your new drive. you can actually make 2 partitions and save the 3rd for your old drive. this requires making an image of the final partition and placing it on a already cloned partition on the new drive. then fdisk and format the old disk, and do an image to partition.

REMEMBER, the larger the partition, the larger the cluster and the more space you are wasting. and ghost cannot write to NTFS, but can read it.

of course i am hoping your motherboard can support an HDD that large. some cannot.