Open Source Norton Ghost Equivalent? Suggestions?

[htmlmasterdave]

I need to be able to copy one drive to another, it's the same drive, but one is older, it's NTFS... are there any tools available to do this? I'm on dialup so hopefully it's small 🙂

 

[BlueWeasel]

Try the manufacturer's website first, as WD and Maxtor have downloadable software that can do drive-to-drive copies if both drives are by the same manufacturer.

If that doesn't work, then the HD Clone Tools listed here may help.

 

[htmlmasterdave]

I was trying to use Norton Ghost 7.0, but everytime I try this it doesn't seem to work, I get the error "Error Loading Operating System" when I try and boot from the copy.

 

[BlueWeasel]

It doesn't sound like the CD or floppy you are using is bootable. Try booting from an old Win95 or Win98 CD, and then run Ghost.exe

 

[htmlmasterdave]

No no, I copy the drive succesfully, it's when I then try and boot windows from that copy of the original harddrive that I get that error. 🙁

 

[tfinch2]

Originally posted by: htmlmasterdave
No no, I copy the drive succesfully, it's when I then try and boot windows from that copy of the original harddrive that I get that error. 🙁

BlueWeasel knew the question and answered it correctly. Read his answer more carefully.

 

[htmlmasterdave]

Originally posted by: tfinch2

Originally posted by: htmlmasterdave
No no, I copy the drive succesfully, it's when I then try and boot windows from that copy of the original harddrive that I get that error. 🙁

BlueWeasel knew the question and answered it correctly. Read his answer more carefully.

I can't see how it is....

 

[drag]

Try it with the linux way.

To duplicate a drive you use the dd command.

Dd dumps data from one device to another. From a file to a tape drive. From a cdrom to a file to create a ISO image. From a harddrive to another harddrive. Whatever, it can also perform some data transformations, but people don't need that so much like they used to.


In Linux everything is a file. All your hardware resources are represented as files, as is your harddrive. (but you don't want to do this while the drive is in use.

So what you do is put one drive as the primary master on one controller and put the destination drive on the secondary master (for speed reasons).

The device drivers are represented by /dev/hd# files.
/dev/hda = primary master
/dev/hdb = primary slave
/dev/hdc = secondary master
/dev/hdd = secondary slave

Then if you have more then that you go up hde hdf and so on and so forth.

Then partitions are represented by their partition number added on to the end of the /dev/hd# names.
So the second partition on the primary slave IDE device would be /dev/hdb2

To duplicate the primary master device onto the secondary master device with dd you go:

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdc

Some setups make it more complex then that, they have things like /dev/host0/lun0/blahblabhah but I don't thing you need to worry about that.


Boot up with a knoppix cdrom. Knoppix is a live-linux-on-a-cd, meaning you get the OS running completely off of the cdrom without installing anything on your harddrive.

Issue the dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdc command (or any hd# devices depending on your setup. just don't get them mixed up!!)

Only works if the destination drive is the same size or larger then the original drive. Going to a smaller drive is not going to work.

if your going to a larger drive you can then use qtparted to resize the partitions to fill up the lost space or use a different similar tool like partition magic.


it's not as clever as ghost, for instance it duplicates EVERYTHING. Including empty sectors, so if you have very large drives it can take a long long time.

If you want something more complex/easier then check out partimage. It doesn't work reliably for NTFS setups, yet. Fat32 ok.

 

[Apathetic]

I'd also recommend DD.

Dave

 

[htmlmasterdave]

Thanks for the suggestion about DD... worked perfectly 🙂