Quick question about Norton Ghost

[GtPrOjEcTX]

Alright, upgrading the hard drive for someone and they don't want to have to reinstall everything so I'm just going to ghost their old hd to a new one.

question is, what do I have to do to prep the new hard drive? Do I need to format it or will the Ghost utility take care of that? Also is it alright to ghost the hard drive that currently in use (read: os is running on it) or do I need to pull it out and stick the two hard drives in another machine to ghost them?

any other advice would be useful as well...I'd like for this to go quick and smooth.

 

[BlueWeasel]

There is no need to "prep" the new HD. Ghost can handle that for you.

If I were doing it, I would put the two drives in the same system and do a HD-to-HD ghost copy. That's the easiest and quickest way to duplicate the drives. Otherwise, you can ghost the old HD to multiple CD-R's, and then restore to the new HD using the CD's.

Both methods do the exact same thing, but there are just more steps involved if you have to burn to CD-R's instead of a direct copy.

 

[LiLithTecH]

GHOST does not support IMAGING while the OS is in use.
(the only imaging program that does is ACRONIS TRUEIMAGE)

GHOST will handle the formating.

Make a Bootdisk from Ghost and use the CLONE DISK option.

You will need to use GHOST 2k2 - 2k3 for Win2k/WinXP
(earlier versions do not handle the filesystems correctly)

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

Thanks guys, I have Ghost 2k3 btw.

Sounds like I'll:

1) make boot disk with ghost
2) slap the new hard drive into the system...will probably make the new hard drive the primary master in this step
3) boot with the disk and do a HD-to-HD ghost copy.

Shouldn't be too bad.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Originally posted by: GtPrOjEcTX
Thanks guys, I have Ghost 2k3 btw.

Sounds like I'll:

1) make boot disk with ghost
2) slap the new hard drive into the system...will probably make the new hard drive the primary master in this step
3) boot with the disk and do a HD-to-HD ghost copy.

Shouldn't be too bad.

Yeah, you shouldn't have any problem with that.

 

[Sid59]

you're gonna run into problems doing a disk to disk copy with XP. XP has a security issues which inhibit it. Im currently trying to get my OS to boot and need to fix some things. Ill post back with a solution.

In the mean time, i hope your disk to disk copy works out without a hitch.

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

which version of ghost were you using?

 

[tcsenter]

1) make boot disk with ghost
2) slap the new hard drive into the system...will probably make the new hard drive the primary master in this step
3) boot with the disk and do a HD-to-HD ghost copy.

Nope, your new drive (destination drive) should be the slave, the old drive (source drive) should be the master. HD-to-HD DISK COPY using Ghost, Power Off when finished, then remove/disconnect the old drive and jumper the new drive to master.

 

[Sid59]

Originally posted by: tcsenter

1) make boot disk with ghost
2) slap the new hard drive into the system...will probably make the new hard drive the primary master in this step
3) boot with the disk and do a HD-to-HD ghost copy.

Nope, your new drive (destination drive) should be the slave, the old drive (source drive) should be the master. HD-to-HD DISK COPY using Ghost, Power Off when finished, then remove/disconnect the old drive and jumper the new drive to master.

yeah. that's the way i did mine. I'm pretty sure it would work the other way too.

 

[tcsenter]

yeah. that's the way i did mine. I'm pretty sure it would work the other way too.

This is the only way Symantec specifies when doing a HD copy. Never tried it the other way.

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

well crap. Just as Sid59 warned, I'm having trouble just getting WinXP to boot. It will load the splash screen and then just black screen after that. The hard drive is still cranking along though seeming like its trying to finish loading windows.

This is the case in both drives, the new and old, when trying to boot.
Although first attempt booting with the new hard drive an error came up in DOS saying "Invalid boot.ini file"

The only thing that changed on the original drive was when Ghost asked me to add a "Ghost Identification" to them so it would be able to work with them. Is there anyway of removing this?

 

[tcsenter]

You may need to use Microsoft's Sysprep utility.

Ghost compatibility with Windows XP

How to Use Sysprep with Windows Product Activation or Volume License Media to Deploy Windows XP

Description of New Features in Sysprep for Windows XP

HOW TO: Use Sysprep.exe Tool to Automate Successful Deployment of Windows XP

 

[tcsenter]

This is the case in both drives, the new and old, when trying to boot.
Although first attempt booting with the new hard drive an error came up in DOS saying "Invalid boot.ini file"

Huh? Why would the old drive be acting up? Ghost does nothing to the source drive during disk copy except reads from it.

Did you jumper the NEW hard drive as the SLAVE and OLD hard drive as the MASTER when copying?

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

for both cases I'm unplugging the other hard drive and setting the old or new hard drive as master. I can get the old hd loaded into safe mode, but cannot get the new one into safe mode nor normal mode.

 

[Sid59]

Originally posted by: GtPrOjEcTX
well crap. Just as Sid59 warned, I'm having trouble just getting WinXP to boot. It will load the splash screen and then just black screen after that. The hard drive is still cranking along though seeming like its trying to finish loading windows.

This is the case in both drives, the new and old, when trying to boot.
Although first attempt booting with the new hard drive an error came up in DOS saying "Invalid boot.ini file"

The only thing that changed on the original drive was when Ghost asked me to add a "Ghost Identification" to them so it would be able to work with them. Is there anyway of removing this?

muahhahha =D

here is what i did.

the new drive (the one you want to use) set it as Master (make sure to correctly set the jumpers
the old drive, set it as slave ( i didn't need anything on it anymore, so i formatted it)
grab a win98se boot disk.
load the boot disc

ran these two lines

fdisk /mbr
format d: (replace drive letter, as said above, i didn't need two instances of XP and just formatted at this level)
*** you'll prolly use NTFS, so don't format it, just delete the partition.

gone for work, so i wont be able to read this until i get home @ 8 PM PST/

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

after doing a small amount of research I think I'll give the fdisk /mbr a shot. its suppose to rewrite the master boot record on the hard drive..
a few sites saying its pretty dangerous but if it screws up, I'll just format the new drive and give it another shot.

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

giving it a shot now...will post back when done with results.

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

well, glad it helped you...but evidently I did not have the same problem.

I did it (warning for changing boot record - yes)
I rebooted
Upon boot (warning for changing boot record - no)
It came up with invalid boot.ini file, booting from c:/windows - didn't work

I rebooted
I did it (warning for changing boot record - yes)
I rebooted
Upon boot (warning for changing boot record - yes)
It came up with the invalid boot.ini file, booting from c:/windows - didn't work


I can't think of anything else...Going to just reinstall Windows XP over the existing one...see if that works.

 

[tcsenter]

A note from the Ghost User Manual:

Warning: You should remove the second hard drive [after disk cloning] before you restart your computer. If you leave the second drive in the computer, damage can occur to both of the bootable operating systems.

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

well crap

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

Originally posted by: tcsenter
A note from the Ghost User Manual:

Warning: You should remove the second hard drive [after disk cloning] before you restart your computer. If you leave the second drive in the computer, damage can occur to both of the bootable operating systems.

as something as important as that you'd think they would at least something about it when you finish the clone. geez, stupid programmers

 

[Sid59]

too bad.

now when tcsenter gave instructions and i quoted and replied about doing it that way. you should of done it that way.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: Sid59
now when tcsenter gave instructions and i quoted and replied about doing it that way. you should of done it that way.

Well it turns out that was the procedure for "Peer-to-Peer" connections. Upon reading the manual more closely, it seems that it doesn't matter for local internal disk-to-disk, the user selects the source and destination drives manually. So that shouldn't have mattered.

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

that's for peer to peer? that doesn't make sense... "Warning: You should remove the second hard drive [after disk cloning] before you restart your computer. If you leave the second drive in the computer, damage can occur to both of the bootable operating systems. " in peer to peer, which is the second hard drive?

 

[tcsenter]

that's for peer to peer? that doesn't make sense... "Warning: You should remove the second hard drive [after disk cloning] before you restart your computer. If you leave the second drive in the computer, damage can occur to both of the bootable operating systems. " in peer to peer, which is the second hard drive?

No, that's for internal disk-to-disk copying. I was referring to the slave/master HDD recommendation above.