Ghost 9 and restoring

jjthenovice · Jul 22, 2005

I'm getting ready to upgrade my hard drive in my Toshiba notebook. I have Norton Ghost 9 and have made an image backup of the notebook's hard drive to a USB hard drive. I have verified that I can see the USB drive with the boot backup disk that comes with ghost. I plan on putting the new hard drive in the notebook then booting up with the supplied disk recovery cd. My question is this: Do I need to prep the new hard drive in any way or will ghost handled it all? I think I might need to install XP first (forgot to mention that I use XP pro). I've searched the manuals and all and they don't seem to address this situation. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

peterparker · Jul 23, 2005

The only thing that may happen, is you will have to reactivate your XP license.

Shadow_Puter_Dude · Jul 23, 2005

Upgrading your harddrive is a significant change in the system. XP will not work properly if you set up the drive from an ghost image. You need to install XP and activate it on the new drive. Then you can transfer your data to the new drive.

peterparker · Jul 23, 2005

Shadow_Puter_Dude - wouldn't XP detect this change and just want to reactivate the license.
I ask this because in a little bit when I get the money and time I will be doing something similar. I was hoping to just get away with a reactivation.

Shadow_Puter_Dude · Jul 23, 2005

peterparker said:

Shadow_Puter_Dude - wouldn't XP detect this change and just want to reactivate the license.
I ask this because in a little bit when I get the money and time I will be doing something similar. I was hoping to just get away with a reactivation.
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No, the XP activation takes a snapshot of your system hardware, major changes will force a clean install and reactivation. A larger HDD would be a major hardware change.

theefool · Jul 23, 2005

A very exciting read on how WPA works:

http://www.licenturion.com/xp/fully-licensed-wpa.txt

Just Playin · Jul 23, 2005

I went from a 40 to a 120GB HD and used a Ghost 2003 to reinstall without any activation or other issues.

Just Playin · Jul 23, 2005

Additional info:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/evaluate/xpactiv.mspx

Modifications to hardware and how they affect the activation status of Windows XP

Product activation rechecks the hardware it is running only to help reduce illegal hard disk cloning — another prevalent piracy method. Hard disk cloning is where a pirate copies the entire image of a hard disk from one PC to another PC. At each login, Windows XP checks to see that it is running on the same or similar hardware that it was activated on. If it detects that the hardware is "substantially different", reactivation is required. This check is performed after the SLP BIOS check discussed above, if the SLP BIOS check fails. This means that if your PC is pre-activated in the factory using the SLP pre-activation method, all the components in the PC could be swapped, including the motherboard, so long as the replacement motherboard was genuine and from the OEM with the proper BIOS. As noted above, installations of Windows XP made using volume licensing media and volume license product keys (VLKs) will not have any hardware component checking.

Microsoft defines "substantially different" hardware differently for PCs that are configured to be dockable. Additionally, the network adapter is given a superior "weighting." If the PC is not dockable and a network adapter exists and is not changed, 6 or more of the other above values would have to change before reactivation was required. If a network adapter existed but is changed or never existed at all, 4 or more changes (including the changed network adapter if it previously existed) will result in a requirement to reactivate.

Scenario A:

PC One has the full assortment of hardware components listed in Table 1 above. User swaps the motherboard and CPU chip for an upgraded one, swaps the video adapter, adds a second hard drive for additional storage, doubles the amount of RAM, and swaps the CD ROM drive for a faster one.

Result: Reactivation is NOT required.

Scenario B:

PC Two has the full assortment of hardware components listed in Table 1 except that it has no network adapter. User doubles the amount of RAM, swaps the video card and the SCSI controller.

Result: Reactivation is NOT required.

Dockable PCs are treated slightly more leniently. In a dockable PC, if a network adapter exists and is not changed, 9 or more of the other above values would have to change before reactivation was required. If no network adapter exists or the existing one is changed, 7 or more changes (including the network adapter) will result in a requirement to reactivate.

Scenario C:

Dockable PC Three has the full assortment of hardware components listed in Table 1 except that it has no network adapter. User doubles the amount of RAM, swaps to a bigger hard disk drive, and adds a network adapter.

Result: Reactivation is NOT required.

The change of a single component multiple times (e.g. from video adapter A to video adapter B to video adapter C) is treated as a single change. The addition of components to a PC, such as adding a second hard drive which did not exist during the original activation, would not trigger the need for a reactivation nor would the modification of a component not listed in the above table. Additionally, reinstallation of Windows XP on the same or similar hardware and a subsequent reactivation can be accomplished an infinite number of times. Finally, the Microsoft activation clearinghouse system will automatically allow activation to occur over the Internet four times in one year on substantially different hardware. This last feature was implemented to allow even the most savvy power users to make changes to their systems and, if they must reactivate, do so over the Internet rather than necessitating a telephone call.
Click to expand...

Adrynalyne · Jul 23, 2005

Scenario A:

PC One has the full assortment of hardware components listed in Table 1 above. User swaps the motherboard and CPU chip for an upgraded one, swaps the video adapter, adds a second hard drive for additional storage, doubles the amount of RAM, and swaps the CD ROM drive for a faster one.

Result: Reactivation is NOT required.
Click to expand...

This is incorrect. You swap the motherboard, you will be reactivating. You will be lucky to even be booting.

theefool · Jul 23, 2005

Adrynalyne said:

This is incorrect. You swap the motherboard, you will be reactivating. You will be lucky to even be booting.
Click to expand...

I agree, with this, at least when swapping out a dead motherboard out of a Dell computer, with a new Asus board. Taking out all the components, putting into a new case, boot up, instant BSOD, repair with xp PRO, then activating, everything in good order. I did this yesterday at work.

Shadow_Puter_Dude · Jul 23, 2005

Just Playin said:

I went from a 40 to a 120GB HD and used a Ghost 2003 to reinstall without any activation or other issues.
Click to expand...

I've never had a cloned drive work when using XP. Maybe it was a bad image, but after 5 attempts and never working. I haven't tried again.

theefool · Jul 23, 2005

Shadow_Puter_Dude said:

I've never had a cloned drive work when using XP. Maybe it was a bad image, but after 5 attempts and never working. I haven't tried again.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, what about cloning from drive to drive, instead of cloning from an image?

Shadow_Puter_Dude · Jul 23, 2005

theefool said:

Hmmm, what about cloning from drive to drive, instead of cloning from an image?
Click to expand...

Now that's something I haven't tried. Guess, I need to try it once I get my testing box back up. Bad PSUhttp://forums.majorgeeks.com/images/smilies/frown.gif.

jjthenovice · Jul 23, 2005

Thanks for all the answers. The answer is: I've just completed the task and it worked. I installed the recovery image to a new hard drive that was unformatted. Norton Ghost saw it as an unallocatted drive. I went from a toshiba 60 gig to Hitachi 60 gig (7200 rpm). I felt the need for speed. It took 35 minutes and I was up and running. On the first boot, windows found new hardware and installed it and that was it. Againg thanks for your help.

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Ghost 9 and restoring

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