problems with ghost?

I have a 120GB IBM Deskstar rigas my old hard drive

bought a 120GB WD 8mb cache that i wanted to ghost my old hard drive onto. (selling my old HDD till i can afford another WD and go Raid 0)

when i ghosted the old HDD over, the new drive showed all the files correctly when it was still a slave drive, but it would not boot as a stand-alone master drive (jumperless setting).

is ghost supposed to allow the drive to boot? (in other words, does it copy all the windows hardware and pnp settings as well?)

or maybe i just need to do a repair install of WInXP?

 

If it isn't booting, but the system is there, you may need to set the partition with the OS on as active. Use FDisk for this.

But i would have thought ghost normally does that too? else, try reformatting using the /s switch...

but i would say that the partition isn't active is the best bet...

 

I have had this exact problem...
when you boot your system with the GHOST floppy, when Ghost starts, go into the configuration.. (I can't remember the exact setting) but you need to set the switch to copy boot sector (or some similar wording...)

this was an issue for me, Ghost would copy the files, but until I check the boot sector check mark in Ghost setup, it would not boot.....

 

Yeah... I was going to suggest the very same thing. I was thinking that it might have had something to do with the master boot records.

 

thanks, i'll give it a try today and report back

 

I prefer the PowerQuest utilities using Drive Image 2002 if you copy an active partition it stays active. Partition Magic will ask if you want it to remain active.

You could try booting from the CD and do a repair install. One of the first things setup will do is repair the MBR.

 

Ok, here's a problem with ghost that someone I know has encountered and is still searching for a resolution.

Keep in mind I've never used ghost myself, and I'm going on memory.

He had two partitions and had backed up files onto the second partition. Restored from a ghost image, and I think in ghost he could see the backed up files on the second partition.

Got everything up and running and now the partition the files were back up onto is empty. However, check the size of the partition and it reports that the free space is smaller then the partition size, and the space that is being used is the same size as the backedup files.

We figure the files are still there, just Windows won't read them.

Anybody else ever experience this or know of a way that we might go about fixing this?

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,
Chris

 

I agree with Timmah.. I tried Acronis and thought it was SO Much better than ghost.

 

OK,

so BitchSlap was correct, ghost did not set the partition to active. I set it to active in FDISK and it booted... but would not load past the (network style, not my traditional) login screen. (it would sit at a black screen after reading "loading your settings")

anyway, instead of dealing with this, I happen to have Acronis TrueImage.

so how would I go about cloning my drive with acronis?

Do I have to make an image file and restore it ontot eh new disk? (and if so, where do i store the image file, i have little room on the old disk)

or is there a more simple "clone" feature like there is in ghost?

thanks for all the help.

 

Yeah, Acronis burns a CD for you that has all of the Acronis program support and the bootable files on it. Once you've used Acronis to make the image on the backup HD, screw in the new HD and format it, and then boot from the Acronis CD, and it will walk you through a complete duplication (on the new HD) of the old HD's files and OS and registry and all.

And the image stays on the old HD, so you can read any files in the image by using the Acronis program, even if they aren't visible to Explorer. The second Acronis TrueImage screen offers you the choice of creating a new image of a partition or a whole HD, OR restoring ... on a new HD, OR exploring an image archive. Once it mounts an archive on a new logical drive for you, you can read any file or copy any file to anywhere else. I don't think you can delete a file from an archived image, but why would anybody want to do that anyway?

 

thanks

sorry if i'm note getting it exactly, but for clarification:

the image file has to be saved on the existing hard drive? (are the image files large? i have very little space)

or do i save the image file on the new drive (once formatted) and then restore the image to that drive from the acronis boot cd? <<come to think of it this way makes sense.... let me know if i am wrong

 

Not your fault. I've probably misunderstood or said something wrong: Here we go:

You have an old drive with your OS and files on it, including the TrueImage software.

You have a backup HD.

You have a new WD HD you want to transfer everything to.

You make an image FROM the old HD TO the backup HD.

You take out the old HD and mount the new WD HD and make sure both HDs (the backup and the new HD) are recognized. Format the new WD HD. Now boot from the Acronis CD and it will walk you through restoring your old HD's contents to the new HD FROM the image on the backup HD.

If you only have two HDs (the old one and the new WD one), you must have a partition on the old HD you could clean up enough so that there's room for a compressed image on it. Store stuff on CDs or whatever, maybe. Then you make an image of the main drive to the partition. Then mount the WD drive, format it, boot from the Acronis CD, and use the CD files to copy the image from the partition to the new HD as an uncompressed full OS and support sware, drivers and all. I'm not sure, but if the image and the Acronis software are on the same HD, you can probably mount the new HD, format and partition it, and then just use the Acronis program from the old HD to expand the image from the partition to the new HD.

How many GB do you have on the main drive that you want to reproduce on the new WD HD? Mebbe somebody else can tell you how small an image Acronis can make from that amount. I dunno, because I only use about 5 GB of my 80 GB main HD (2 x 40 GB partitions), and I use a 40 GB backup HD for backups of those two partitions to two backup partitions (2 x 20 GB) only.

Sorry if I got confused or confused you.

 

I get it now, I was just hoping there was some direct copy feature so that i would not need a 3rd hard drive or enough room on an existing hard drive...

I am trying to copy a 120GB hard drive that has 110GB of used space so unless there is some other way, i think i am out of luck as the smallest i could compress the Acronis image is 45GB, which i do not have to spare.

I may have to use Ghost... and this time be sure it copies the MBR along with the rest of the files...

 

ok... once again

When i clone the disk using Ghost, how do i make sure it includes the MBR?

or is it included, and all I need to do is set the partition to active once the disk is cloned?

 

ok, got everything to go perfectly

initially i tried to use Ghost's "clone" utility from within Windows, which SIGNIFICANTLY limits your options. this is why ghost did not copy the MBR files over.

Once i created the ghost boot floppy and entered ghost through PC-DOS, there were many more options as to which kind of image was to be created. I chose "Image Boot" which includes the MBR in the transfer, and this time i didn't even have to set the partition to active.... it booted perfectly on the first try.


thanks for all the help.

 

Glad to hear it worked out. Good luck with your new WD HD.

When you can, start working on saving up for that second HD. It'll make a big diff in how you compute and what you can do.