Hi Guys, you are my last hope.

I have Norton Ghost 14.  My computer is from Dell and is a Inspiron 530s, which has a 500GB HDD.

My old HDD started to sound a bit chuggy, so recently purchased 1TB SATA HDD and wanted to make this new OS disk.  I initialised new HDD, made it active in data management, gave it a drive letter.

Using Ghost 14, I chose, "copy my hard drive".  This then brought up 3 "drives", which are actually partitions, d, c and j.  The original HDD came with d and c pre-partitioned, I added j later.

I chose "drive" C and then I chose all of the tick boxes I could, i.e.check source for system errors, check destination for file system errors, set drive active (for booting), disable smarttsetor copying, ignore bad sectors, copy MBR, then seleted go.

A perfect copy of the c partition was now on my new HDD, but when taking out my old HDD and plugging in the new one, it would not boot and said "no boot device available".

I have a suspicion that the boot details are on the d drive and not the c drive, but how do I copy the "whole" drive rather than just a partition?

I did try and replicate the drive, i.e. set up new HDD with copies of d, c and j, but this did not work either, any ideas?

I must be missing something really obvious

@ sihev

WinXP or Vista?

In Disk Management (old HD), are there 3 or 4 partitions? What size is each partition? In order.

Also, do you have the new HD plugged into the same SATA port that the old HD was using. It will be SATA port 0. Check in the BIOS that the HD is being seen on that port.

sihev
see my similar problem in Headings "Problems using NG-14 in migrate XP to a new HD".
i use other software to fix it up but not the NG-14.
Cheer
mic

In disk management there are actually 4 partitions, first one is not named 55mb (healthy EISA configuration), second is d with 10GB, third is OS C with 236.9GB and fourth is J with 218.81.

The new HDD is plugged into SATA port 0.

I have just re-formatted and tried disk copy again with Ghost 14, and this time it booted up and started Windows and then said something about sorting out desktop,then went to a light blue screen and did nothing further.

I was able to go into task manager and it advised that most of the "services" had been stopped.

When started Vista with old HDD again, everything ok.

So to summarise, can now boot, but can't get desktop to work!!

Any ideas

@ sihev

As in the previous thread, you copied into a partition with a drive letter so Windows won't boot. Also, the Vista partition offset is different from the old HD as you didn't copy the Dell Diagnostic partition and the D: drive. You need to zero the Disk ID and run a BCD Edit. Then Vista will boot. I'd use BING.

Download BootIt NG. There is a one month trial usage. Unzip the file and make a boot CD.

double click makedisk.exe, next
dot in I accept the agreement, next
no tick for Registration, next
dot in Mouse Support Enabled, next
dot in VESA Video, next
dot in Partition Work (Don't put a dot in Normal), next
don't choose any Default Device Options (if necessary, these can be chosen in BING), next
leave Registration strings blank, next
select your CD burner drive letter (you can use a CD-RW or a CD-R disc)
Finish

Boot from the CD....

the BootIt NG CD boots to the Work with Partitions window
Using the radio buttons on the left side of the Work with Partitions window, select the appropriate hard drive. (It should  be HD 0)
click the "View MBR" button.
click the "Clear Sig" button. Then click OK on the Notice.
click the "Apply" button.
click the "View MBR" button again and confirm the number in the left bottom corner is 0x00000000
click Cancel
click Close on the "Work with Partitions" window

Now you should run a BCD Edit so stay in BING.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=318

When the BCD Edit has completed, click Reboot and remove the CD. Vista should boot. All OK?

How do you zero disk ID, do you mean format the new HDD? or remove the drive letter? please advise

Sorry, I was too brief. Just follow the instructions in Reply #5. Clear Sig does zero the Disk ID (also called the Disk Signature).

Vista should be booting in 5 minutes.

Thanks, done all the bits to "close work with partitions", but how do you run a BCD edit?

I have bootit ng screen with various icons, but none say BCD edit.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=318

Almost there!

Sorry, been a bit thick, when in boot entry point 4, do I choose <boot> or HD0 and OS0?

I've tried both. Both work.

Fantastic work, you are really one clever bloke, when all seemed to be lost, especially in other forums, you could see what was wrong all along.  Also BootIt NG is a nice bit of kit too.

One question, if I ever need to change this hard drive to a newer one, will I need to use the CD again, or will NG14 copy the disk and the boot details across to the new HDD correctly.

Oh, and second question, on old HDD was the J drive with all games in it.  If I use NG14 to copy the J drive to a partition on the new HDD, will all games work ok?

Nice work. Give me a little time and I'll answer those questions. It should be bed time for you.

Thanks again for your time, its much appreciated.  :)

Quote:

One BING to rule them all, One BING to find them, One BING to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

It is an amazing app.


sihev wrote on Nov 8^th, 2009 at 6:38pm:

if I ever need to change this hard drive to a newer one, will I need to use the CD again, or will NG14 copy the disk and the boot details across to the new HDD correctly.

Copy Drive should work. I wrote this some time ago..


Quote:

I’m not sure why you can’t see unallocated space from your Ghost as that’s how people successfully clone in this forum. I cloned into unallocated space this morning. We need to make a distinction between problems with Ghost and problems with the NT family of OS. There are two general rules for cloning these OS as outlined in this link … http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm Do not let old-XP see the new partition before cloning. Doing so would give XP a chance to assign a drive letter, it will be remembered by the registry when it is cloned, and the clone will adopt the wrong drive letter for itself. Do not let new-XP see the old-XP partition the first time it boots. If new-XP sees old-XP, it won't reuse the original drive letter when it assigns a drive letter to itself. (Once XP-2 has booted and reallocated new drive letters, the old-XP partition can be reintroduced into the system, if desired.) You broke the first rule. You let the old OS see the partition on the second HD before the clone. You are correct that a lot of people have a problem when using Ghost. But it’s not a bug in Ghost. It is the way these OS behave when they are cloned. It’s nothing to do with formatting either. The Ghost user-guides from Ghost 9 to Ghost 14 say “The new hard drive does not need to be formatted.” This could be interpreted by some as “you can use a formatted disk”. If you do, the copied OS will not boot. What the guide should say is “You can either copy into unallocated space or into a partition without a drive letter.” If a drive letter is present, with or without formatting, the copied OS will not boot. The other issue with cloning is what to do with the HDs immediately after the clone has been created. The user-guides for Ghosts 9 and 10 had confusing instructions and subsequent user-guides have no instructions at all. The second rule applies to this situation. Ghost creates partition clones. It can’t create whole disk clones. Acronis True Image can’t create partition clones. It can create whole disk clones. When Acronis TI creates a clone it doesn’t create an exact copy of the original HD. It writes to the registry of the new HD to get around both of the rules quoted above. You had success with Acronis TI and so do I. I’ve tried hard to make an Acronis TI clone fail and I can’t. So why isn’t writing to the registry a good idea? If you look at the Acronis TI forum, the procedure with the most failures is the cloning process. So it doesn’t work for everyone. Getting back to the mistake many people make, breaking the first or second Rules. As you found, Windows won’t boot because of a drive letter issue. But this can be corrected in less than a minute by zeroing or altering the DiskID and forcing Windows to recalculate Partition Signatures. There are many ways to do this but the easiest ways are fdisk /mbr from a Win98 boot floppy or by using Clear Sig from a BING CD. Once the DiskID has been zeroed, Windows then boots normally. By breaking either of the above rules, the Ghost clone will fail to boot, but the failed clone can always be made to boot by zeroing the DiskID.

It applies to Vista and Win 7 too. You must clone into unallocated space or a partition without a drive letter.

The copy choices are...

Check source for file system errors
Check destination for file system errors
Resize drive to fill unallocated space (or NOT)
Set drive active (for booting OS)
DON'T Disable SmartSector copying
DON'T Ignore bad sectors during copy
Copy MBR
Destination partition type...  Primary
Drive letter.... Choose "None"



sihev wrote on Nov 8^th, 2009 at 6:38pm:

on old HDD was the J drive with all games in it.If I use NG14 to copy the J drive to a partition on the new HDD, will all games work ok?

Yes. But could you do me a favour? I think this will work but I haven't had the opportunity to try it out. Create a partition on the new HD and just Copy and Paste all files and folders from the "old J: drive" into this partition. Ghost shouldn't be needed. You must change the drive letter of this partition to J:
Does it work?