I have finally gotten up the courage and have everything going. I have a Dell 8400 XP SP2 a SATA drive and I have added a SATA drive in an enclosure connected to a PCI host card. I have the drive formated and when I turn the power on to the enclosure the computer recognizes it and if the power is off it is gone. Now my question is this. My C drive has 3 partitions a 55 mb FAT a 145GB NTFS and a 3.79mb FAT32. Now what do I have to do to be able to copy my C to my new F.  Both are Seagate 160 GB. SATA with NCQ

WilliamP wrote on Nov 25^th, 2005 at 9:27pm:

"... My C drive has 3 partitions a 55 mb FAT a 145GB NTFS and a 3.79mb FAT32.  Now what do I have to do to be able to copy my C to my new F.  Both are Seagate 160 GB. SATA with NCQ..."

Am I correct in assuming that: (1) you are using Norton Ghost 2003; (2) your MASTER HDD has only the single drive letter assignment of C: while the miniscule FAT and FAT 32 partitions lack drive letters; and (3) that you only have a single optical drive onboard?

EP :'(

That is correct . I have a Floppy drive ,a CD/DVD RW drive , an IDE hard drive on the cable with the CD/DVD RW drive that I use to store Digital photos.  And I have Ghost 2003

WilliamP wrote on Nov 25^th, 2005 at 9:43pm:

That is correct . I have a Floppy drive ,a CD/DVD RW drive , an IDE hard drive on the cable with the CD/DVD RW drive that I use to store Digital photos.  And I have Ghost 2003

I am assuming the IDE HDD is an unpartitioned SLAVE with jumper settings set to MASTER.  If so, what is its drive letter assignment?

EP :'(

That drive is Dr E and the new SATA is F.

"My C drive has 3 partitions a 55 mb FAT a 145GB NTFS and a 3.79mb FAT32."

You can find an explanation of the two extra Dell partitions on my webpages:
Inside the Dell Utility Partition
Inside the Dell PC Restore Partition

BTW, you don't mean your "C drive", you mean your main hard disk.  Drive letters are only handles an operating system gives to partitions (not disks) for reference purposes.  XP is referring to your XP partition as C.  The two Dell partitions do not have drive letters.


"I have added a SATA drive in an enclosure connected to a PCI host card ... Now what do I have to do to be able to copy my C to my new F."

First question is what is your purpose?  Are you making a backup of your system for disaster recovery?  If so, you want an image.  Are you migrating your system to the new disk?  Then you want a clone/copy.

Dan ,What I planned was to make a duplicate bootable drive and keep it updated on a schedule. If my C drive was to die I could just swap out the drives. That is if that is possible. As far as the ATA drive If I remember correctly it is set as slave the CD/DVD drive as master at the end of the IDE cable.

"What I planned was to make a duplicate bootable drive and keep it updated on a schedule. If my C drive was to die I could just swap out the drives. That is if that is possible."

Yes, it's possible, but not very sensible, IMHO.  Images are more practical.  

• Images are files, so you can save multiple generations.  A clone leaves you with just one generation.
• Images can be saved/moved anywhere a file can go, such as CD/DVD (which is ideal for offloading earlier generations, BTW).  Clones cannot.
• Images are compressed and capture only space in use.  Clones are not only uncompressed, they duplicate free space in the partition, as well.
  

Sure, images require a restore step when disaster strikes, but that only takes minutes, not hours.  Also, a clone doesn't always work just by swapping the drives alone, but often requires some degree of repair to get the clone disk up and running.  Considering how rarely you'll (hopefully) be doing this, saving a few minutes by keeping a ready-to-go clone is hardly worth the effort, IMHO.

The more recent Ghost/Acronis versions support incremental backup images, but since you're using Ghost 2003, I would seriously consider splitting your main partition so you can keep your data on a separate partition.  (See Rad's Partitioning Strategies for numerous other advantages of partitioning.)  That way, you can backup your data more frequently than your OS.  Your OS doesn't change much unless you're adding new programs or applying updates.  Your data probably changes daily.  Since Ghost 2003 doesn't support incremental images, if data and OS are on the same partition you'll either:

• waste gobs of time and disk space unnecessarily backing up your OS just to keep up with your data; or
  
• not backup often enough to keep your data backup current.
  

(BTW, if you repartition, you'll either need to use my dsrfix utility to keep Dell's PC-Restore partition viable, or eliminate the PC-Restore partition altogether.  Since you'll be backing up your system with Ghost, it isn't essential to keep the PC-Restore partition.)

Thank you Dan. How long does it take to Ghost an image with 15 GB.  I would be going SATA to SATA. If I image, then how do you keep it updated?

WilliamP wrote on Nov 26^th, 2005 at 7:08pm:

"... How long does it take to Ghost an image with 15 GB.  I would be going SATA to SATA..."

Interpolating from my own experiences, a Norton Ghost 2003 "disk-to-image" Backup with 15GB in content via SATA should take at least 12-to-14 minutes, but certainly not more than 19-to-23 minutes. This does not include performing the Integrity Check which I regard as being an absolute requisite - with your setup, this should take no more than 60-to-80 percent of the time required for the Backup.

EP :'(

If I was to "disk to image" then a month later want to update the image,do I format the drive then do another "disk to image" or what would be the best route.

WilliamP wrote on Nov 26^th, 2005 at 7:44pm:

"... If I was to "disk-to-image" then a month later want to update the image, do I format the drive then do another "disk-to-image" or what would be the best route..."

I perform such a routine on a very regular basis, and all I do is delete the very last spanned segment (the smallest *.ghs file based on volume) beforehand and then overwrite the entire set of spanned file segments using the same filename.  On occasion, I have seen just the last segment from the previous iteration survive an attempt at overwriting which in turn renders the entire set worthless.  As an aside, I would anticipate you generating one *.gho file and seven *.ghs files.

You may even wish to maintain alternating files (e.g., based on odd or even month numbers) in the interest of increased security.

EP :'(

El_Pescador I'm afraid I don't understand what you posted. What I was talking about was formatting the drive then make a new disk to image. I seem to have a hard time understanding this stuff.

WilliamP wrote on Nov 26^th, 2005 at 8:19pm:

"... What I was talking about was formatting the drive then make a new disk to image. I seem to have a hard time understanding this stuff..."

In the illustration below, Drive H: has already been formatted in the NTFS file system format and so it shall remain indefinitely as iteration after iteration of Norton Ghost 2003 "disk-to-image" Backup files from my Dell Dimension 8100 PC are first written and then overwritten upon it.  Actually, once the Backup file exceeds 2Gb then a set of one or more spanned segments is generated and appended - BUT you still must think of these segments as a unified set described with a single filename when performing Ghost 2003 operations.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v235/El_Pescador/WillyP.jpg

EP :'(

Whem imaging to the drive, Ghost creates files of 2gb each? Is that correct?

"If I was to "disk to image" then a month later want to update the image, do I format the drive then do another "disk to image" or what would be the best route."

By "format the drive", I assume you're referring to the USB drive containing your image.  Refer back to my earlier post: an image is a file, not a partition.  You treat it like any other file.  When you want to make a fresh image, you have several choices:

• delete the old file, then create a new image file; or
  
• move the old file somewhere else (CD/DVD?) to keep a prior generation, then create a new image file; or
  
• leave the old file as is, and create a new image with a different filename.
  

Remember, these are files, so you can name them whatever you want.  Also remember that the image is compressed and only includes used space.  If you have a 100GB partition with 15GB of used space, Ghost will take that 15GB and compress it into about 8-9 GB.  Instead of making one 100GB clone on the USB disk, you could store many copies of 9GB images on the same USB disk without having to delete the previous images.

In all of the above, what I refer to as an image "file" could actually be a set of multiple files.  As I said earlier, an image can be split into multiple pieces, with the entire set representing the image (IOW, each piece is useless without the entire set).  In El_P's post, that's exactly what he's illustrating--a set of 8 files that comprise a single image.  In El_P's case, each piece is 2GB large because that's the maximum size segment Ghost 2003 can create, but you can also create them in smaller pieces if you choose.  (I normally split them into 690MB chunks, just in case I later decide to burn the image pieces onto a set of CDRs.)

I want to thank you all for the help. I know it must be frustrating trying to explain something to someone that can't seem to get it. I haven't been working with computers long and need help from time to time. Mostly because I like playing with them. I have learned a lot, thanks to helpful people like yourselves.

WilliamP wrote on Nov 27^th, 2005 at 1:47pm:

"... I want to thank you all for the help ... I have learned a lot, thanks to helpful people like yourselves..."

Doing so is a pleasure, and pleasure is a rare commodity in these environs following Katrina and Rita.  The only "around-the-clock" residents in this neighborhood able to exist in healthy circumstances are occupying FEMA travel trailers while they restore their respective residences, and the rest of us are waiting on our trailers to be delivered.  My nextdoor neighbor on the east side is living in a canvas pop-up trailer and the neighbor on the west side fled on August 28^th with no evident intention to ever return.

EP :'(  

What can I say my friend. I'll be thinking about and praying for you folks down there  . I was born and raised in the Gentily section of New Orleans. Been gone since 1959.

WilliamP wrote on Nov 27^th, 2005 at 6:54pm:

"... I was born and raised in the Gentilly section of New Orleans.  Been gone since 1959..."

Compared to Gentilly and Lakeview, my neighborhood is unscathed.  Regrettably, the misgovernance of the City of New Orleans with its insistence on counterproductive policies - compounded by Entergy filing for bankruptcy and reducing its workforce to restore utilities - ensures reconstruction is a shining dream that is waning rather than waxing.

EP :'(