I am a long time user of True Image. I never had problems making a "copy" or maybe the word is "Image" of my single drive, single partition hard drive.

Never needed to do a restore for three years. I was using ver. 8.0 of TI. I decided I needed a larger hard drive, so I purchased a new drive twice as large as my old one. I don't have room in my computer for two drives as I have an additonal cd-r drive.

So I just hooked up the new drive (setting cable select) with the cover off and the drive setting on a pile of books. Windows
XP ver2 found the drive ok.

I tryed to use TI to restore and got various messages, one about corrupted data. Talked to TI support and they said they don't support 8.0 anymore, so I downloaded the current 10.0
Still doesn't want to work. Corrupted data msgs. This is off the primary partition and also off the secure area where I have been saving an image of the primary partition,  in it's own (secure) partition.

I purchased a new cable and checked jumpers, tried slave and such and checked BIOS and even ran IBM  and Maxtor diagnostics against the second (new) drive ok.

After much conversation with TI support, they have basicly gave up, don't know, or tired of messing with it and me.

So, I asked and recieved my money back.

So, now is Ghost 10 what I need to do this task? Also I am thinking about getting an external DD for backup (clone) of complete system and files.

After doing some reading here, I am under the impression that you have to know quite a bit about disk management and such in order to do anything with any version of Ghost.

Am I wrong about that?

I just want a disk clone program that works (don't we all) and that will allow me to put the copy where ever I please, even to CD-R, and not have to be a computer whiz. I do good with hardware but this is a little deep for me.

I have looked on the net for other "backup programs" and they all promise the moon but have bad or indifferent reviews and in the forums where they were discussed, they seem to be having loads of problems also.

If you need to know, my system is a 4 year old IBM, with preloaded WinXP  and a Maxtor 80GB hard drive that is about 18 months old. Scandisk and a Maxtor utility says drive is ok.

Back when I changed out the original hard drive with the new Maxtor I tried to use TI, with no success. I don't remember why it would not work, but I didn't have much on the drive then so I borrowed a friends XP cd's and just did a new install.

I would like opinions or recommendatons, when you have time, if you please.

Thank you

Papa Ray
West Texas
USA

Papa_Ray, you certainly don’t need “to know quite a bit about disk management and such in order to do anything with any version of Ghost”.  Ghost 10, most would agree, is quite a bit easier than Ghost 2003, but neither is exceedingly complex.

The big advantage of using Ghost, Papa_Ray, is that you have access to this forum - a collection of very friendly and helpful folk!

Papa_Ray

Unfortunately--no  one can *guarantee* that a given software will work with a given hardware setup--there can be *glitches* along the way--but we try our best to help folks who visit here to work out the problems if it's possible.

Every program has its *specialize* vocabulary--once you get past that, most of the common Ghost procedures are really quite straight forward and *uncomplicated* for the vast majority--it's the occasional exception that makes matters difficult for those few.

Regarding your present problems--does you system support a 160 GB HDD?  If it's 4 years old, and if the BIOS has not been updated--you could have a HDD size limitation that's about 130 to 140 GB--I think the number is 137 GB!

You would have to look up your exact system's capability to answer that question.

Papa_Ray,

Acronis True Image seems hardware sensitive. In the TI forum there are frequent reports of restore failures. However many others find it an excellent application. I don't think we have seen any reports of restore failures with Ghost 9/10. Image creation problems, yes, but not restore problems. It's the restore problems that really matter.

Re: "It's the restore problems that really matter."

Yeah.

Thanks for info. I will ck. size limitations. I haven't ordered anything yet, still doing research.

Yes, it's kinda stupid to keep doing backups and then not being able to restore.

It seems like, by this time, several good, easy to use programs for this would be available to the general public. I mean, it's not 1984 anymore.

Papa Ray