I cloned my old (slowly? dying) HDD to a new one using Ghost 12.0. All seemed to go fine, but when I reboot using the new HDD (original one disconnected) Windows can't get past the blue WinXP splash screen. I have been told that Windows may be 'confused' about what disk to load because the new drive was assigned a different letter from the old, is a different size, has different internal identifier info etc.

I really don't know what to do at this point and I know my original HDD will fail eventually. How do I get the ghosted drive to be bootable?

blakekr,

I assume you cloned into a partition. The solution is in this thread. Reply #11 onwards.

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1186249124#11

Zero the DiskID with a floppy or CD.

Was it easy?

Thanks so much Brian, that sounds like a fix.

However in the meantime I've emptied the second drive thinking I would have to try another solution than Ghost, and not wanting to blow away my registry by loading two copies of XP at the same time.

So if I start from scratch, how do I treat the second drive so the clone works correctly the first time? Do I need to somehow remove the partition?

I truly appreciate your help.

blakekr,

Yes, delete all partitions from the new HD.


Quote:

You can delete the partitions from WinXP Disk Management. Right click My Computer, Manage, Disk Management. Right click a partition on your second HD, click Delete Partition. Repeat the procedure if there are other partitions.

Then follow...    http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1117581957;start=

Ghost 9/10/12 will be the same.

This worked perfectly, and saved me much panic, hair pulling and premature age.

Thank you SO much for helping me swap out this drive successfully with a backup in place. I hugely appreciate it.

I'm pleased I could help. The Ghost userguide is terrible with its cloning instructions.

Here are my latest instructions for cloning with Ghost 12.


Quote:

COPY MY HARD DRIVE with Ghost 12 Start Ghost 12 click Tools tab on the left click Copy My Hard Drive The wizard starts, Next Select the Source Drive (usually your C: drive), Next Select the Destination. This MUST be unallocated space on the second HD. Next tick Check source for file system errors tick Check destination for file system errors tick Resize drive to fill unallocated space if that's what you desire. It's your choice. tick Set drive active for booting don't tick Disable SmartSector copying don't tick ignore bad sectors during copy tick Copy MBR Destination partition type: Primary partition Drive letter: None Next Finish

Remember to shutdown after the clone process, remove the old HD and boot to the new HD.