Radified Community Forums
http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl
Rad Community Technical Discussion Boards (Computer Hardware + PC Software) >> Norton Ghost 2003,  Ghost v8.x + Ghost Solution Suite (GSS) Discussion Board >> A big Oooops with Ghost 2003.
http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1223925391

Message started by TheShadow on Oct 13th, 2008 at 2:16pm

Title: A big Oooops with Ghost 2003.
Post by TheShadow on Oct 13th, 2008 at 2:16pm
Today, I finally decided to clone my new Main Drive to my old (screwed up) HD.  The two drives are identical and both partitioned into two parts.

The route I decided to take was to do a Disk to Image copy to a third drive (My Vista Drive) and then do an Image to Disk restore to the old drive.

Well, the whole process went off without any errors.  
But, when I booted up with the newly cloned HD I found very small partitions, actually way too small.

On further investigation I found that the entire Disk Image had been restored to the first partition on the old disk, cramming a 160 gig drive into a 50 gig partition.  A very tight fit!  ;) ::)

So what to do next?  
Well, I decided to boot up with my "Partition Magic" disk and remove all the partitions from that old disk, leaving only FREE SPACE.

Then I repeated the Image to Disk operation with Ghost, to the old drive, and I wound up with an exact duplicate of my new drive.

A side effect of the whole process was that I now have a Disk Image of my XP drive on my Vista drive, just in case........

So what did I learn from this whole exercise?
Never try to do a Disk-Image restore to a partitioned HD.

Conclusion:
Ghost sees each partition as a different drive and whichever drive letter you select for it to restore to.....that's where it will put the entire disk image. ::)

So now you know, without having to go thru the same thing I went thru today.  "Only do Disk-Image Restores to a blank HD." ;)

Y'all have a great day now, Y'hear?
The Shadow  8-)

Title: Re: A big Oooops with Ghost 2003.
Post by Christer on Oct 14th, 2008 at 3:12am
A while ago, I did a Disk-to-Disk. It went from a 40GB disk partitioned 20/20 to a 160GB disk pre-partitioned 40/120. I didn't alter any partition sizes on the target and everything ended up where it was supposed to.

My conclusion is that the step over the image makes a difference, right?

Christer

... and yes ... :) ... I'm having a great day!

Title: Re: A big Oooops with Ghost 2003.
Post by TheShadow on Oct 14th, 2008 at 8:25am
I'm pretty certain that if I had done a Disk to Disk copy there would have been NO problem.  That's just a CLONE operation and should have gone off without a hitch.  Ghost should have in that case paid NO attention to the data or partitioning on the TO drive.

Apparently where I got into trouble was in doing the Disk-Image restore to a lettered drive.  It happened to be only a 50gig partition.
Once I removed the partitions, the restore went off exactly as it should....without a hitch.  
My hope is that someone else can learn from my BooBoo's.

This was all a controlled exercise and my main drive was never in jeopardy.
And I was under NO pressure as I may have been had my main drive crashed and I was trying to do a recovery.  
That can be pretty stressful. ;)

It's always good to try these things out when you're not under any pressure and your critical data is NOT at stake.

When you start playing around with Ghost or any such program, it helps to have an extra hard drive available for testing purposes.  I've scrapped out several computers lately and have a number of SATA1 and SATA2 drives available for, whatever testing I may want to do.

One thing that threw me for a loop, for all of about 30 seconds, while I was just playing around with different drives, is that a SATA2 drive cannot be read by a SATA1 motherboard.  :'(

The first SATA2 drive I bought would not read on my computer (5 yr. old SATA1 mobo) so I took it back to the store for a replacement.  The tech put a little jumper on the back of the drive and handed it back to me, saying "Now it will work".  Boy, did I ever feel stupid. :o

What really hurt, was the 160 mile round trip to take the drive back where I bought it. :'(

It was an OEM drive and not a Retail Boxed Drive so it did not come with the little SATA1 jumper already installed.
The tiny little jumper tells the drive to run at SATA1 (1500MB/sec) speeds which makes it compatible with the older SATA1 (only) motherboards.

Many retail SATA2 drives come out of the box with the little jumper already installed.  That drive will only run at SATA1 speed, even on a SATA2 mobo, till the jumper is removed.  

I wonder how many people with SATA2 drives, connected to SATA2 motherboards, are only getting half of the performance they should be getting because they didn't know to remove that jumper? :-/

Those little jumpers are only half the size of the old motherboard and drive jumpers that we're all familiar with.  You won't fine them at most computer/electronics stores.  I found some, 10 for $1, at a computer show so I bought a bag of 10.  ::)

I'll sell them for $1 each + S&H to anyone who wants one. ;D ;D ;D
(Just kidding!)

Y'all have a great day now, Y'hear?
Shadow  8-)




Radified Community Forums » Powered by YaBB 2.4!
YaBB © 2000-2009. All Rights Reserved.