I am trying to use Ghost 14 to upgrade my laptop hard disk.

I created what I thought was an image on the portable USB drive (ran "Copy My Hard Drive"), and installed the larger laptop drive.  Now I want to install the backed up image on to it from the portable USB drive, but for the life of me cannot figure out how.

At any rate, my old drive is unreliable but I've got it copied to the portable.  How do I get that image on to the new laptop drive?

Many thanks.  The docs are pretty impenetrable for a casual user like me.  I know computers (software developer for 20 years) but Ghost is the stuff of sysadmins...

Oh.  Forgot to mention.  Laptop is Win XP.

@ Don CC


Don CC wrote on Apr 28^th, 2010 at 4:10pm:

Ghost is the stuff of sysadmins...

That sounds like a compliment.

Don, I'm trying to understand what you have done. Copy My Hard Drive doesn't create an image. It creates a partition clone.

How many HDs do you have? Sizes? What is on each? Do you have a .v2i Ghost file?

Thanks for your reply.  I'll try to clarify.

First, yes, my compliments to the sysadmins of the world.  I don't know where we'd be without you!

My laptop had an old 40gb disk with WinXP installed, and I copied it to a 300gb external USB disk.  I can view the contents of that external disk.  It looks like my old laptop directories.

Now, I have installed an 80gb disk in the laptop.  It's not brand new, but is in fine working order.  In fact, it has an installation of WinXP on it, but not configured for this machine and it won't successfully boot (reboots itself quickly and repetitively).

I thought I'd just write the contents of the external disk onto the 80gb disk now in the laptop (presumably including MBR, etc) and it would be all set.  But I can't figure out how to do that.

If another approach is more appropriate, I can start over.  The old laptop disk runs fine for about 30 minutes before failing.  I can reinstall it.

I hope this helps.  Many thanks for your advice.

- Don

Don,

I understand you did a Copy Drive from the 40 GB to the 300 GB external HD. You can see the WinXP files and folders on the external HD.

Is this correct? You installed an 80 GB HD in your laptop. The HD contained a WinXP OS that was created in another computer. It won't boot into Windows. At what point in the boot sequence does it reboot? At the logon screen? Is there a BSOD?

I'd start again. Put the 40 GB HD in the laptop and create an image (recovery point) of the OS. It will be a One Time Backup. Page 63 in the userguide. Write the image to a partition on the 300 GB external HD. Have a look in Disk Management and let us know what partitions are present on the 40 GB HD. Other images may be needed of these partitions. What brand is the laptop?

Next, remove the 40 GB HD and install the 80 GB HD. Boot from the Ghost 14 CD and restore the image stored on the external HD to the 80 GB HD.

You did a Copy Drive. They can be unreliable if done to USB external HDs. Creating images to USB external HDs is fine.

Questions?

It worked!

Thanks for your good advice.  I now understand that "backup" means "image" and "copy your hard drive" means backup!

Well, ok,  not quite.  But I realize my problem was one of terminology combined with an impatience with the documentation.

Thanks again for your valuable assistance.