I don't mind if people interchange 'clone' and 'copy'--in the case of Ghost they generically mean the same thing.  In fact, if someone says they "copied their XP partition to the new disk", I always have to wonder if they mean they drag-and-dropped the files or did a .  It may not always be literally accurate, but I like to use the term 'clone' when talking about a tool like Ghost.

Victor,

For Copy Drive the destination partition needs to be the same size or larger than the source partition.

For a restore process it should work but I see that it doesn't. I suspect that your C: drive is defragmented with some data extending beyond the 4GB mark. I've seen this explanation for Acronis True Image and at least it sounds logical. Can you look at the defrag graph and see if this is likely. You will need a commercial defrag prog to shift the data back as the Windows defrag prog isn't too efficient at moving data to the left.

Do you have partitioning software to increase the size of your D: drive? What does the defrag graph look like?

You don't really need to do it this way because if your Windows XP does become corrupt you can just restore your image to the C: drive.

Here I just thought I post that code again but this time formatted so that it makes more sense...

Code:

<SDO clsid="{E097FFA2-58F0-4EDC-8489-4A4BD6230F26}">

<Volume1 vt="13" clsid="{C85BC36B-53ED-4760-A388-DE72B0A04119}">
<VolumeType vt="8">Simple</VolumeType>
<IsHidden vt="11">0</IsHidden>
<IsActive vt="11">-1</IsActive>
<ImageFile vt="8">D:\XP2W4685.v2i</ImageFile>
<Size vt="21">71847784448</Size>
<Segment1 vt="13" clsid="{C9D92A04-7744-4697-A02A-A0AAEB01A9AD}">
<DeviceNumber vt="19">0</DeviceNumber>
<IsLogical vt="11">0</IsLogical>
<Size vt="21">71847788544</Size>
<OffsetOnMedia vt="21">63</OffsetOnMedia>
</Segment1></Volume1>

<Volume2 vt="13" clsid="{C85BC36B-53ED-4760-A388-DE72B0A04119}">
<VolumeType vt="8">Simple</VolumeType>
<IsHidden vt="11">0</IsHidden>
<IsActive vt="11">0</IsActive>
<ImageFile vt="8"></ImageFile>
<Size vt="21">4194856960</Size>
<Segment1 vt="13" clsid="{C9D92A04-7744-4697-A02A-A0AAEB01A9AD}">
<DeviceNumber vt="19">0</DeviceNumber>
<IsLogical vt="11">-1</IsLogical>
<Size vt="21">4194860544</Size>
<OffsetOnMedia vt="21">140327838</OffsetOnMedia>
</Segment1></Volume2>

<Volume3 vt="13" clsid="{C85BC36B-53ED-4760-A388-DE72B0A04119}">
<VolumeType vt="8">Simple</VolumeType>
<IsHidden vt="11">0</IsHidden>
<IsActive vt="11">0</IsActive>
<ImageFile vt="8"></ImageFile>
<Size vt="21">6292306944</Size>
<Segment1 vt="13" clsid="{C9D92A04-7744-4697-A02A-A0AAEB01A9AD}">
<DeviceNumber vt="19">0</DeviceNumber>
<IsLogical vt="11">-1</IsLogical>
<Size vt="21">6292306944</Size>
<OffsetOnMedia vt="21">148520988</OffsetOnMedia>
</Segment1></Volume3>

</SDO> 

Tell me I can hack this... When I tried opening the file with Ghost it said it could only be used in the recovery environment... I will check...

I believe you're right... My theory was quite simple... If Windows (A) went down and became unbootable Windows (B) could be up in 5 to 10 seconds... Instead of booting from a restore CD or DVD at a very slow read and write speed I could boot up from the hard disk and read and write at blazing speeds. Another thing about my pc, is it only has one bay for CD/DVD... If I needed to boot up and burn a backup, I might as well just dream about it. Another thing about incremental backups is everything between the backups is lost...

Basically what I mean is any given hour of the day I have work and email on the PC which cannot be afforded lost. If I set incremental backups to take place every 24 hours but the pc goes down in the 23rd hour I lost 23x's my work, etc... Whether it was 1x or 23x it is very frustrating... Just multiply x by frustration and you probably get the picture... I was just hoping my theory would help with this problem... For some reason and it is completely unpredictable as to when it will happen I will one day boot up and can't boot into Windows... Some file is missing or corrupt... I hate XP for this very reason...

Trust me, Microsoft itself offers a remedy in which they clearly state will work only *50%* of the time... I tried the remedy probably more than 5 times and not once did I succeed in getting back into Windows... For me it was a 500% failure rate... At times Ghost and Norton Go Back could not even save what I was forced to lose... Ghost is awesome but to an extent which still makes it limited to me... Unless I misunderstand it...

Anyhow, I think at the moment I will dedicate the 4 gigs to Ghost incremental backups... Thanks!

You're right Brian! I agree! I do have Nero which shipped with a backup program and planned on using it. Also, I just wanted Ghost to create a Scratch Recovery Disc*. Would you believe in my over 8 years of working on computers most if not all my unbootable experiences resulting in lost work stemmed from malfunctioning software on XP and not a hard disk failure?

I didn't want to leave this thread unanswered so I thought I report back with my findings. Having two copies of XP on the same disk at the same time is not a good idea. If one goes down, it will bring the other with it. I found this out after a quick test...

Instead what I've resulted to was the following... Install only one copy of XP and make a 2G partition to house the swap file. If the main Windows does go down, restore a slipstreamed (optional) version of XP into the swap file's partition... This is only advisable if XP is unbootable because of software related problems. Doing this over a hardware failure may yield catastrophic results. I haven't fully tested this theory yet but believe it should work right out of the box...

Brian, do you have a walkthrough on how to put the Ghost backup images directly onto the Norton Recovery Disc so when time comes to restore a backup you do not have to swap out the disc? If not, I'll be glad to write one up covering my steps and post it to these forums. Thanks!

* Scratch Recovery Disc: My term for an in house OEM type recovery CD meant to restore the OS and applications specific to the user and there settings. No personal information is to be found on a SRD.

Hi I need some help with cloning using Ghost 9.0 (newbie here)

I have a 200GB hdd with partitions
C:30
D:50
E:30
F:79

If I get a 250hdd, using ghost 9.0 do I need to copy each partition one by one, each time booting windows, or can I do it without booting into the OS? Also, if all the partitions are copied onto the new drive, which was not partitioned previously, what would that leave the rest 50GB? would that just be unallocated space which I could use to make a new drive?

Or can I, say, copy C, D and E as they are, then when I am copying F, pick the resize drive with space option and make rest of the disk drive F?

Please help.

darnayer,

I'm a little confused. What are you planning to do with your 250 GB HD? Leave it in the computer as a second HD, replace the 200 GB HD with the 250 GB HD, store it in the cupboard as a copy of the 200 GB HD, etc.