Radified Community Forums - Cloning partitions with Ghost 9

John.

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Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
Reply #60 - Dec 24^th, 2005 at 10:23am

Quote:

Anyways, I've got norton ghost 10.0 and I want to clone my 40GB Maxtor HD, with my os and stuff, to my 200GB Seagate HD. My good ol' 40GB Maxtor is just to loud and I cant stand it. The thing is, I've already formatted my 200GB HD and it has a lot of valuable data on it. Sooooooooo, if I clone my HD, will it just overwrite all my data, or can I configure it to create a new partition within the 200GB HD.

For safety's sake, Norton Ghost will restore an image (or copy/clone your existing one) onto UNALLOCATED/UNUSED space on a hard drive. That's so in a misunderstood panic, a user doesn't accidently overwrite an existing partition.

If your 200 GB drive has some unallocated (by that I mean not in a partition) space you could do what you want. However, I suspect that you have the entire 200 GB already formatted and in use. In that case you need a partition manager (one is Symantec Partition Magic, other good ones as well).

1. Backup up everything on your 200 gb first!!!!!
2. Use PM to shrink your 200 GB by at least 40 GB to create an unallocated space. Be sure that the 40 GB unallocatged/free space is in front of the 160GB so that the partitions are in the same relative order:

40GB (empty)
160GB your shrinked partition

3. Restore your 40gb image backup to the new empty drive space and make it bootable using Ghost option.
4. Change your 160GB partition from primary to extended/logical.

Brian--did I miss anything here?

Ghost4me Ghost 9, 10, 12, 14, 15. Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7

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Brian

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Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
Reply #61 - Dec 24^th, 2005 at 3:02pm

Ghost4me.John, you are a mindreader.

Quote:

Norton Ghost will restore an image (or copy/clone your existing one) onto UNALLOCATED/UNUSED space on a hard drive

I understand this is so "do not let old-XP see the new partition before cloning. Doing so would give XP a chance to assign a drive letter, it will be remembered by the registry when it is cloned, and the clone will adopt the wrong drive letter for itself."

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm

Ghost 9 "clones" (Copy Drive) from the Windows environment so I don't know if the above explanation would apply if one did the Copy Drive from BartPE. I haven't tried "cloning" to a partition from BartPE yet.

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John.

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Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
Reply #62 - Dec 24^th, 2005 at 5:15pm

Brian wrote on Dec 24^th, 2005 at 3:02pm:

I understand this is so "do not let old-XP see the new partition before cloning. Doing so would give XP a chance to assign a drive letter, it will be remembered by the registry when it is cloned, and the clone will adopt the wrong drive letter for itself."

I've never done a live clone from XP. I always used the standalone diskettes or boot cd to do an "offline" clone or disaster recovery. I always felt that was safer.

Ghost4me Ghost 9, 10, 12, 14, 15. Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7

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Brian

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	Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9 Reply #63 - Dec 24^th, 2005 at 5:48pm Sounds reasonable for earlier Ghost versions but Ghost 9 only allows Copy Drive from Windows.
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John.

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Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
Reply #64 - Dec 24^th, 2005 at 7:25pm

Brian wrote on Dec 24^th, 2005 at 5:48pm:

Sounds reasonable for earlier Ghost versions but Ghost 9 only allows Copy Drive from Windows.

Yes, you're right (again). I just booted my Ghost 9 CD to see and the copy drive function wasn't there.

I never used earlier versions of Ghost prior to 9 (I used DriveImage). The few times I had to do bare metal disaster hard drive failures in the past, I used the DriveImage disaster recovery diskettes to restore from a backup image from a separate internal IDE hard drive which had backup images on it.

The beauty now and in recent versions is the ability to restore individual files/folders. This is honestly used more frequently when I or someone else wants a copy of a file that existed several weeks ago. That's another reason I like weekly backups and monthly archives to DVD. It's not a $10,000+ tape archive system solution, but for most home/home office environments it has most of the protection needed for a reasonable cost.

Ghost4me Ghost 9, 10, 12, 14, 15. Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7

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Andrew James Chang

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Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
Reply #65 - Dec 24^th, 2005 at 9:00pm

Hey guys, thanks for the quick replies. Here are the answers to your original questions Brian.

I have one parition on my 40 GB HD. The total size of that drive is 37.2 GB, and as of this moment I have 14.3 GB free. So I supose there is about 22.9 GB of data on it.

As for my 200 GB HD, there is only a single 187 GB partition, with 62 GB of data stored on it.

I unfortunately do not have an external HD available, which I'm sure would make this whole process much easier. My original plan was to eventually use this 200 GB HD in an external enclosure, but my efforts to isolate my PC's high pitched whine have singled out my 40 GB HD as the culprit. Further, it seems that this drive may also be near the end of it's life cycle. So, though eventually I will have one available, at the moment my hands are tied.

I was under the impression that I might require Partition Magic, though I had hoped Ghost would have much of that program's functionality included. I was unaware of the fact that Parition Magic is now Norton Product. I'm sure I could obtain a copy however.

Reading a little futher down, Ghost4me.John looks to have a pretty straightforward instruction set for me, which I appreciate very much. So I guess this is what I'll be attempting to do either today or tommorow.

Catchin the last bit, you guys were mentioning problems with 'old-XP seeing the new partition before cloning'. Do you expect this to be something I should look out for?

Thanks!

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Brian

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	Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9 Reply #66 - Dec 24^th, 2005 at 10:51pm Andrew, follow Ghost4me.John's instructions. He did read my mind. Then follow the instructions from page 1. Ask questions if it's confusing.
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Andrew James Chang

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Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
Reply #67 - Dec 26^th, 2005 at 4:47am

Hey guys, so here's the update. Using Partition Magic, I shrunk the partition on my 200GB HD to allow for an unallocated partition of 40GB. I then did a HD Copy in Ghost 9 following the instructions from the 1st post in this thread.

However, I did not change my 160GB partition to extended/logical before turning off my computer. I was under the impression that I would have to do that AFTER I removed the original drive. I'm thinking this may be the reason why I'm encountering this problem...

Having performed what I thought was a successful Copy, I turned off my computer and removed my orginal 40GB HD. Making sure the 200 GB HD was now the Master drive, I turned on my computer.

This is what I encountered:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll
Please re-install a copy of the above file.

Sooooooooooooo, having read about problems of booting a computer with two idential HD's in the Radified Guide to Norton Ghost, I unplugged my 200GB HD and reinserted my orginal 40GB HD.

And now here I am, sorry to disappoint guys, but it looks like I need some help.

Thanks,
AJ

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Brian

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Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
Reply #68 - Dec 26^th, 2005 at 5:27am

Andrew,

Should be only a minor problem. The following should be met.

Was the 40 GB Unallocated Space you created in PM on the left hand side of the 160 GB partition?
Is the 160 GB data partition a Primary partition with a status of "None"? (use the PM floppies)
Booting to the Ghost 9 CD, I think try Utilities and then Edit boot.ini. The boot.ini should point to Partition 1. (The hal.dll message usually refers to a boot.ini mismatch)

Here is my boot.ini. Yours should be similar.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

See the reference to partition(1). Change it from the Ghost CD if it says (2)

Naturally you need to swap HD's so only the 200 GB HD is installed as Master. If you have a BartPE CD you could edit boot.ini as well. Whichever is easier.

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John.

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Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
Reply #69 - Dec 26^th, 2005 at 11:03am

Andrew,

In addition to what Brian said, use Partition Magic to be sure that your new 40GB partition on your Seagate drive is set/marked to ACTIVE and the other partition on the Seagate is not active. Also make sure it is bootable.

There can be more than one primary partition on a hard drive, but only ONE of the them can be set active. (You will not be able to access the other primary one, but after making the change you can verify if your system works. Then you can go back and change the 160gb one from primary to extended/logical).

Ghost4me Ghost 9, 10, 12, 14, 15. Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7

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John.

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	Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9 Reply #70 - Dec 26^th, 2005 at 11:40am Andrew, Here's just one link that explains and shows the different kinds of partitions on a physical hard drive. http://www.ahuka.com/other/partition.html
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Brian

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Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
Reply #71 - Dec 26^th, 2005 at 3:55pm

John, I think the "160" GB partition will be OK as a primary partition with a status of "None". It will be visible with a drive letter in Windows. Conversion to an Extended Partition will be optional.

As you point out, only one "active" primary partition can exist on a HD. But Andrew's "160" GB primary partition won't be active or hidden and should be visible. I just did something similar (before I wrote this) on my son's computer and the partition was visible.

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Andrew James Chang

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Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
Reply #72 - Dec 26^th, 2005 at 6:13pm

Hey guys,

I'm about to boot up with my Ghost CD, but having finished up with the PM diskettes, here's the update. As you guys originally noted, the 40 GB partition is in fact on the left side.

The 40 GB Partition is set to Active, and Primary.
The 160 GB Partition is set to None and Primary.

Having read your suggestions, I'm under the impression that even with these settings, I should not be experiencing that error/problem. So I hope to see what my boot.ini looks like shortly.

One thing that I should note however, is that unlike the original post, I did select "resize drive to fill unallocated space" when originally Copying the 40 GB drive. I did that because the 40 GB Parition I created is slightly larger than the actual 37 GB size of my Maxtor drive. I'm hoping that slight deviation is not contributing to this problem.

Will report back,
AJ

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Rad

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	Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9 Reply #73 - Dec 27^th, 2005 at 1:24am Nearly 5,000 views .. popular thread.
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Andrew James Chang

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Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
Reply #74 - Dec 27^th, 2005 at 1:47am

Dear gosh,

This seems to be turning into an ordeal. After spending all day finding myself a bootable Ghost CD (why isn't there some utility in these newer versions of Ghost, like the one in Ghost 2003 that creates bootable media?) I finally was able to enter the Norton Recovery Environment, where I was able to edit the Boot.ini file via Utilities.

However, my boot.ini file looked pretty pristine... Here is what I saw:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

or somthing along those lines.

Should I just try deleting this partition via the PM utility and attempt to do all this through Windows with Ghost 9 again?

I'm wondering if the fact that I left Avast & Kiero running while Ghost was doing it's business caused this problem, as reading the PM User Guide, I was advised to turn off AV functions while the program was running. Which is what I did, and things seemed to be going fine until I began Copying my 40GB Partition...

Any further advice would be much appreciated guys.

Thanks!
AJ

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