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Cloning partitions with Ghost 9 (Read 249697 times)
Brian
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Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
May 31st, 2005 at 8:25pm
 
On reading past posts in this forum it seems some people are having trouble copying partitions with Ghost 9. Not having used this function, I had to see if it was easy or not. The technique I followed was outlined in this forum a month or two ago. Remember you can only copy one partition at a time with Ghost 9. The whole HD can’t be copied in one step.

I’ve included all steps for clarity.

The spare IDE HD was 10 GB capacity with 6 GB for the OS partition and 4 GB for the data partition.  I connected it as a slave, deleted both partitions with PM so it then showed 10 GB of unallocated space. In Ghost 9, I clicked "Copy One Drive to Another”, chose my C: drive as source and the unallocated space on the second HD as destination. I ticked “check source for file system errors”, “check destination for file system errors”, “set drive active (for booting OS)”. Destination Partition type: “Primary partition”. Chose Drive Letter of “None”. Ticked “Copy MBR”.

I didn’t tick “resize drive to fill unallocated space”, “disable SmartSector copying” or “ignore bad sectors during copy”.

The 6 GB partition took 4:45 mins to copy (contained 4.3 GB of data). I then shut down the computer, removed the master HD and connected the 10 GB HD as a master. Windows booted normally and Win XP was an exact copy of the original. I couldn’t copy another partition because the 4 GB of unallocated space remaining wasn’t large enough.

Points previous posters have stressed were to copy into Unallocated Space, don’t assign a drive letter and Copy the MBR.

I doubt I’ll need to do this in anger for a long time. I’m happy just creating and restoring images rather than copying partitions, but at least I know it’s easy.
 
 
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Rad
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Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
Reply #1 - May 31st, 2005 at 9:41pm
 
Re: "
Remember you can only copy one partition at a time with Ghost 9. The whole HD can’t be copied in one step
."

I've never heard this before. Are you sure it's true? I mean, it seems like a step backwards from Ghost 2003, which allows you to clone-copy a whole (physical) hard drive.

I should probably link to this thread in/on the "Cloning" page.

R.
 
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Brian
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Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
Reply #2 - May 31st, 2005 at 9:51pm
 
Afraid so. There is no way to select more than one partition.

It's on page 90 of the userguide.pdf
 
 
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Rad
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Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
Reply #3 - May 31st, 2005 at 10:27pm
 
If the HDD contains only one partition, then is okay?
 
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Brian
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Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
Reply #4 - May 31st, 2005 at 10:44pm
 
I'd imagine so. One partition on the HD would be equivalent to your full disk to disk example.

The HD (master) I played with yesterday had 6 partitions. I don't have any computers with a single partition on the HD to do the test but I can't see why it should make any difference whether you have 1 or 10 partitions.  Only one can be copied at a time.
You have the option of resizing the partition to fill the unallocated space if the newer HD is larger than the one being copied.
 
 
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El_Pescador
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Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
Reply #5 - May 31st, 2005 at 11:43pm
 
Quote:
"... it seems like a step backwards from Ghost 2003, which allows you to clone-copy a whole (physical) hard drive..."

Rad

I am going to keep watching these forums re: Ghost 9.0 with great interest because I already have Norton Systemworks 2005 Premier which includes ver 9.0 of Ghost - albeit I have not installed any components of the suite.

However, if Brian is correct (and I do tend to trust his comments on any topic) and it really turns out that Ghost 9.0 does not allow clone-copying of an entire HDD, it will then be forever useless to me.

El Pescador
 

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Brian
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Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
Reply #6 - Jun 1st, 2005 at 12:01am
 
El_Pescador, my experience of cloning a drive is once, yesterday. Is there a problem with cloning partitions one at a time rather than all at once? I'd expect you would finish up with the same result.
 
 
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El_Pescador
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Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
Reply #7 - Jun 1st, 2005 at 12:16am
 
Brian wrote on Jun 1st, 2005 at 12:01am:
"... Is there a problem with cloning partitions one at a time rather than all at once? I'd expect you would finish up with the same result..."

I confess to making an assumption that is perhaps unwarranted, i.e., since a "disk-to-disk" clone is not possible, then neither is a "disk-to-image" backup procedure nor an "image-to-disk" restore procedure. However, if my assumption does turn out to be accurate, then I most certainly prejudge Ghost 9.0 to be useless to me.

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Brian
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Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
Reply #8 - Jun 1st, 2005 at 12:30am
 
I think I understand you now. Let's say you have a HD with 3 partitions. In Ghost 9 you can select all 3 partitions at once and they will be imaged to your external HD (say). But, you finish up with 3 separate .v2i files (the images) and a .sv2i file. If you want to restore all 3 partitions at once, you select the .sv2i file which relates to the 3 image files and the 3 partitions are restored at the same time (same session). Or, you can just restore 1 or 2 partitions at the session.

These comments refer to imaging, not cloning.
 
 
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Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
Reply #9 - Jun 1st, 2005 at 1:47pm
 
El_Pescador, it may help the readers of this thread to define “cloning” versus “imaging.”

As stated in the Norton Ghost 2003 User’s Guide, “cloning” is defined as “creating a replica of a specified hard disk of a computer” whereas an image file is used to “create exact duplicates of the original disk or partition.”  (Hey, that’s clear!)  So, the scope of “cloning” is an entire physical hard disk whereas the scope of imaging is a partition – right?  As a consequence, a clone of physical hard disk with only one partition is the same as an image/restore operation - right?

In the language of Ghost 9.0, a “drive” is equivalent to a partition, and the program operates only on one drive at a time.  What I don’t know (and maybe Brian could test) is whether a restore of multiple drives made with the System Index File (.sv2i) yields the same result as a hard disk clone operation.  The Ghost 9.0 User’s Manual (pages 76-77) implies that such is the case.
 
 
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Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
Reply #10 - Jun 1st, 2005 at 2:42pm
 
Pleonasm

I think 'cloning' is a general term referring to creating an exact duplicate.

You can clone 'disk-to-disk' which is whole HDD to whole HDD directly without image creation.  The source HDD can have a single or multiple partitions.  The destination HDD will be over-written so it need not be formated or partitioned.  

And you can clone 'partition-to-partition' which is single partition to single partition directly without image creation.  The source HDD can have a single or multiple partitions.  But  here the destination partition has to already exist.

When you use 'cloning software' to create an 'image file'--'disk-to-image' for example--you are introducing an intermediate step--a 'file' creation--
but it is 'cloning' just the same
--just not re-creating the HDD structure directly onto another HDD.  To re-create the HDD structure--you now have to restore the image to HDD.
 

No question is stupid...but, possibly the answers are  Wink !
(This is an old *NightOwl* user account--not in current use.  Current account is NightOwl without a dash at the end.)
 
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Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
Reply #11 - Jun 1st, 2005 at 3:08pm
 
Quote:
"... It all depends on what the definition of 'is' is..."

Slick Willy Roll Eyes
Pleonasm wrote on Jun 1st, 2005 at 1:47pm:
"... to define 'cloning' versus 'imaging' ... the scope of 'cloning' is an entire physical hard disk whereas the scope of 'imaging' is a partition – right? ... As a consequence, a clone of physical hard disk with only one partition is the same as an image/restore operation - right? ..."

Where any HDD contains only a single partition, the final results of performing either (1) a "disk-to-disk" cloning operation of said disk; or (2) a complete "disk-to-image" backup/"image-to-disk" restore cycle would be the same.  What must be made clear is that the scope of (2) above almost always is reverting to the source HDD whereas the scope of (1) above is seldom intended to do likewise - albeit it is feasible with two complete cycles of cloning.

Even discounting the habits of current PC owners, in today's world you would still be hardpressed to find a modern PC with only a single partition as most OEM-installed PRIMARY HDDs are outfitted with an EISA configuration in the FAT file system format.  

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Brian
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Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
Reply #12 - Jun 1st, 2005 at 6:24pm
 
I chose the title “Cloning partitions with Ghost 9” because I thought it was an accepted term with only one meaning. That was incorrect. Ghost 9 doesn’t use the term cloning. It calls what I understand as cloning, Copy Drive. So from now I’ll use the Ghost 9 term.

Ghost 9 performs three functions. Images, Copy Drive and Restore. The first two functions can’t be done from the Recovery Environment. Restore can be done from Windows and the RE. Restore of the system partition can only be done from the RE.

Copy Drive is a process where one partition is copied to another space on the same or another HD. No image is created. Ghost 9 can only copy one partition at a time so if you have 3 partitions to copy, you need to do it 3 times. No problem from what I can see.

Imaging creates a file which is stored outside of the imaged partition and this file may later be used to re-create the partition. Several partitions can be imaged from the same step but each partition will have its own .v2i image file.

Terms such as “disk to image”, “disk to partition” etc are not used in Ghost 9. I still have to think about these terms because I only used Ghost for a short time before changing to Drive Image 5. Don’t hold that against me.

Anyone have differing definitions?

Pleonasm, after our previous discussion I did try the .sv2i to restore 2 partitions at the same time. Let’s say you have 10 images of the C drive in one folder along with a single .sv2i and 20 images of the D drive in another folder along with its single .sv2i. In the RE, when you choose to restore by .sv2i you can select either .sv2i (doesn’t matter which one) and the two most recent C and D images will be offered as the restore images. You can manually choose earlier images if you like, it really is easy.

Instead of choosing to restore by .sv2i you can choose to restore by Multiple Drives (partitions). Again just choose the relevant images and click Go. So if you had a HD with 7 partitions and you had images for each partition, you could connect an empty HD and restore all 7 partitions in one step. I’m sure you would get the same result as doing the Copy Drive process 7 times.
 
 
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Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
Reply #13 - Jun 2nd, 2005 at 6:52pm
 
To summarize - based on the above posts - it appears that Ghost 2003 and Ghost 9.0 have essentially equivalent functionality (albeit different terminology) for cloning and imaging.
 
 
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Re: Cloning partitions with Ghost 9
Reply #14 - Jun 5th, 2005 at 1:30am
 
Pleonasm said:
"So, the scope of “cloning” is an entire physical hard disk whereas the scope of imaging is a partition – right?"


No, you're talking apples and oranges here.  A clone is an exact duplicate of the original, regardless of whether it's a partition or a whole disk.  An image is a file whose contents can be used to create a clone, but it is, itself, not a clone.  You can have an image of a partition or a whole disk, but in neither case would you have a clone--you would have an image, which you could use to create a clone of the original partition or a clone of the original disk.  The scope of either--image or clone--could be one partition, multiple partitions, or whole disk.

El_P. talks of:
"the final results of performing either (1) a "disk-to-disk" cloning operation of said disk; or (2) a complete "disk-to-image" backup/"image-to-disk" restore cycle would be the same."


That's true--the result of both is a clone.  But I would emphasize that scenario (2) is actually two separate steps, and it's only 'cloning' if both are performed.  And that's not always the case.  It's common to make image files that never get restored.  That's not cloning, that's imaging.  Put imaging together with restoring, and now you've got cloning.  Whether it's back to the same hard disk or a new hard disk is irrelevant--apples and oranges.

Nightowl said:
"When you use 'cloning software' to create an 'image file'--'disk-to-image' for example--you are introducing an intermediate step--a 'file' creation--but it is 'cloning' just the same--just not re-creating the HDD structure directly onto another HDD."


I have to disagree a bit with this.  The intermediate step is itself an end result--the image.  But it's not 'cloning' until you take the separate step of restoring the image back to a hard disk or partition.

As for the distinction of a 'copy' vs. a 'clone', things get fuzzy.  By a rigorous definition, a clone is an exact duplicate, indistinguishable from the original.  Usually, however, an exact duplicate is not what we want; we want a copy that works like the original.  So, if we alter the clone slightly to make it work--such as tweaking the registry, or boot.ini--or resize the partition, do we not have a clone?  If files end up on the destination partition in slightly different sectors, do we not have a clone?  Technically, that's true ... but it works just like the original.  In the common vernacular, a very close copy that works like the original is typically still accepted as a clone.  As the original and clone become less and less identical, at some point we have to stop calling it a clone and refer to it as a copy--but exactly where to draw that line is a bit subjective.
 
 
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