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Ghosted XP Pro Drive, will not boot. G8 (Read 21143 times)
John.
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Re: Ghosted XP Pro Drive, will not boot. G8
Reply #15 - Feb 13th, 2006 at 2:10pm
 
Brian wrote on Feb 12th, 2006 at 6:40pm:
In the Acronis TI group they say the same about a disc to disc copy as you are saying about Ghost 2003. I haven't tried copying with Acronis TI.

With your extensive experience with Ghost 9, Ghost 10, Casper XP, have you ever considered testing the (I think free) version of Acronis XP? I would be very interested in your comparative opinions about the differences of the competitive products.  I know Ghost, Acronis, and Casper arent' the exhaustive list of imaging products, but certainly Symantec Ghost and Acronis TrueImage are often considered two of the top contenders.

Of course this may end up like comparing Word vs. WordPerfect a few years ago.
 

Ghost4me  Ghost 9, 10, 12, 14, 15.  Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7
 
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NightOwl-
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Re: Ghosted XP Pro Drive, will not boot. G8
Reply #16 - Feb 13th, 2006 at 3:41pm
 
Brian

Quote:
When is the MBR created? Say you have a fresh HD and you partition it (using PM floppies) to an active primary partition and an extended partition with logical drives, does it now have a MBR?

I think the moment you create a partition, you create a MBR--yup--here's a reference:

How It Works:  Master Boot Record (MBR)


*Absolute Sector 0* is the boot sector--of which only part of it is actually used--to contain the MBR, the Partition Table, Disk ID, Disk Overlay if your system uses it, and possible other stuff depending on your system setup and software (i.e. linux *Grub Loader*).  This is also where Ghost 2003 *marks* the HDD that Ghost 2003 requests to do, and it stores the Ghost *fingerprint* which shows the last Ghost procedure done on that HDD.

Ghost 2003 has *gdisk.exe*, which is a DOS based Ghost version of MS *fdisk.exe*.  It's a *command line* program that you run after booting to DOS from the floppy disk or after booting to DOS, you can change to some other directory that DOS has access to and run *gdisk.exe* from that directory.

GDisk.exe is found here on my system:

C:\Program Files\Norton SystemWorks\Norton Ghost\gdisk.exe


To see how Gdisk enumerates the HDD's on the system use:

gdisk /status


Here's my status report on a system with two HDD's:

Disk  Partitions  Cylinders  Heads  Sectors  Mbytes  Model
 1       8        14593     255      63  114473.5  HPT37x RAID 1 Array SCSI Di
 2       4        14593     255      63  114473.5  ST312002 6A SCSI Disk Devic


Once you know which HDD is which number, then use the following command line (using the appropriate disk #--example below is *2* for the second HDD above that has 4 partitions on it so I know which HDD it is) to wipe the whole HDD which will include the *absolute sector 0*--so the MBR and Partition Table will be zeroed out:

gdisk 2 /diskwipe


Quoting from the Ghost 2003 User Guide:

Quote:
The /diskwipe switch wipes the entire disk, partitions, partition table, MBR, and all used and unused space.


If you installed Ghost 9.x from Norton SystemWorks Premier, you can find *GDisk.exe* on the installation CD here:

X:\SUPPORT\GHOST\GDISK.EXE

If you have the stand along Ghost 9.x CD, I suspect it's in the same sub-directory.

 

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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Brian
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Re: Ghosted XP Pro Drive, will not boot. G8
Reply #17 - Feb 13th, 2006 at 3:44pm
 
John, I've used Acronis True Image 8 for imaging and restoring. I liked it. Nice GUI and easy to use. I haven't tried True Image 9 as there has been so much bad press in the TI group. It sounded like a pre beta when first released but more recent builds seem to be stable. TI is very hardware dependent and some people just can't get it to work.

There is a BartPE plugin to use if the Recovery disc doesn't work properly. Apparently the recovery disc uses USB 1 drivers so imaging to an external USB HD is slow. I don't know if the drivers have been updated in recent builds.

 
 
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Brian
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Re: Ghosted XP Pro Drive, will not boot. G8
Reply #18 - Feb 13th, 2006 at 4:01pm
 
NightOwl wrote on Feb 13th, 2006 at 3:41pm:
I think the moment you create a partition, you create a MBR--yup--here's a reference:



Maybe that's why I've had success with imaging in the past. I create partitions similar to the old HD with PM before I restore the image.

My Ghost folders don't contain gdisk. When I get my test computer back (it has a new home) I'd like to try wiping a HD.
 
 
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El_Pescador
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Re: Ghosted XP Pro Drive, will not boot. G8
Reply #19 - Feb 13th, 2006 at 8:18pm
 
NightOwl wrote on Feb 13th, 2006 at 3:41pm:
"... GDisk.exe is found here on my system:

C:\Program Files\Norton SystemWorks\Norton Ghost\gdisk.exe..."

I am now running "plain-Vanilla" Norton SystemWorks 2003 on my Dell Dimension 8100, with Norton Ghost 2003 being derived from the spare CD included with a Ghost 9.0 retail kit for pre-XP users.  Therefore, gdisk.exe is found here on my particular system:

C:\Program Files\Symantec\Norton Ghost 2003\gdisk.exe

EP
Cry
 

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