Hi Guys.
Just found this board, whilst struggling with a Ghost 9 prob.

Have been using G9 for some time with great results, have done about 10 drive copies on various desktop machines whithout a problem.

The trouble I am having at the moment is on my Dell laptop. on WXP PRO SP1. have done a drive copy in the past with total success, when I upgraded from a 20 gb to 40 gb hd.

So today thought I would copy the 40gb drive (only 8gb on it) back to the spare 20gb drive for a back up via a hd USB2 caddy, which is the same method I used in the first place with no probs.

Trouble is now when I have finished the copy,( which I do in two operations, first the dell EISA partition of 32mb then the main body of the drive in the second), is that after the operation is complete the only partition visible on the drive under windows, is the EISA 32mb one, the rest is still unaloctated. If I go back into Ghost to view the drive it shows the copy is all there.

Anyway thought I would swap the coppied HD into the machine and see what happened, boots into the Windows splash for a few seconds and then goes into blue screen with error codes, but this can only be seen for a split second before going to "start Windows normally" and back to the same loop.

What I find confusing is,
1, have used this method before no prob.

2, how are you suposed to treat the EISA partition (without which the Dell will not boot) under Ghost 9 copy drive.

3, what settings should I be using to copy the two partitions, eg copy MBR, set to active etc.

Have alway had the destination drive set to unalocated in Ghost copy drive.

Any help would be most welcome.
Cheers Martin.

futaba1024 wrote on Mar 24^th, 2006 at 3:40pm:

Martin, could you run the Ghost program PartinNT.exe and then "copy to clipboard" icon and then paste the output here on this forum?

It should be in c:\Program Files\Symantec\Norton Ghost\Utility folder. 

Also, when you say that "the only partition visible on the drive under windows, is the EISA 32mb one", do all partitions show up under Windows XP Disk Manager?

My Computer/right click/manage/Disk Management

Hi Guys.
Thanks for your help.

Have run Partint, but I had unallocted the disc and am not sure whether you want the results from the doner disc or the destination disc before or after a copy attempt, if that makes sense.

Anyway, tried another copy with SSC disabled, but it repeatedly came up with the error "E7C0012 no more free sectors on this disc", is that because the destination drive has a smaller total  capacity than the doner drive ?

When I have done a copy, the destination disc viewed in disc manager,  shows only the first 32mb partition, the rest is still unallocated as far as it is concerned, but as I said G9 shows all 6.7gb on the drive.

Cheers Martin.

Does the Windows XP free defrag program actually move all files to the front (bottom) of the partition?  I don't think it does.

I know that PerfectDisk http://www.raxco.com/ which I use and like, does move everything to the front; free trial available.  I think Diskeeper http://www.diskeeper.com/defrag.asp also compacts the partition.

Thanks guys.
Yes have defraged, but as you say Windows has not moved everything to the left and yes there is some data that looks as though it might be past the 20gig mark.

Will download one of those and try again.

Cheers Martin.

Hi Guys.
Have cracked it!!!

After many failures, thought I would try to copy the EISA partition with nothing checked in the left hand fields and then copy main partition with my usual, verify data, set to active, primary and copy MBR checked................ It worked.

Thanks for all your help.
Martin.