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gino

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Ghost 9 Restoring to New Smaller Boot Drive
Oct 20^th, 2006 at 9:06pm

Friday, October 20, 2006

Ghost 9 Restoring to New Smaller Boot Drive

I would like your opinion and advice on upgrading & replacing my boot drive. Currently, my Dell 390 Work Station came with one 160 GB, 7200 rpm, SATA Drive (WDC WD1600JS-75NCB3). I am planning on add a new boot drive and using the existing 160 GB as a second drive for store, etc.

1.
New Boot Drive - My old Dell Precision 340, is equipped with two 12 GB, 15,000 rpm SCSI hard drives in non-raid configuration. The Boot Drive is split into two partitions, C at 10 GB (Operating System and Programs) and D at 7.2 GB NTFS Logical (data files, downloads, etc.)

My New Dell 390 currently does not have a SAS Controller Card for the newer type Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) drives. To obtain the card and drive(s) appears rather expensive. Therefore, I believe a can get significant speed improvement by getting a 10,000 rpm SATA drive. Currently, I am thinking of two options:

Western Digital Raptor WD360ADFD 36.7GB 10,000 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM @ $104.99 plus shipping at NewEgg

Or

Western Digital Raptor WD740ADFD 74GB 10,000 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM @ $149.99 plus shipping at NewEgg

I would appreciate any thoughts on this approach or drives.

2.
Restoring Images to New Smaller Boot Drive – I am using Ghost 9 to make images of my current 160 GB drive. Before getting my new replacement boot drive, I am planning on using Partition Magic to repartition my 160 GB drive.

The drive currently has a small 39.2 MB FAT Partition (Dell Utility), and 152.5 GB NTFS Primary Partition (Operating System and everything) I am planning to resize C to perhaps 15 GB NTFS Primary Partition for my operation system and programs, and add a D NTFS Logical partition with the balance of approx. 137 GB for data files, downloads, etc. I will be making separate Ghost 9 images of C & D as I progress forward. These images will be available for restore to a new boot drive.

Now for my concern, I believe I can restore these images to the new boot drive, possibly a 36.7GB SATA 10,000 rpm drive, which will have two smaller size partitions. However, I am not sure.

I couldn’t find any discussions or instructions on this specific problem as yet. I would appreciate any input and or directions on how to proceed.

Gino

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Brian

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Re: Ghost 9 Restoring to New Smaller Boot Drive
Reply #1 - Oct 20^th, 2006 at 9:30pm

gino wrote on Oct 20^th, 2006 at 9:06pm:

.
Restoring Images to New Smaller Boot Drive – I am using Ghost 9 to make images of my current 160 GB drive. Before getting my new replacement boot drive, I am planning on using Partition Magic to repartition my 160 GB drive.

The drive currently has a small 39.2 MB FAT Partition (Dell Utility), and 152.5 GB NTFS Primary Partition (Operating System and everything) I am planning to resize C to perhaps 15 GB NTFS Primary Partition for my operation system and programs, and add a D NTFS Logical partition with the balance of approx. 137 GB for data files, downloads, etc. I will be making separate Ghost 9 images of C & D as I progress forward. These images will be available for restore to a new boot drive.

Now for my concern, I believe I can restore these images to the new boot drive, possibly a 36.7GB SATA 10,000 rpm drive, which will have two smaller size partitions. However, I am not sure.

gino,

Restoring Ghost 9 images to a smaller partition is certainly possible but it depends on the data spread on the larger partition. For example, if you had a 100 GB partition with 5 GB of data spread over the first half of that partition then you wouldn’t be able to restore an image to a 10 GB partition. But if the 5 GB of data had been moved to the start of the partition by PerfectDisk etc, then it’s likely you would be able to restore the image to a 10 GB partition.

The other approach is to resize the source partition to match the destination partition size before creating the image.

The boot.ini in your current WinXP is likely to reference partition 2. When you restore the image to a new HD it may not boot because the OS will be in partition 1. Sometimes Ghost makes the correction but if it doesn’t you can edit boot.ini from the Ghost 9 CD.

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Re: Ghost 9 Restoring to New Smaller Boot Drive
Reply #2 - Oct 22^nd, 2006 at 4:38pm

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Brian,

Thanks for very much for the info. I believe the best approach would be to resize the ghost images before restoring to a new boot drive. A few questions:

1.
I read somewhere not to format the new boot drive because ghost 9 needs it that way or will take care of formatting during restore. If this is true, I will first need to restore a resized image of my existing C partition to the new drive, then resize the new drive to allow for restore of D partition. Your advice here please.

2.
Depending on your answer in item 1 and If the new target partitions on the new boot drive is C @ 15 GB and D @ 21 GB, what size GB would you recommend my final resized images are from my existing drive.

3.
Can you reference me to some detailed instructions giving me a step by step for this restore procedure so can get information on what items to check or activate during the restore procedure.

4.
If the new drive won’t boot, as you indicated, resulting in a need to edit the boot.ini file, can you reference me to some detailed instructions should I need to do this.

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Re: Ghost 9 Restoring to New Smaller Boot Drive
Reply #3 - Oct 22^nd, 2006 at 5:45pm

gino wrote on Oct 22^nd, 2006 at 4:38pm:

I believe the best approach would be to resize the ghost images before restoring to a new boot drive.

That's fine but still make sure that you defrag before resizing the partitions. Same explanation. To shift the data to the start of the partition. PerfectDisk is the best app for shifting data and I think there is a trial version of PD 8. Diskeeper is not as efficient at doing this as PD.

Quote:

I read somewhere not to format the new boot drive because ghost 9 needs it that way or will take care of formatting during restore.

I always partition and format a new HD before restoring images.

Quote:

If the new target partitions on the new boot drive is C @ 15 GB and D @ 21 GB, what size GB would you recommend my final resized images are from my existing drive.

Make the source partitions the same size as the destination partitions before you create the images.

Quote:

Can you reference me to some detailed instructions

Boot to the Ghost CD
Set the Time Zone
Advanced Recovery Tasks
System Restore
dot in Restore drives ,Next
dot in Single drive ,Next
Browse to your image file ,Next
Select a destination ,Next
tick Verify backup
tick Check for file system errors after restore
tick Resize drive to fill unallocated space (Y or N) Will be greyed out if partition is correct size
tick Set drive active (for booting OS)
tick Restore original disk signatures
tick Restore MBR (for a new HD)
Next
tick Reboot after finish
Finish

Check computer clock after OS boots. May be out by an hour or two.

Quote:

If the new drive won’t boot, as you indicated, resulting in a need to edit the boot.ini file

The typical error is ..hal.dll

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=130

You don't need to get editbini, you can do this from the Ghost 9 RE. Advanced Recovery Tasks, Utilities.

This is my boot.ini
Quote:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

Have a look at your boot.ini. I suspect it's the same as mine. (I have a Dell too with a Diagnostic partition)
If the OS was in Partition 1, then you would need to change 2 into 1. Both 2s.

An exciting project.

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Re: Ghost 9 Restoring to New Smaller Boot Drive
Reply #4 - Nov 3^rd, 2006 at 8:47am

Friday, November 03, 2006

Hello Brian,

I have successfully installed a new 10,000 rpm SATA drive in my Precision 390 to act as a new boot drive. I was very easy to restore ghost images to the new drive. Your detailed instructions were very helpful.

Thanks for your help.

Gino

PS: I have another question for you in a new posting “ Restoring Ghost 9 Images to SAS & SATA Hard Drives

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