Until my health forced me to leave the business in 2003, I had been an independent network consultant, sys admin and PC box builder for micro business in Portland, Oregon.

Once I discovered it, I used the hell out of Ghost when it was 'really' GHOST and not this bastardized Symantec crap. I used it for system building and backups.

I tried to use one of the early versions from Symantec, but got frustrated with it & gave up - I've been using RAID, tape & multiple machines for data & just rolling the dice on OS's.

I'm now getting ready to do hardware upgrades on all four systems I still have. (mine, my wife's, spare and NT server).

It's a food chain setup with me getting mostly new and the remains feeding the food chain, etc, etc.

I need to keep my current system alive (XP.SP2) until I get the new system up & configured, (also XP.SP2).

I also need to use the dedicated OS HD I'm currently using and migrate it into the new system, (for the time being).

SO, I thought, I've got System Works 2003 w- Ghost 2003, which I have sneered at in passing and never installed, maybe it will actually work to clone the 4.3gb of files on the 8gb OS partition {multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)} to an 8.4gb drive I have kicking around.

That way, I can use my present HD in the new build w/ a fresh OS and still have my existing system working and as a reference tool.  Make sense? It did to me...

Now five days later and several blistering feedback posts to my friends at Symantec, (I defiantly posted my email address and challenged them to respond), I have:

1. made Ghost boot disks
2. cloned the OS partition to the second drive
3. updated Ghost to build 793
4. there is no more 'cause the damn drive won't boot!

Help!!

I have tried booting with the XP CD and using bootcfg to rebuild the boot.ini, (though I don't see any benefit if the boot.ini is correct already.)

I fixboot'd the boot sector alone, I have fixmbr'd & fixboot'd the partition. Everything looks like it should work, but I get the nagging suspicion it's due to a virtual partition that Symantec has decided I need, (Peter Norton Syndrome is alive and well), though the docs are flaky on whether cloning actually uses one - there is a VP file on the root of the drive.

Am I missing something? Should I make an image instead of cloning? Seems like a long way around to get where I am already.  BTW, all drives are NTFS.

Do I need to do it completely from DOS and not use the GUI? (I'd really love to rub that in their nose in Eugene!)

If the complete & basic directions are written in one location on how to do the most basic thing with Symantec Ghost I can't find it. (The entire endeavor has been very similar to the absurd hoops one has to jump through to get the most recent build of Ghost)

Any help would be appreciated. It doesn't have to be more than where to find correct & complete instructions.
If I can get that, I can do it...well, I hope..

TIA, later,

Geo

Hey Shadow,

Thanks for getting back to me on this.  I can boot w/ FD, in fact, after I posted, I tried a complete boot from DOS clone this AM just for hell of it, but of course, it wouldn't boot.

So, I sort out the impact of cloning the entire disk, don't think it's an issue - the rest of the drive is mostly empty, but I've been delaying nuking it as I lost a smallish data folder a week or so ago and I want to try an undelete app on the partition to see what I can recover. It's not irreplaceable data, it's a bunch of downloaded stuff that I don't want to track down again, so in the end it's no biggie.

It's funny you say this is documented on Radified, the number of Google searches I did on the web, and then searching after joining, I didn't find it  - oh well.

Thanks for the help, I'm sure we'll be crossing paths, from what I see this looks like the kind of place I've been looking for - it appears that the egos get checked at the door AND people don't talk unless they know what they're talking about.

Also, I've read quite a few of your posts - I laughed at a lot of them 'cause I do things a certain way too. 1. cause it works 2. because it makes sense (ie using GHost w/ FD).

It's one of the major topics in my continuing conversation, (diatribe? venomous rants?) w/ Symantec.  They do so much stuff to 'dumb' down applications.  It just contributes to the whole reluctance of people to learn things.

Well, I think I get after it and get my new Quad 6600 goin' before the weekends over -- it'll be a bit of a change over an Athlon 2400!

Later,

Geo

Geo,
I'm somewhat of a packrat as well as a very opinionated auldfahrt.
I still have the Ghost Image that I made the day I upgraded from Windows 98/SE to XP-Pro, with an upgrade CD, many years ago now.

I recently posted a thread asking if there was a later version of Ghost Explorer than what came with the full install of Ghost 2003.  My answer came unexpectedly from a totally different source. (sorry Rad!)
The ink wasn't even dry on my post, when I found Ghost Explorer 11 on a "Hiren's Boot CD".

With Ghost Explorer, which runs from within Windows, I can open up any Ghost Image file going back years, and recover any file that may have since then been lost.  For that very reason, I always make a new Ghost Image of my C: drive at least once a week, and before I do any major HD cleanups, deleting old files, etc.
If I deleted a file, five years ago, off of my HD, I can open up an old Ghost Image, with Ghost Explorer and recover that file. 

Using Ghost and Ghost Explorer (properly) you need NEVER loose anything of importance.  Everyone should be doing backups and HD maintenance,
WEEKLY, not Weakly!   (my little joke for the day)

Cheers Mates!
The Shadow