TomJ wrote on Dec 15th, 2008 at 3:40pm:OK, Shadow, does that mean that the strategy to split between system and data partitions and Ghost the system partition for recovery is flawed under NTFS?
Is one best to simply keep the data and system files integrated on one partition and just ghost the entire drive? I thought the split was more efficient but I did not realize that the system partition was not enough for a recovery to a brand new drive.
In your reply you describe using Fat-32 and FDisk. For a brand new drive what order would you take in recovering with these two, FDisk first or Ghost image restore of the Windows XP Partition?
Thanks.
Tom
Tom,
I apologize for seemingly missing your questions.
I keep all my HD's (except the one with Vista installed) in FAT-32 mode. I like having total control over all my data, even from a DOS boot disk.
Several times over the years I've had a problem with a HD that either required total replacement or at least a Low Level Format to clear up a problem.
In any case the drive is as blank as a new factory fresh drive.
I make primarily Partition Images, which contain everything from drive C:....OS, programs and data.
In my situation I'd be shooting myself in the foot, so to speak, by splitting up my OS and data on different drives. (It really serves NO good purpose)
Anyway, I always set up a new drive the same way, as I have for oh so many years now.
I first boot up my system with the new drive installed as MASTER and my Windows ME boot floppy in the A: drive.
From my ME Utilities menu I first pick "FDISK" which I use to partition my new drive into two partitions. One small one to be C: (20 or so gig's) and the rest (whatever) into a D: (storage) partition.
Then if that's successful, I go ahead and DOS Format both partitions.
That writes all the little tracks and sectors on the HD and verifies the surface and that the drive is working 100%.
Any bad sectors found by "Format" will be blocked out and added to the bad sector map, present on every drive.
Even though FDISK and Format do not have enough digits in them to accurately display the real disk size, both operations can be done quite nicely. Format will report a smaller disk size when it starts, but it will continue formatting right out to the end of the partition.
The largest HD I'm currently using is a 200gig SATA2 Maxtor drive.
I set it up with FDISK and Format just like I've set up every other drive for the past 10 years. NO Problem!
With the partition table and boot sector written by FDISK and Format, a Ghost restore of a Partition Image goes off without a hitch and the newly Restored drive boots with NO problems.
For all the above reasons, I seldom make an entire DISK Image of my hard drive. For me, it's redundant.
(and where would I store such a large Image File?.....That actually requires another hard drive)
But, for those whose drive is in NTFS mode, a disk Image is very important. A disk Image includes the Boot sector, not copied in a Partition Image. An External HD works great for such backups.
I hope all this makes sense.
Happy Holidays Everyone!
The Shadow