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copy laptop hard drive (Read 7384 times)

rleescott

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	copy laptop hard drive Sep 19^th, 2010 at 12:56pm I have g12 and win7 os on a 160 g hd. Can I clone this hard drive to another hd in a usb enclosure attached to my usb port. I tried it and it seemed to work, but when booting it is very slow and stops at preparing desktop. Backup and restore using g12 and win 7 works ok.
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Brian

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	Re: copy laptop hard drive Reply #1 - Sep 19^th, 2010 at 3:38pm @ rleescott I suspect you created a partition with a drive letter on the external HD and copied into this partition. Correct? rleescott wrote on Sep 19^th, 2010 at 12:56pm: stops at preparing desktop Does it ever get into Win7 proper?
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rleescott

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Re: copy laptop hard drive
Reply #2 - Sep 20^th, 2010 at 10:16am

It never gets past preparing desktop except for a blank blue screen, not a bsod.
I did not deliberately assign a drive letter, but as I recall, it may have done so with the option greyed out so I could not override.
Are you saying that it should work ok?
If the drive is dynamic, does that matter. I have run into alternate software that won't proceed because of dynamic disk.

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rleescott

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	Re: copy laptop hard drive Reply #3 - Sep 20^th, 2010 at 10:19am Also, I forgot to mention, I tried a second time and it wouldn't copy over the existing copy until I deleted the drive and made it unallocated space. It then proceeded to copy and said succeeded, but it malfunction just like the first copy.
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Brian

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Re: copy laptop hard drive
Reply #4 - Sep 20^th, 2010 at 4:54pm

rleescott

"Preparing your desktop" followed by a blank dull grey blue screen is a drive letter issue usually due to cloning into a partition with a drive letter. See Rule #1.

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm

With Win7, the drive letter issue can be corrected by zeroing the disk signature and editing the BCD store.

Your second attempt should not have resulted in a drive letter issue. Cloning into unallocated space is correct. But you have several potential issues. The only Ghost said to be compatible with Win7 is Ghost 15. Cloning to a USB external HD occasionally fails due to BIOS geometry problems. What brand is your computer?

You are fortunate that your Ghost 12 works for backup/restore.

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rleescott

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Re: copy laptop hard drive
Reply #5 - Sep 22^nd, 2010 at 10:02am

Thanks for the reply. The laptop is a dell lattitude d530.
I tried again, this time instead of formatting i deleted the partition and created unallocated space, but did not format. I then copied and received copy successful. On reboot it asked for the os disc to repair startup, and then boots normally. If I didn't have the repair disc it would have been unsuccessful.
3 questions remain:
1)If copying to usb is problematic sometimes, what is the more reliable alternative for laptops with one hd?
2)Are ghost users expected to be almost able to clone, providing we have a repair disc or os disc? This sounds like a 2 step cloning requirement which, to me, isn't a complete clone. I have tried some freeware which produces a complete clone in one step, and it actually works.
3) Does dynamic disc matter to ghost, as it does with some freeware?

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Brian

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Re: copy laptop hard drive
Reply #6 - Sep 22^nd, 2010 at 4:10pm

As your Ghost 12 is not compatible with Win7 I'm surprised that it works at all. A typical incompatibility is having to do a Startup Repair after the procedure as the BCD store hasn't been updated.

I only use Copy Drive in tests. I find image/restore is much more flexible when upgrading to a larger HD and it works with laptops that have geometry issues with USB HDs. Dells don't have geometry issues.

Ghost 15 supports dynamic disks. I'm not sure about earlier Ghosts.

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