"Ghosting" backups to usb drive.

[victord66]

I would like to purchase a usb drive due to space
limitations in my case. Now if I were to do a ghost backup
to this external drive how would I restore it to a new hard
drive in my pc? Presumably the new hard drive would come
formatted with dos? (Not sure here since I've never
purchased a hard drive separately) If that's the case,
when I booted the pc with the new hard drive I would then
need to install an operating system in order for it to
recognize the usb drive, right?

Once the new operating system is installed and I restore
the 'ghost' backup from the usb drive wouldn't that install
all of my old hardware/software settings? But won't some
of these be changed with the new hard drive? Supposing the
new hard drive is larger than the old one?

Also suppose I wanted to take the 'ghost' backup and
install it into a brand new pc. Would the settings from
my old pc get transferred, and if so, maybe they wouldn't
work on the new system?

 

[Bob Harris]

First, most new (internal) hard drives do not even come partitioned, nor
formatted. They definitely do NOT come with any operating system
whatsoever. They do usually come with a floppy (or CD) that will walk you
through the partitioning and formatting. Or, you could use the XP CDROM,
since it is bootable and can create partitions. However, XP will refuse to
make a FAT32 partition larger than 32Gig, whereas most other partitioning
software can easily do that. XP can use larger FAT32 partitions, it just
can not create them.

As for recovering the backup image, you need to use whatever software was
used to create it. Norton GHOST, PowerQuest DriveImage, and Acronis
TrueImage all instruct you how to make bootable media so that you can run
them on a computer with no operating system installed, such as will be the
case if you replace the hard drive.

If instead of these you happen to be using the Microsoft program called
Ntbackup.exe, as best as I can tell, you will need to first install a copy
of XP on the new hard drive, then run Ntbackup.exe to recover image. If you
have ntworked computers, it may be possible to run Ntbackup.exe from another
ocmputer, but that is not omething a home user would probably attempt.

I was once burned by the win98 equivalent of this backup routine, so I do
not use it for major backups any longer. I have had excellent results with
GHOST and with TrueImage. TrueImage is easier to use, and fully supports
USB, firewire, and SATA disks, whereas GHOST has only partial support for
these.

Now, to clarify a point. I have been discussing the backup and restoration
of an entire partition (or whole drive with multiple partitions). If the
"ghost" image you are talking about is less than that, then (1) it ain't
Norton GHOST or the other major backup software, and (2) it probably won't
work, meaning that the resulting PC plus new disk will not be bootable. You
need 100% of what is on the primary hard drive first partition, assuming
that is also where XP is installed, to have any hope of the image transfer
working.

Now for another point. I have been discussing backup/recovery on the same
computer. If you attempt to recover to a new computer and/or a new
motherboard, expect XP to give you a blue screen of death when the PC is
booted after the recovery. This can usually be fixed by running a "repair"
installation of XP. however, to do this you must have a real, retail XP
CDROM. An OEM version of XP may not support this feature, since by
definition an OEM verison of XP is suppoed to be installed only on the
original hardware.

Finally, if you have not yet done it, think about moving your personal files
(DOC, XLS, JPG, etc) to a separate partition than the one with the operating
system. These can be backed up and restored via XCOPY. Use the /D option
to backup only those files which have changed since the last backup. This
makes the backup process very fast, except for the first time you fo it. If
you do this, then the backup of the partition with XP and programs should be
much smaller, only a few Gigs.

 

[Kent W. England [MVP]]

I would like to purchase a usb drive due to space
limitations in my case. Now if I were to do a ghost backup
to this external drive how would I restore it to a new hard
drive in my pc? Presumably the new hard drive would come
formatted with dos? (Not sure here since I've never
purchased a hard drive separately) If that's the case,
when I booted the pc with the new hard drive I would then
need to install an operating system in order for it to
recognize the usb drive, right?

You might not need to do anything at all to the blank new hard disk.
Your Ghost software may be able to restore the partition directly to the
blank drive. (I don't know whether you are using the term "ghost"
generically or not.)

Once the new operating system is installed and I restore
the 'ghost' backup from the usb drive wouldn't that install
all of my old hardware/software settings? But won't some
of these be changed with the new hard drive? Supposing the
new hard drive is larger than the old one?

Most likely you would have a partition of the same size as the old drive
had, so you would have some left-over space. A partition manager tool
could expand your partition to take up the slack space. If the partition
won't boot, then your ghost software didn't restore the boot sector. You
can run the recovery console from the XP CD and fixboot and fixmbr to
get the disk to boot. If you have swapped disks, then the BIOS should be
looking to boot the new drive.

Also suppose I wanted to take the 'ghost' backup and
install it into a brand new pc. Would the settings from
my old pc get transferred, and if so, maybe they wouldn't
work on the new system?

You would have to do a repair install on XP before it would boot and
this likely won't work if you have an OEM copy of XP, which your license
prevents you from transferring to a new PC. If you have a full retail
license, then the repair install will get it working, but you still
might need to run Recovery Console to fix the boot sector.

All in all, it's not too painful, but the cloning tools are far from
perfect for XP.

 

[InfoQuest]

I have been trying to decide between Ghost 2003, Drive Image and True
Image. In reading the online manual for True Image, it only appeared to
give a choice of FAT16 or FAT32 when it came to reformatting the hard drive
before loading the image. Is NTSF also an option?