How can I test Ghost system backup?

[DeanB]

Hello all,

I have installed Norton Ghost 12 on my XP machine, and I have made a
full C-drive system backup onto a USB external drive.

Is there any way I can test a restore onto a new hard drive? (I am
mostly concerned about windows activation problems).

Thanks!

DeanB

 

[Xandros]

A simple change such as swapping in a new drive shouldn't trigger activation
unless you've made a number of other hardware changes within a short period
of time. Even if it did the problem would be minor. You may have to
reactivate again which a simple process. Read here
http://aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm

 

[Poprivet]

Hello all,

I have installed Norton Ghost 12 on my XP machine, and I have made a
full C-drive system backup onto a USB external drive.

Is there any way I can test a restore onto a new hard drive? (I am
mostly concerned about windows activation problems).

Thanks!

DeanB

Play with the Restore options. Try restoring some mundane files first, like
maybe c:\windows\temp or some of your own data that you've since deleted.
You can even restore them to "alternate" locations if you want to see
exactly what was restored, and then compare the two folders, the original
and the restored one.

Work your way up. Next Restore say your My Pictures folder, or something
else you can easily replace because you copied it to a CD or DVD first,
"just in case". It won't take you long to gain confidence.
When you're feeling more confident, then try Restoring Program Files or
the Windows folders, the whole things.
When you feel confident it's doing all things correctly, try doing a full
drive Restore and see what happens. Think though, first, in case you might
want to do another backup first, in case you've changed anything since the
last backup you did.

Did you make (or receive) the ISO disk? If so, you can pretend your drive
is completely trashed and use the ISO disk to do a complete system restore
of your hard drive.

I didn't do all those steps; I restored a few data files, then parts of My
Documents and Settings, then My Documents and Settings, and finally used the
ISO image. It worked flawlessly.

You've got the right idea:
It's extremely important to know how to use your application before it's
needed for a mission-critical operation when you're upset and prone to
making mistakes as is just plain human to do.

When you're happy, set up the schedules and do a Full of each drive, then
schedule Incrementals with a new Full each month. And periodically copy a
Full to DVDs just so you have "something" to start with in case you lose a
disk drive somewhere. NEVER save your backups to the same drive the data
came from. An external drive is best for backups and archives, plus DVDs
periodically.

HTH

Pop`

 

[Poprivet]

Hello all,

I have installed Norton Ghost 12 on my XP machine, and I have made a
full C-drive system backup onto a USB external drive.

Is there any way I can test a restore onto a new hard drive? (I am
mostly concerned about windows activation problems).

Thanks!

DeanB

Any activation problems, IF they happen, will be minor. I doubt you'll have
any problems but worst case you'll have to use the phone number it gives you
onscreen if you can't do it online.

Pop`

 

[DeanB]

Play with the Restore options. Try restoring some mundane files first, like
maybe c:\windows\temp or some of your own data that you've since deleted.
You can even restore them to "alternate" locations if you want to see
exactly what was restored, and then compare the two folders, the original
and the restored one.

Work your way up. Next Restore say your My Pictures folder, or something
else you can easily replace because you copied it to a CD or DVD first,
"just in case". It won't take you long to gain confidence.
When you're feeling more confident, then try Restoring Program Files or
the Windows folders, the whole things.
When you feel confident it's doing all things correctly, try doing a full
drive Restore and see what happens. Think though, first, in case you might
want to do another backup first, in case you've changed anything since the
last backup you did.

Did you make (or receive) the ISO disk? If so, you can pretend your drive
is completely trashed and use the ISO disk to do a complete system restore
of your hard drive.

I didn't do all those steps; I restored a few data files, then parts of My
Documents and Settings, then My Documents and Settings, and finally used the
ISO image. It worked flawlessly.

You've got the right idea:
It's extremely important to know how to use your application before it's
needed for a mission-critical operation when you're upset and prone to
making mistakes as is just plain human to do.

When you're happy, set up the schedules and do a Full of each drive, then
schedule Incrementals with a new Full each month. And periodically copy a
Full to DVDs just so you have "something" to start with in case you lose a
disk drive somewhere. NEVER save your backups to the same drive the data
came from. An external drive is best for backups and archives, plus DVDs
periodically.

HTH

Pop`

I wanted to do a restore on a brand new hard drive and see if I can
boot from it fine. If not, then I would return my original hard drive
(plug it back in) and carry on as usual. I just didn't want to have to
register XP twice to do this.

Mine is an OEM install - is there a way to tell if its a BIOS-based
licence or not (apparently there are two kinds of hardware that XP
looks at when determining if this is still the same computer).

 

[Jerry]

I wanted to do a restore on a brand new hard drive and see if I can
boot from it fine. If not, then I would return my original hard drive
(plug it back in) and carry on as usual. I just didn't want to have to
register XP twice to do this.

Mine is an OEM install - is there a way to tell if its a BIOS-based
licence or not (apparently there are two kinds of hardware that XP
looks at when determining if this is still the same computer).

If you want to restore to a brand new hard drive then install it in the
computer, do a full copy with ghost and then swap the drives. It doesn't
matter if XP is OEM or not when using ghost, it don't care. While I've
never used Ghost 12, I use Ghost 2003 on a weekly basis doing a full disk
copy and then running off the copy, works great and only takes under 15
minutes for 25 to 30 gig.

 

[aRKay]

If you want to restore to a brand new hard drive then install it in the
computer, do a full copy with ghost and then swap the drives. It doesn't
matter if XP is OEM or not when using ghost, it don't care. While I've
never used Ghost 12, I use Ghost 2003 on a weekly basis doing a full disk
copy and then running off the copy, works great and only takes under 15
minutes for 25 to 30 gig.

I have been using Ghost for over a year.... backing up my wife's Dell
D-600 to an external drive. It was my understanding that all I needed
to do to install a new drive was to first do a Ghost backup to to the
External drive, install the new drive, then boot from the Ghost CD and
ask it to restore from the External drive.