Copy entire system drive to new drive in XP Home using Norton Ghost

[Paul Soderman]

I have a 40GB drive in a Dell and I also have an external USB backup,
the same size. I am considering putting in a larger drive to the Dell
and ultimately matching the backup with a similar, larger drive (most
likely 60GB or 80 GB for each).

I realize that Norton Ghost will supposedly clone the drive; ideally,
I'd like to clone the present internal drive to the new, larger drive
in the external, then simply take the external drive and put it into
the Dell. I can then later put a larger drive in the external when I'm
ready. Does this sound like a realistic project?

Assuming that I am on the right track, would it be necessary to
reformat or initialize the larger drive in the external, other than
simply making sure that it is DOS type? I saw that the internal drive
presently in the Dell is of a FAT 32 type, and that the drive presently
backing up the Dell in the external was something like NTSC. Since I
can have anything that was backed up on the external appear properly on
the desktop when I access the external/D drive, I'd think that this
FAT32/NTSC (forgive me if I have the acronym wrong on this, as I'm
going from memory) issue isn't that important, but I'd like to know
before I clone the drive and then attempt to install the external in
the Dell.

Much thanks for any help!
Paul

 

[BR549]

I have a 40GB drive in a Dell and I also have an external USB backup,
the same size. I am considering putting in a larger drive to the Dell
and ultimately matching the backup with a similar, larger drive (most
likely 60GB or 80 GB for each).

I realize that Norton Ghost will supposedly clone the drive; ideally,
I'd like to clone the present internal drive to the new, larger drive
in the external, then simply take the external drive and put it into
the Dell. I can then later put a larger drive in the external when I'm
ready. Does this sound like a realistic project?

Assuming that I am on the right track, would it be necessary to
reformat or initialize the larger drive in the external, other than
simply making sure that it is DOS type? I saw that the internal drive
presently in the Dell is of a FAT 32 type, and that the drive presently
backing up the Dell in the external was something like NTSC. Since I
can have anything that was backed up on the external appear properly on
the desktop when I access the external/D drive, I'd think that this
FAT32/NTSC (forgive me if I have the acronym wrong on this, as I'm
going from memory) issue isn't that important, but I'd like to know
before I clone the drive and then attempt to install the external in
the Dell.

Much thanks for any help!
Paul

Why bother installing the drive in the external enclosure, just install it
as a slave inside the Dell computer. Run ghost and do a disk to disk copy,
then replace the 40GB with the one you ghosted to. It sounds strange that
the Dell internal is fat32 and the external drive is NTFS, typically I would
expect it to be the other way around. Usually external usb drives come
preformatted to fat32 so that they can be used by both XP, W2k machine and
also those running 98 or ME, at least my WD 250GB external did.
I use removable drive trays in my system and regularly clone my C drive to a
spare with Ghost 2003. I then swap and run off the clone, this way I always
have a known good backup.

 

[Al Brumski]

I've used Norton Ghost and it works. but it requires Microsoft .Net
Framework which I don't like.

I'm currently using Acronis True Image 9.0 to backup/clone drives and
it works like a champ.

I would strongly recommend TI over Ghost straight away.

Al

 

[John O]

Why bother installing the drive in the external enclosure, just install it

as a slave inside the Dell computer.

If you go this route, be CERTAIN that you know the difference between drive
0 and drive 1. If you have not done a clone like this before, and if these
are IDE, I might even go so far as to recommend putting the drives on
different IDE channels.

Go slowly, and take your time reading *every* dialog.

....over the past several years I have seen many otherwise-competent computer
techs make mistakes cloning drives and losing the original data. Don't join
their club!

-John O

 

[Paul Soderman]

I may be having some progress; then again, maybe not!

I've cloned the disk and it appears to be of the same type and size as
the original; however, when I installed it in the Dell and tried to
start up, I got the following message:

"Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware
configuration problem.
Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk
hardware.
Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk
configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional
information."

Thinking that maybe the master/slave settings needed to be adjusted, I
played with that to no avail. Is this a simple problem where the
computer "remembers" that another drive had been present or installed
and some setting needs to be adjusted, even though the contents of the
new and old drive should be identical? Thanks for any suggestions or
help!
Paul

 

[Jim]

Two things:
1) Try booting with only the new drive installed.
2) If you have different drive manufactures (WD and Maxtor) you may need to
set the old drive to Cable Select (CS) and not as a slave.

Jim

 

[BR549]

Norton Ghost 2003, which I use, does not require Microsoft.Net Framework. I
boot from a Ghost floppy running dos, nothing else required.

 

[Paul Soderman]

It was only when I installed the new drive, after cloning it from the
one that had been in the Dell, that I encountered the trouble I
described.
As far as the second suggestion, did you mean to set the new drive to
Cable Select (I would think that it wouldn't help to change the old
drive's settings after it was out of the computer, since that couldn't
really cause the trouble with the new one)? The drives in question were
indeed from 2 different manufacturors, the old one was a WD and the new
one a Maxtor.
Thanks again!