Expanding laptop hdd size, how to clone system?

[Bo Berglund]

I have a HP workstation laptop that came with 80 Gb hdd and now I have
about 5% space left over....
So I need to expand the drive space. Therefore I bought a Seagate 160
Gb 2.5" drive and am ready to strat transfering my system. But it
can't be done like I used to when I had desktop PC:s, though :-(

On desktops I just plugged in the new drive into a free IDE connector
and booted up with my Ghost 2003 CD and made a disk copy from the old
to the new disk. Then I shut down the PC and took out the old drive,
moved the new to the old position and booted up and I was done.

Now on a laptop this does not work since I cannot find an extra IDE
connector for the new drive!
So how can I clone the system drive????

I tried to connect the new drive via a USB2 adapter gizmo to the USB
port of the PC but it was not possible to do the transfer cause the
speed was terrible. Calculated on the data amount the transfer would
have taken about 50-60 hours! Seems like USB connection uses only
USB1.1 protocol...

I have looked at the backup utility in XP-Pro but although it seems to
be able to back up to a USB2 disk (with Windows running that will be
USB2 speed), but in the end it needs a floppy (!) to write important
data, which of course cannot be done nowadays (no floppys anymore!).

What can I do?


Bo Berglund
bo.berglund(at)nospam.telia.com

 

[Kerry Brown]

You need a newer imaging program that works with USB 2.0 or a USB/IDE
enclosure that supports USB 2.0. You'll have to determine which one is the
cause of the problem. Does the portable drive work with USB 2.0 when you are
in XP?

 

[Bo Berglund]

You need a newer imaging program that works with USB 2.0 or a USB/IDE
enclosure that supports USB 2.0. You'll have to determine which one is the
cause of the problem. Does the portable drive work with USB 2.0 when you are
in XP?

Yes, I get decent transfer rates when I hook the drive up as USB
inside XP, looks like something like several hundred megabits per
second.
But when I tried the ghosting (after booting the Ghost2003 rescue CD)
the drive was present (via BIOS, I suppose) but transfer rate was
about 3 megabits per second (20 Mbytes per minute).
Maybe it is a problem with the HP BIOS?

I do have Norton Ghost 9 on another PC so I checked it, but it does
not seem to have any function to create a boot CD, so I guess it is
only good for backup purposes (I have never used it as a matter of
fact).
In my book the system must be closed down in order to clone it so
anything running inside Windows must be a no-no...


Bo Berglund
bo.berglund(at)nospam.telia.com

 

[Anna]

You need a newer imaging program that works with USB 2.0 or a USB/IDE
enclosure that supports USB 2.0. You'll have to determine which one is the
cause of the problem. Does the portable drive work with USB 2.0 when you
are in XP?

Bo:
First of all, there's no question that your laptop supports USB 2.0,
correct? We'll proceed on that assumption.

Presumably, the "gizmo" you were using - the USB 2.0 adapter - should have
worked at that speed. We did run into problems with the previous USB 1.1
generation adapters to the point where we simply did not recommend them, but
our experience with the USB 2.0 adapters has been, by & large, positive.
Assuming you've correctly connected the device and it is designed as a USB
2.0 device, and it is not defective, it should work. But it doesn't, so if
you want to consider a different route...

Kerry's suggestion of (temporarily) installing your new HDD in a USB
enclosure designed to accommodate 2 1/2" HDDs is a good one. You could thus
use your Ghost 2003 bootable CD to clone the contents of your internal 80 GB
HDD to your new 160 GB Seagate. And, of course, after the disk cloning
operation install the new 160 GB HDD in your laptop and install the 80 GB
HDD in the enclosure so that it would serve as the recipient of future
backups. How does that sound?

I'm not sure why Kerry suggested you need a new disk imaging system. The
Ghost 2003 program should work just fine in disk-to-disk cloning as is your
objective. Make sure that you're working with the final build of that
program - Ghost 2003.793. If you're using an earlier build, use Symantec's
LiveUpdate feature to automatically download/install the latest build.
That's important, if not vital, where disk cloning to a USB device is
concerned. As a matter of fact, if you haven't been using the latest 793
build, after it's installed give another try to using your "gizmo".

BTW, I assume you're an experienced user of the Ghost 2003 program so that
you don't need step-by-step instructions for using that program. But if you
do, so indicate and I'll post them.
Anna

 

[Kerry Brown]

Check out Anna's response about making sure you have the latest version of
Ghost. I mostly use True Image but I have some experience with Ghost as
well. I have seen cases where some motherboards were very slow when using
either Ghost or TI. Sometimes one program will be considerably faster than
the other. If all else fails you could also try imaging while Windows is
running. This is not my preferred method but I have seen occasions where
this is faster than when booting from the imaging program's boot media. You
should also carefully check the BIOS setting for anything to do with USB and
make sure in particular that any USB settings that mention legacy are
enabled.

 

[Kerry Brown]

I'm not sure why Kerry suggested you need a new disk imaging system. The
Ghost 2003 program should work just fine in disk-to-disk cloning as is
your objective. Make sure that you're working with the final build of that
program - Ghost 2003.793. If you're using an earlier build, use Symantec's
LiveUpdate feature to automatically download/install the latest build.
That's important, if not vital, where disk cloning to a USB device is
concerned. As a matter of fact, if you haven't been using the latest 793
build, after it's installed give another try to using your "gizmo".

Anna

I have seen cases where TI was faster than Ghost and also when Ghost was
faster than TI. It is probably something to do with the built in USB support
being better for some chipsets than others for each program. As TI has a
free 15 day trial it may be worth a try if Ghost doesn't work out.

 

[Anna]

Anna

I have seen cases where TI was faster than Ghost and also when Ghost was
faster than TI. It is probably something to do with the built in USB
support being better for some chipsets than others for each program. As TI
has a free 15 day trial it may be worth a try if Ghost doesn't work out.

Kerry:
Our experience comparing disk-cloning speed between ATI & Ghost 2003 is that
in virtually every case the ATI program is the faster of the two. Sometimes
by not much; other times by a significant speed increase. I would be
hard-pressed to think of a single instance where Ghost 2003 performed faster
although at times the difference was inconsequential.

Again, the comparison I'm reporting is based on disk-to-disk cloning using
the Ghost 2003 bootable floppy disk (or bootable CD). We virtually never use
Ghost's GUI nor do we use its disk imaging feature.

The speed differential is one reason why we started to lean toward the ATI
program about two years ago, especially when Acronis released their version
8 upgrade.

Of course in this instance the OP already has the Ghost 2003 program so
he/she might as well use it. But there's certainly no harm in his/her trying
out the trial version of ATI 10 that you mentioned.

While we're on the subject of ATI 10, and speaking of speed...

1. We've found no difference between the speed performance of version 9 vs.
version 10, whether undertaking the disk-to-disk cloning operation or disk
imaging. I've come across some reports that indicate ATI 10 is significantly
faster than the 9 version but that has not been our experience. Has it been
yours?

2. The ATI program supposedly incorporates a basic email backup program. I
say "supposedly" because we've never once have gotten it to work? Have you
used it?

As it stands now we've been advising our contacts that we see no need for
any update to version 10 if they're using version 9 for basic disk-to-disk
cloning and/or disk imaging.
Anna

 

[Kerry Brown]

While we're on the subject of ATI 10, and speaking of speed...

1. We've found no difference between the speed performance of version 9
vs. version 10, whether undertaking the disk-to-disk cloning operation or
disk imaging. I've come across some reports that indicate ATI 10 is
significantly faster than the 9 version but that has not been our
experience. Has it been yours?

I haven't tried TI 10 yet. I have the full suite of 9.1 workstation and
server. I haven't seen any reason to upgrade yet. As good as Acronis
programs are I find it better to wait for some time after a new release
comes out before upgrading. I only upgraded from 8 to 9.1 last September. I
only use TI for imaging and cloning, more imaging than cloning, probably 10
to 1. I image almost every computer I work on before commencing repairs. I
don't use any of the file backup options. I prefer other programs for that.
To back up email I find that exporting the account settings to a IAF file
and just physically copying the email store to external media be the most
effective for OE. For Outlook I copy the PST or OST files to external media.

 

[Bo Berglund]

Bo:
First of all, there's no question that your laptop supports USB 2.0,
correct? We'll proceed on that assumption.

This is an HP 8240 workstation about one year old and it works just
fine with USB2 when Windows is running.
In the laptop BIOS one can see that USB is enabled for disk
connections too.

Presumably, the "gizmo" you were using - the USB 2.0 adapter - should have
worked at that speed. We did run into problems with the previous USB 1.1
generation adapters to the point where we simply did not recommend them, but
our experience with the USB 2.0 adapters has been, by & large, positive.

My "gizmo" is actually one of these USB2 enclosures for 2.5" disks
that you mention below. Usually when I retire a drive of that kind I
put it into such an enclosure so I can have access to the old data if
need be. Works just fine.

Assuming you've correctly connected the device and it is designed as a USB
2.0 device, and it is not defective, it should work. But it doesn't, so if
you want to consider a different route...

Well, it kind of works....
I tried to install the new drive in the laptop and putting the old
drive into the enclosure and then boot up Ghost 2003. This made ghost
see the new drive (internal drive 0) and the old drive now via USB as
drive 1. But the speed of operation once I started cloning was
horrible...

Kerry's suggestion of (temporarily) installing your new HDD in a USB
enclosure designed to accommodate 2 1/2" HDDs is a good one. You could thus
use your Ghost 2003 bootable CD to clone the contents of your internal 80 GB
HDD to your new 160 GB Seagate. And, of course, after the disk cloning
operation install the new 160 GB HDD in your laptop and install the 80 GB
HDD in the enclosure so that it would serve as the recipient of future
backups. How does that sound?

In fact if I just connect the new drive to the PC via the USB2 unit
and keep my old drive internal then when Ghost 2003 comes up it can
see only one drive (drive 0). That is why I switched places to get at
the new drive as drive 0 and the old as drive 1.
When I connect the enclosure with the new drive to Windows it plings
the USB detection but no drive comes up. Of course at this time the
drive is completely blank, might be the reason it does not show up.

I'm not sure why Kerry suggested you need a new disk imaging system. The
Ghost 2003 program should work just fine in disk-to-disk cloning as is your
objective. Make sure that you're working with the final build of that
program - Ghost 2003.793. If you're using an earlier build, use Symantec's
LiveUpdate feature to automatically download/install the latest build.

I don't anylonger have Ghost 2003 installed anywhere, in fact I just
installed it a couple of years back to create the boot CD for cloning.
All other bloat functions were not interesting for me but the CD is.
So liveupdate is not going to help me.
I made a check on Ghost on the web and the results really surprised
me. It turns out that Ghost 9 and Ghost 8 (and Ghost 2003) are not the
same but different versions. In fact Symantec bought up a competitor
and then released its competing product as Ghost 9! This explains why
there is no boot CD option in that product! Strange.

That's important, if not vital, where disk cloning to a USB device is
concerned. As a matter of fact, if you haven't been using the latest 793
build, after it's installed give another try to using your "gizmo".

My version of Ghost 2003 is dated December 24th 2003 (X-mas eve!)

BTW, I assume you're an experienced user of the Ghost 2003 program so that
you don't need step-by-step instructions for using that program. But if you
do, so indicate and I'll post them.

Thanks, I have been using Ghost off and on for many years. But always
with PC:s where I could attach two drives on the IDE controller...


Bo Berglund
bo.berglund(at)nospam.telia.com

 

[Bo Berglund]

Kerry's suggestion of (temporarily) installing your new HDD in a USB
enclosure designed to accommodate 2 1/2" HDDs is a good one. You could thus
use your Ghost 2003 bootable CD to clone the contents of your internal 80 GB
HDD to your new 160 GB Seagate. And, of course, after the disk cloning
operation install the new 160 GB HDD in your laptop and install the 80 GB
HDD in the enclosure so that it would serve as the recipient of future
backups. How does that sound?

Just realized that all of the drives I have attached to my USB2
enclosures have been <= 80 Gb.
Could it be that the USB2 disk enclosure I use does not support 160 Gb
size disks? Maybe that is why I cannot see the (empty) drive even in
DeviceManager/DiskManager when hooked to a running XP-Pro SP2 machine?


Bo Berglund
bo.berglund(at)nospam.telia.com

 

[R. McCarty]

True Image 10 seems to work fine, I've not noticed any big
changes in the performance area compared with Version 9.

 

[Ron Sommer]

:
: >Kerry's suggestion of (temporarily) installing your new HDD in a USB
: >enclosure designed to accommodate 2 1/2" HDDs is a good one. You could
thus
: >use your Ghost 2003 bootable CD to clone the contents of your internal 80
GB
: >HDD to your new 160 GB Seagate. And, of course, after the disk cloning
: >operation install the new 160 GB HDD in your laptop and install the 80 GB
: >HDD in the enclosure so that it would serve as the recipient of future
: >backups. How does that sound?
:
: Just realized that all of the drives I have attached to my USB2
: enclosures have been <= 80 Gb.
: Could it be that the USB2 disk enclosure I use does not support 160 Gb
: size disks? Maybe that is why I cannot see the (empty) drive even in
: DeviceManager/DiskManager when hooked to a running XP-Pro SP2 machine?
:
:
: Bo Berglund
: bo.berglund(at)nospam.telia.com

The Bios and operating system see drives greater than 120 GB, not the drive
enclosure.