Ghost problem with Dell 2400

[CW]

I purchased a dell 2400 recently with a 40 gig drive. I added a 2nd 200 gig
drive to it with no problems. I had a spare 80 gig drive laying around and
thought it would be nice to replace the 40 primary drivew with it. When I
firs up Ghost (Systenworks 2004 Pro)., it gives me a error message about it
can't backup the drive because the is a small Dell "diagnostic partiton"
preventing it. Has anyone had this problem?

CW

 

[Rod Speed]

I purchased a dell 2400 recently with a 40 gig drive. I added a 2nd 200 gig
drive to it with no problems. I had a spare 80 gig drive laying around and
thought it would be nice to replace the 40 primary drivew with it. When I
firs up Ghost (Systenworks 2004 Pro)., it gives me a error message about it
can't backup the drive because the is a small Dell "diagnostic partiton"
preventing it. Has anyone had this problem?

Yeah, ghost can be a problem there. It basically uses its own temporary
partition for the boot to dos and cant always create that to use.

It will work fine if you boot the CD or the rescue floppy
and its usually possible to reconfigure the boot drive so
it can create its own partition for the boot to dos too.

Real trap for the unwary if image ops fail for whatever reason.
You can end up with that special boot partition still active with no
obvious way to get back to the normal boot config. It isnt that hard
to manually delete it, but you do need to know thats the problem.

 

[DaveinOlyWa]

i have the identical system you talked about.

why are you ghosting the system. do you have that much invested into
the setup?

why not just fresh install to the new drive?

that partition you speak of is the hardware config for your system and
other goodies.... it basically serves as an extended bios.

get rid of that and you will find that most of the hardware wont work.


however most of the info there is simply for recovery purposes.

you might find that you be better off doing a clean install. after
all, maybe your install wont include trial versions galore...

or better yet, if you have decided that the trial version's time
period wasnt long enough, this may provide a way to try em again.

 

[CW]

Thanks for the reply.

Can I use PartitionMagic to delee/merge the Dell partition so that C: drive
becomes a single partition? Will this fix my problem? What are the odds
doing this will screw up the C: partiton? I ask becuase if I use PM before I
can use Ghost, then I will have no insurance if C: gets screwed up.

Thanks

CW

 

[Rod Speed]

Thanks for the reply.

Can I use PartitionMagic to delee/merge the Dell
partition so that C: drive becomes a single partition?
Yes.

Will this fix my problem?

It will fix the problem with ghost but will likely cause
problems with Dell's diagnostics and restore ops.

What are the odds doing this will screw up the C: partiton?

None if you just delete the Dell partition.

I ask becuase if I use PM before I can use Ghost,
then I will have no insurance if C: gets screwed up.

True. But you can boot from the CD or the
rescue floppy to make a safety images first.
Using Ghost that way doesnt require the
special partition ghost uses to boot to dos.

Safer to just do your ghost ops that way, that way you
wont ever have a problem using Dell's diagnostics.

If you want to allow the boot to dos to work with ghost,
you should first use PartiionMagic to JUST display the
current partition detail and post that here. It may be
possible to just shift the end of the C partition back
a bit, shrink it a little, to give ghost room to put its
special partition. Very dangerous to try changes like
that without at least two safety images of the entire
physical drive made when booted from the ghost CD
or the rescue floppy tho.