Ghosting XP to SATA drive

[Guest]

I have been running Windows XP on an IDE drive. I just got a Serial ATA drive
and I want to transfer my operating system to the SATA drive.

I hooked up the SATA drive and particioned it with Windows Disk manager.
Then I used Norton Ghost to ghost my c drive to the new drive - I checked to
"copy MBR" box. I then restarted and set the boot order in the BIOS to boot
from the new drive. I also disconnected my IDE drives.

I got a boot error (It couldn't be that simple could it?)

I have about a gagzillion programs installed and it would take me a couple
of weeks to reinstall them all. If I could ghost the operating system it
would be a big time saver.

I thought about doing a repair with the Windows installation disk. If you
chose "repair an existing installation" does it give you that F6 option to
install a third party SATA or RAID driver?

Anyway, I'm not sure that is the way to go.

Any suggestions would be appriciated.

Thanks

 

[Jerry]

The repair installation will give you the option to press F6 to load the
drivers. But, if you had the SATA drive installed when you did the ghosting
it must have already had the drivers installed or how would it see the drive
in the first place?

 

[D.Currie]

I regularly use Ghost on SATA drives, and I've never had a problem with
booting.

However -- I've never partitioned the drive first, I just let Ghost create
the partitions when it copies. I don't know if that would make any
difference, but it may be worth a try.

One other thought -- is your bios recognizing the drive as the first boot
device?

What's the boot error that you get? The text of that might be useful.

 

[Guest]

Ghosting or mirroring doesnt work with SATA drives to or from IDE.Instead,
try running file transfer wizard on IDE,set the wizard to "old
computer",select
the files,folders,settings for it to save,save the data in a new folder
that you
create,once its thru,transfer the folder to a cd.

 

[DL]

Crap

Ghosting or mirroring doesnt work with SATA drives to or from IDE.Instead,
try running file transfer wizard on IDE,set the wizard to "old
computer",select
the files,folders,settings for it to save,save the data in a new folder
that you
create,once its thru,transfer the folder to a cd.

 

[Guest]

Good point Jerry and the same thought did cross my mind.

However, if the SATA is the boot drive I thought the drivers might need to
be loaded in a different order (i.e. first). If I’m booting from IDE the
drivers could be loaded at any point.

It is kind of a mystery to me how you can boot from ATA at all if you need
third party drivers to access the drive. You need the drivers to access the
drive and you need to access the drive to load the drivers. It’s sort of a
chicken and egg thing when you don’t have a chicken or an egg. Everyone
assures me you can boot from ATA so the system must manage it somehow.

Thanks

Garth

 

[Guest]

I tried that first D, but Ghost couldn't see the drive untill I partitioned
it. Maybe I could have done something in Windows Disk Manager to get Ghost
to see the drive without partitioning. I didn't see any option other than
partition.

 

[Guest]

The File Transfer wizard would restore my Outlook and my desktop settings,
but I would still need to reinstall all my programs. Maybe if I also backed
up my system registry and copied the Program Files folder.

 

[Leythos]

I tried that first D, but Ghost couldn't see the drive untill I partitioned
it. Maybe I could have done something in Windows Disk Manager to get Ghost
to see the drive without partitioning. I didn't see any option other than
partition.

If you image one drive to another, you don't need to partition it. If
you copy a partition from one drive to another drive you don't need to
partition it. If you are just cloning files, then you may need to
partition it.

To clone a drive, it will make an exact data copy, not file level, but
sector by sector, including boot, from source to destination - the good
thing is that you can also change the size of the destination partitions
(if you have more than one).

 

[Guest]

By the way, the bios does "see" the drive and the error message is an
unhelpful "boot error".

 

[Guest]

Well, the only software I have installed for the task is Norton Ghost, which
is supposed to be real good at least if you believe Symantec's propaganda.
The only option Norton Ghost gives me reads -

"Copy One Drive to Another

Copy the contents of your drive directly to another drive. This feature is
useful when upgrading to a larger hard drive."

Ghost couldn't "see" the drive untill I used Windows Disk Manager to
partition it. Disk Manager doesn't give me any option for "image" or "copy
partition"

 

[neil]

If you have Norton ghost installed on the IDE drive then did a ghost image
to the SATA then you must have had the SATA drivers loaded on the IDE drive.
(or did you use a boot disk, a floppy)
I would just go ahead and do a repair install with just the SATA drive
connected and press F6 when prompted, then the OS will install the drivers
it need to run the SATA drive and you should end up with a working system.
If your XP CD is the original then you will need to update to SP2 and apply
the other updates. If you have a slipstreamed disk with SP2 then just the
updates will be needed.

Whatever you do, do not format or delete the files on your IDE drive until
the new system is up and running.

best of luck
Neil

 

[Natéag]

If you mean SATA drive, it depends on the motherboard (chipset).
For new boards, you don't.

 

[Guest]

I'm guessing that you have an Intel motherboard right? I've run into this
problem many times, but it will work. Try going into the BIOS and going to
Advanced > IDE Configuration > make sure the following settings are set -
Configure SATA as IDE, IDE Mode Select as Compatable or on earlier versions
it might be "Legacy" then restore the image to the SATA drive again and try
it.
SteveF

 

[Leythos]

Well, the only software I have installed for the task is Norton Ghost, which
is supposed to be real good at least if you believe Symantec's propaganda.
The only option Norton Ghost gives me reads -

"Copy One Drive to Another

Copy the contents of your drive directly to another drive. This feature is
useful when upgrading to a larger hard drive."

Ghost couldn't "see" the drive untill I used Windows Disk Manager to
partition it. Disk Manager doesn't give me any option for "image" or "copy
partition"

That's because your not using the real ghost, you're using something
Symantec bought and named Ghost. If you want to really clone a drive,
exact image, you make a ghost Boot Floppy, boot from it, and then clone
drive 0 to drive 1