HD file transfer question (using Norton Ghost to migrate the C: HD) (1st post here)

[raylopez99]

RL:
I'll try this one more time...

Frankly you're making what should be a relatively simple & straightforward
process to clone the contents of one HDD to another HDD much more
complicated than it need be.

You say your Ghost program "works only under DOS". Fine. While you've never
reported the version you're working with I assume it's the Norton Ghost 2003
version.

No, it's Norton Ghost 2002, which has less functionality.

Since that Ghost version "works only under DOS", I assume you're working
with it using a Ghost bootable floppy disk. Fine. But even if you're not,
you can use its GUI. In any event, whatever version of Ghost you're using I
assume you know how to use the program for disk cloning purposes.

Once more...why don't you simply connect both HDDs in your system - your
source disk and the new HDD and using your Ghost program clone the contents
of the old HDD to the new one? Period.

Isn't that the most simple & straightforward process that you can undertake
to meet your objective?

Sorry, won't work. I just checked--the only options for the 2002
version of Ghost are: Disk to (and from) Image and Partition to (and
from) Image. They did not have a "disk copy" function back then. I
have to rely on Seagate's freeware for that.

So, unless I can get a free Norton Ghost 2003 somewhere, I'm stuck to
my original plan or as modified as per Jerry's suggestion using
Seagate's freeware utility.

RL

 

[JohnO]

How can I clone my present HDD, if it's the "C" drive? You need to

bootup from the C drive. So you therefore need to clone C: to D:
(what I erroneously called the "external drive" in my original post)

Indeed, Ghost can't do this. But, Image for Windows (terabyteunlimited.com)
can create an image of the C: drive while you are running Win XP on that
same drive. Slick.

-John O

 

[Anna]

Indeed, Ghost can't do this. But, Image for Windows
(terabyteunlimited.com) can create an image of the C: drive while you are
running Win XP on that same drive. Slick.

-John O

John O...
I really don't know how you can say that "Ghost can't do this" with respect
to cloning the contents of one HDD to another HDD within an XP environment.
I've effectively used that disk cloning capability of the Norton Ghost
program more than a thousand times with the 2003 version as well as the
Ghost versions 9 & 10.

While the OP's Ghost 2002 version also has that disk cloning capability (in
spite of the OP's remark that it does not) we do not recommend that version
for use in an XP environment because we found certain incompatibilities of
that program with the XP OS.
Anna

 

[Jerry]

Indeed, Ghost can't do this. But, Image for Windows
(terabyteunlimited.com) can create an image of the C: drive while you are
running Win XP on that same drive. Slick.

-John O

Indeed, Ghost can do that.

 

[Brian A.]

No, it's Norton Ghost 2002, which has less functionality.



Sorry, won't work. I just checked--the only options for the 2002
version of Ghost are: Disk to (and from) Image and Partition to (and
from) Image. They did not have a "disk copy" function back then. I
have to rely on Seagate's freeware for that.

You should have the option "Disk to Disk" which essentially is cloning.
Ghost 2002 manual:
ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/products/ghost/manuals/ghost2002.pdf

So, unless I can get a free Norton Ghost 2003 somewhere, I'm stuck to
my original plan or as modified as per Jerry's suggestion using
Seagate's freeware utility.

--

Brian A. Sesko { MS MVP_Shell/User }
Conflicts start where information lacks.
http://basconotw.mvps.org/

Suggested posting do's/don'ts: http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375

 

[raylopez99]

You should have the option "Disk to Disk" which essentially is cloning.
Ghost 2002 manual:ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/products/ghost/manual...


Brian A. Sesko { MS MVP_Shell/User }
Conflicts start where information lacks.http://basconotw.mvps.org/

Thanks Brian--seems like indeed there's a "disk-to-disk" option in
Ghost 2002, though I've never used it, and in view of Anna's comments
about "compatibility" I'm hesitant to use it. Better for me is my
plan as outlined above.

RL

 

[Brian A.]

Thanks Brian--seems like indeed there's a "disk-to-disk" option in
Ghost 2002, though I've never used it, and in view of Anna's comments
about "compatibility" I'm hesitant to use it. Better for me is my
plan as outlined above.

I can't recall if I ever used any Ghost version less than 2003, I'm pretty sure I
did. However IIRC anything older than 2003 had little NTFS support especially over a
network, perhaps that's where the incompatbility comes in (not the network but NTFS).
If you've been using it with NTFS without problems you may want to try the Disk to
Disk, if it fails you can always go your other route.


--

Brian A. Sesko { MS MVP_Shell/User }
Conflicts start where information lacks.
http://basconotw.mvps.org/

Suggested posting do's/don'ts: http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375

 

[Lil' Dave]

I again agree with Anna, your making it a lot harder than it is. Unplug
the D drive cable and plug in your new disk, no need to remove the D drive
at all, just hang the new drive on the cable. Boot the Ghost floppy or cd
and do a disk copy of C to D. Then swap out C for D and your done. The
idea of having a program like Ghost work under DOS is that you don't need
anything else, you don't need to boot into windows, that's the advantage
of it.

Just a couple of observations. You don't have an external drive in any
shape, manner, or form based on your reply. You seem to be unaware that the
older version Ghost you're using may have trouble accessing a sata drive.

There may be other ramifications if the bios and system are original SATA
specification vice SATA II. Since you have onboard ide, there could be alot
of bios setup to get the SATA to boot.
Dave

 

[raylopez99]

Just a couple of observations. You don't have an external drive in any
shape, manner, or form based on your reply. You seem to be unaware that the
older version Ghost you're using may have trouble accessing a sata drive.

There may be other ramifications if the bios and system are original SATA
specification vice SATA II. Since you have onboard ide, there could be alot
of bios setup to get the SATA to boot.
Dave-

Lil' Dave: I don't have Sata, true; I don't intend to add a SATA
drive since my BIOS is from 2002 and won't support it. Thus I have
EIDE/ATA (old stuff). Two internal drives, and a kit that converts
IDE to USB2.0, so you can add an old internal IDE HD to your USB bus
as an external drive.

I have several schemes to transfer my old C: drive to the new C: drive
(a Seagate) once I buy the new drive. Two of them I've listed in this
thread. The others are variants of these two listed schemes.

Another option, for anybody reading this thread in the future, is to
check out www.acronis.com/ for either their TrueImage product or
(somewhat equivalently) their HD Migration software tool, which
strangely comes with a 15 day free trial (use it once and not pay?
bizarre). These HD migration tools also are given free by HD sellers,
including Seagate. I'll find out if the Seagate tool, which is found
in this thread, will read an external (IDE-to-USB) drive, as soon as I
get the new Seagate drive--since my plan is to work to migrate data
from insider of the Windows XP GUI as much as possible, rather than
rely on old DOS interface and DOS commands insofar as possible.

Long story short: for the Average Joe --which I don't think I am
since I've assembled all of my numerous systems from scratch since the
beginning of the PC era-- data migration for bootable (C drives is
not trivial, but not difficult either. You just have to spend a few
hours studying the problem.

RL

 

[Lil' Dave]

Lil' Dave: I don't have Sata, true; I don't intend to add a SATA
drive since my BIOS is from 2002 and won't support it. Thus I have
EIDE/ATA (old stuff). Two internal drives, and a kit that converts
IDE to USB2.0, so you can add an old internal IDE HD to your USB bus
as an external drive.

I have several schemes to transfer my old C: drive to the new C: drive
(a Seagate) once I buy the new drive. Two of them I've listed in this
thread. The others are variants of these two listed schemes.

Another option, for anybody reading this thread in the future, is to
check out www.acronis.com/ for either their TrueImage product or
(somewhat equivalently) their HD Migration software tool, which
strangely comes with a 15 day free trial (use it once and not pay?
bizarre). These HD migration tools also are given free by HD sellers,
including Seagate. I'll find out if the Seagate tool, which is found
in this thread, will read an external (IDE-to-USB) drive, as soon as I
get the new Seagate drive--since my plan is to work to migrate data
from insider of the Windows XP GUI as much as possible, rather than
rely on old DOS interface and DOS commands insofar as possible.

Long story short: for the Average Joe --which I don't think I am
since I've assembled all of my numerous systems from scratch since the
beginning of the PC era-- data migration for bootable (C drives is
not trivial, but not difficult either. You just have to spend a few
hours studying the problem.

RL

Exactly why my observational comments. No study time from what I've seen
before asking questions.

My observations in moving an operating system from one PC to another is bad
ju-ju. Save your data, and all else yours specifically to removable media.
Incorporate that in a newly installed OS and apps. Highest success rate
vice other methods.
Dave

 

[raylopez99]

Exactly why my observational comments. No study time from what I've seen
before asking questions.

My observations in moving an operating system from one PC to another is bad
ju-ju. Save your data, and all else yours specifically to removable media.
Incorporate that in a newly installed OS and apps. Highest success rate
vice other methods.
Dave- Hide quoted text -

Sorry I couldn't follow your slang.

My observations in moving an operating system from one PC to another is bad
ju-ju.

So you're saying it should not be done?

Save your data, and all else yours specifically to removable media.

Not sure what you mean here, except the routine admonition to backup
your HD before making major changes.

Incorporate that in a newly installed OS and apps. Highest success rate
vice other methods.

This ignores how to save your registry file, etc.

Your advice is incompetent I'm afraid.

RL

 

[Lil' Dave]

Sorry I couldn't follow your slang.


So you're saying it should not be done?


Not sure what you mean here, except the routine admonition to backup
your HD before making major changes.


This ignores how to save your registry file, etc.

Your advice is incompetent I'm afraid.

RL

Pray tell, why would I save my registry. EXACTLY, why?
Dave

 

[raylopez99]

Pray tell, why would I save my registry. EXACTLY, why?
Dave

Uh, you're either very, very advanced, or, you're missing something
very, very basic. You want your registry saved because you want to
replicate your desktop exactly as you have it now, when you install
your new HD. This is the whole raison d'être for doing a hard drive
replication in the first place. Otherwise you might as well do a
lengthy, time-consuming, 'clean reinstall' of all your programs on
your new HD.

To use an analogy, I think you're so far advanced from the rest of us
that you have proved what the French say about the super rich: they
merge and become like the super poor.

What are we mere average people missing, that you see?

RL

 

[Lil' Dave]

Pray tell, why would I save my registry. EXACTLY, why?
Dave

Uh, you're either very, very advanced, or, you're missing something
very, very basic. You want your registry saved because you want to
replicate your desktop exactly as you have it now, when you install
your new HD. This is the whole raison d'être for doing a hard drive
replication in the first place. Otherwise you might as well do a
lengthy, time-consuming, 'clean reinstall' of all your programs on
your new HD.

To use an analogy, I think you're so far advanced from the rest of us
that you have proved what the French say about the super rich: they
merge and become like the super poor.

What are we mere average people missing, that you see?

RL

Will ignore your bad judgment of my personality and experience level.

Your last 2 additions to the thread have nothing to do with it. I'll bow
out now.
Dave

 

[raylopez99]

Thanks Brian--seems like indeed there's a "disk-to-disk" option in
Ghost 2002, though I've never used it, and in view of Anna's comments
about "compatibility" I'm hesitant to use it. Better for me is my
plan as outlined above.

RL

Just to complete this thread for future generations, I've just tried
Seagate's DiscWizard and with a new Seagate HD on the USB connection,
the DiscWizard identifies it, sets up the 'clone' correctly (ie. copy
C to the new HD), but upon reboot there's a reading error and it
fails. Perhaps this is due to a virus or firewall program running
resident, though I thought I corrected for this. In any event, I'm
going to go to plan B which is to attach the new HD in the "D" bay,
and use Ghost 2002 to copy "disk to disk" (clone) as Brian points out.

RL

 

[raylopez99]

Just to complete this thread for future generations, I've just tried
Seagate's DiscWizard and with a new Seagate HD on the USB connection,
the DiscWizard identifies it, sets up the 'clone' correctly (ie. copy
C to the new HD), but upon reboot there's a reading error and it
fails. Perhaps this is due to a virus or firewall program running
resident, though I thought I corrected for this. In any event, I'm
going to go to plan B which is to attach the new HD in the "D" bay,
and use Ghost 2002 to copy "disk to disk" (clone) as Brian points out.

I finally migrated the new C: drive. What I ended up doing is using
the "disk to disk" feature of Norton Ghost, using the power supply and
data interface cable from the old D: drive (I have two drives), as
suggested in this thread. It worked fine. The funny thing is: the
new HD from Seagate was formatted as FATS (I mistakenly formatted it
as FATS prior to mounting it), while the old C: drive I was cloning
was NTFS, yet, when I did the "disk to disk" cloning (from inside of
Norton Ghost), and when I booted up, the new C: drive was formatted
entirely in NTFS! I was expecting an error and I was expecting to
have to reformat the new drive in NTFS. But Windows XP apparently was
smart enough, after booting up, to recognize the rest of the new drive
(i.e., the rest of the drive not taken up by the NTFS image file) was
FATS and automatically formatted it as NTFS. Then on the reboot the
entire new C: drive was NTFS.

Also the new Seagate drive came with instructions and a utility* on
disk migration, along with interface cables. I am confident their
solution would also have worked to migrate the data (*it's basically a
crippled version of Acronis software).

All in all disk migration when you are cloning the C: drive is not
trivial, but not hard either if you do your homework.

RL

 

[Guest]

Watch out: before you pop the champagne, try Office 2007 to make sure it
works fine.
I have pasted below my experience on this from a similar question (I need
help and recommendations!):...

Definitely Micrososft Office problem. I migrated to a new hard disk using
Acronis Easy Migration (disc imaging technique). After the procedure, every
other program, including
Internet Explore 7 workd fine. Except for the Office 2007 suite.
1) Outlook 2007 icon disappeared. Running it from Programs got as far as
starting program and going down one more level deeper. Anything else gave the
error of "Not supported"
2) Word was kinder: it would start the Installer when you to open it;
sputter a bit, give an error message, but would nevertheless open for you and
allow you to use it.
3) Using the Control panel to get to Office and try to repair failed: it
could not run setup.
4) Running setup so you can repair from original disk also failed--I have
never seen setup fail to run from the origianl disk
5) Uninstall from Control Panel panel also failed.

Just to be sure, I used the utility software from the new disk to do my
migration over again (disc-copying technique). The same problem occurred
with Office.
I have to conclude there is an OFFICE problem when it comes to migration.
BTW: Running Office Diagnostics failed to reveal any problem at all in all
the
parameters.

I am running WIN XP Professional

 

[Guest]

This is my first post/question and I could not figure out how to initiate a
new thread, so I did this search for the closest situation in the hopes that
I could ask my question.

I have a hard drive that will no longer boot up and I suspect that the
operating system is either corrupt, or not a genuine copy. It has a windows
xp pro operating system in it. My question is this;
If I load newly purchased win xp pro software on a new hard drive and place
both drives on the same ribbon cable (master/slave conf'g), will I be able to
access the non-bootable drive and transfer all my files/data to the new drive
before I reformat the old drive?

 

[DL]

Install winxp to your new drive, whilst the old is disconnected.
After updating etc, connect old as slave. Providing the old hd has not
failed you will be able to access data
though you may have to use this http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421/en-us

 

[Guest]

Hello, I know this is an older thread but I am trying something like this
with very similar software and hardware and have hit a wall. I'll start by
listing my hardware and software and finish with what I've done:

Running XP Home on an older PIII
Have Norton Ghost 2003 installed
Have a Seagate 20 GB HD (ATA)
Bought a Western Digital 80GB HD to replace it (ATA)
Purchased Belkin dual drive master/Slave cable

I have connected the new drive in series and formatted it NTFS and is
designated drive E. I made the appropriate master/slave pin changes with my
old SG drive (C) the master and WD (E) as the slave. I went into the cloning
option on
Norton Ghost, followed the prompts to clone C to E and got all the way to
the message about the system will restart once completed and then ......
error message: "Unable to defragment the virtual partition. This is probably
due to you disc being too fragmented. We suggest you run the windows disc
defragmentation and run this task again ... yadda, yadda. Well, I ran the
disc defragmentation over and over trying the cloning in-between ... no joy
.... same error message. I brought out the big guns and used my Norton
speedisk which takes hours upon hours to defragment .... still no joy. HELP!

P.S. You can prob tell I am barely above a novice so feel free to giggle
amongst yourselves and use "duh" liberaly ... just help!

Thanks,
Neal