Norton Ghost 9.0 Drive Copy Issue

[skippie 0]

Basically I work for a company, and in the near future I am going to need to start using norton ghost 9.0 for several different things. The main problem I am having right now is the Drive Copy feature. This is the system I am running to test the program:

 

Dell G1 450 mhz

256 Ram

Windows XP pro, Service pack one (it is what my company uses right now)

4 GB hd

 

Basically my test scenario is this. I am trying to copy all of the data from the 4 Gig HDD to a 20 Gig HDD, that has been freshly formatted, the drive has been set to active and appears to be "Healthy" in the disk manager.

 

Initially what I have done is this. I have set my 4 gig hdd to Master, and the 20 gig to Slave. And in bios, both are appearing to register correctly. I get norton ghost 9.0 installed with no problems and the program is running as intended from as far as I can see. I have seen suggestions where it is a good idea to turn system restore off on windows xp Pro, so that is off.

 

I select to Copy drive C(4 gig drive), to Destination Drive D (20 gig drive)

 

I enable all of the Features, I disable smart sector copying, and also for some reason it will not let me click the 'resize drives to fill unallocated space' option for some reason.

 

The drive copy seems to work as it should. And when it is done all of the files are over on the new drive and it is browsable.

 

I take the drive out, change the new 20 gig to master, Ive acctually done this 2 ways. #1 I have put it on cable select with no other drives, and #2 I have set it to master with no other drives, and #3 i have set it to Master with a slave.

 

When i boot the PC up all I get is a flashing dos style cursor just after the Dell bios (screen where it says press f2 to enter set up) splash screen, No windows loading screens or anything. Anyone know what could be causing this?

 

 

 

[skippie 0]

I did try fixmbr before I left work, I will try fixboot tomarrow. There is an option for Resizing disks to fill unallocated space but for some reason it wont let me select the option maybe that is for just unpartitioned space I don't know. I have found a program that would work very well for this, called Casper XP but I only have the Demo (its 49.99 I believe). Anyways if anyone knows how to get this feature to work correctly any help would work. When i bought ghost 9 it did come with ghost 2003. I wonder if burning an image to a disk then using a restore on a new drive would work. But a program like ghost should be able to resize a drive. The feature is specifically for upgrading to a new, larger hard drive.

 

APK as far as restores go yes it does restore from a boot disk. But the drive copy feature you can use directly out of windows

[skippie 0]

acctually when I bought ghost, it was in a 2 box set that included norton partition magic 8.0. I will work with it a little bit more I have been using both the programs

 

Now that I think about it, I was using ghost 2003 the other day because I was tired of messing with 9.0 and not getting the results I wanted. With ghost 2003 I had pretty much the same problem as the demo version of Casper. The program worked great, windows would boot up. My problem is that after I copied the drive, a 20 gig drive would now have a partition that is 4 gigs (the same amount as the original hard drive), and 16 gigs of free unpartitioned space. I wonder if PM 8.0 would be able to merge the 2 partitions together. That sounds like it could work. I did try to merge the 2 partitions with Casper but it didnt work, but it was also a demo. I bet with a full version of a programl ike ghost 2k3 it would work

[Peabo 0]

Skippie,

 

I have EXACTLY the same issue as you, and interestingly on a Dell machine, but with Win 2000 Pro instead of Xp that you have. I've tried the same things as you but again nothing's worked.

 

Did you ever resolve this or find a decent workaround? I see Ghost 2003 was mentioned as an option that might work....

 

Cheers!

[rp@net-comm.net 0]

I have being trying Ghost with a couple of computers, Both running XP/Pro. I made my backup by "cloning" the drive and also checking the copy/create MBR option, not copying the drive. I was able to restore the drive, as needed. I also tried replacing the clone with the master and it worked.

 

I have tried both Ghost 9.0 and Ghost 2003. The menus are a little different, but what you want to try is the clone feature, which can be found on the side bar in one version and in the advanced section in the other version. Sorry, I don't have the systems near me at this time to provide the exact procedure.

[Jzearfoss 0]

This is a crazy question. Have you checked to see if the partition is set to active.

[Jackkatt 0]

;(

 

I have a similiar problem.

 

I have a IBM laptop 600e with XP.

 

I remove the 3 gig, 2.5 inch HD and put it onto an IBM Intellistation running GHOST 9.0 on Windows 2000. I copy the 3 gig 2.5 inch HD onto another 6 gig 2.5 inch HD with 2.5 to IDE adaptors. Everything copies fine and I can read the disk.

 

When I try to boot on the laptop, "I get a blinking CURSOR on the upper left corner." Sound familiar?

 

NOW GET THIS.

 

I repeat this process with another 6 gig HD and also a 10 gig HD with WINDOWS 2000 in which case the copy works.

 

I also tried Acronis True image which did the same. Last hope is creating a backup image and than recover to the 6 gig HD and try to boot.

 

 

[bcreasy 0]

I am also trying the new ghost 9.0 and having no luck. I have used 7.0 and 8.0 with no problems and like it a lot better due to being able to clone a complete drive. In 9.0 you can't do this. I suggest using the older versions until they fix this problem.

[Jackkatt 0]

8) I have used Ghost 7.0 2003 and 9.0 - When I copied the WINDOWS 2000, I did a drive copy to copy on 9.0 so it definetely does copy disks. Why would you think that it does not?

[jtamiw 0]

I’m experiencing a very similar issue. I’m running XP Pro, SP2 and Ghost 2003.

 

When I create an image of the source disk, I’m only able to restore it to disks of the same size. For example, the source disk is 40GB and if I restore to another 40GB it works fine. If I try to restore it to a 60GB drive I get the blinking cursor.

 

I’ve attempted calling Symantec and spent 3 hours on hold after using their “priority support” signup.

 

Anyone?

 

[PietroinItaly 0]

Hi there, I have the same exact problem while cloning my hd with 2 partitions, one with Win2000 and the other with XP pro.

I can't boot from the new HD, I just get the blinking curson after the POST operation has completed with no errors.

BTW it is not possible to copy a full drive if you have more than one partitions, you are forced to copy one partition at a time.

ciao

 

[Chriscent 0]

Hi Skippie,

 

I have analyzed your problem and seems to it that you are doing the hard disk copy method using the Norton Ghost. I used to upgrade the Windows XP from 4GB Hard Disk to 20 or 40 GB without any problem occured. I have tried before the method of hard disk copy from 4GB to 20 GB and it all copied all the files as you can see, but Im pretty sure, there are hidden files which that method didnt copy. So, what I would suggest here, since Im doing the same thing.

 

1. Since you are in Norton Ghost, you have to backup the whole hard disk using the Norton Ghost, it will ask you to which location you want to save the image file. Lets say, you have a slave drive, save that image file on that drive. Once Norton Ghost finished saving the image file, copy that image file back to the C Drive. Remember, you cannot save the image file of your C drive to its drive itself. Its only a tedious work but it will work Im sure. Now, once you finished copy that image file which you had just created, Run the Norton Ghost again and choose the Restore option. Look for that image file and click restore and choose the destination drive as D:\

 

Im sure it will work because I have done it several times.

 

Thanks

 

[therip 0]

Skippie and others,

 

I had the same problem with Ghost 9.0 and Windows XP, but found a SOLUTION that turned out to be pretty simple (finding the solution was hard, invoking it was easy).

 

Similar to those of you in this post, I Ghosted my existing 30 GB drive to my new 80 GB drive and then cabled the drives to make the 80 GB the master and the 30 GB the slave. It booted up just fine and all the files from the old drive seemed to have correctly copied to the new drive. However, I found that the C: drive is still the 30 GB drive and the D: drive is the 80 GB. Huh? So, I unhooked the 30 GB drive and cabled just the 80 GB drive (setting the jumpers correctly, of course). Now on boot up it hung at the initial Windows blue screen and went no further.

 

I did some exploring on-line and tried fixmbr and fixboot and turning off System Restore. All with no luck. However, from this and other message boards I became convinced that the issue is that the 30 GB drive is "locked" as the C: drive and the 80 GB is locked as the D: drive. Of course, Norton or Windows XP doesn't even talk about this.

 

Now, here is what I found that worked. With the 80 GB as the master and the 30 GB as the slave, I booted into Windows (of course, I am booting into the 30 GB drive). From there I modified the registry by running "regedit" from the command line and traversing to:

 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SYSTEM -> MountedDevices

 

Looked for \DosDevices\C: and \DosDevices\D:

 

I changed these names by right-clicking on the Name, choosing Rename and changing the names as follows:

 

Renamed \DosDevices\C: to \DosDevices\X: (where X is not a disk drive that is in use).

Renamed \DosDevices\D: to \DosDevices\C:

Renamed \DosDeivces\X: to \DosDevices\D:

 

After booting up, the 80 GB is now correctly the C:\ drive and the 30 GB is the D:\ drive. Just to make sure, I unhooked the 30 GB drive and booted with just the 80 GB drive. It came up with no problems.

 

I am now using the 30 GB drive as my backup. I assume that I will need to do the same funky stuff if I ever need to restore the data from the 30 GB drive.

 

Hope this helps as this has caused me tons of grief this weekend. But, persistence does pay off.

[raddad51x 0]

Skippie:

 

If you are using Ghost, reverse the drives. Make the c: drive the d: drive and switch the jumpers accordingly, making the master the slave and the slave the master.

 

Boot into Ghost, and follow the links for both formating the TARGET DRIVE (in the voice of Elmer Fudd--very carefully or bye bye data on the SOURCE drive) and drive copying.

 

Godspeed, my good fellow.

 

raddad51x@hotmail.com

 

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[klostrophobik 0]

I have come up with a solution that worked for me after about 4 days of messing with it.

First off, I found it easier if you don't even put the new hard drive into the system untill you have it powered down, and will boot to a Ghost CD on the next run.

However, if you do, and windows assigns it a drive letter, here's what I did, maybe it'll work for you.

 

- Shut the computer down and physically remove the new drive (The destination drive you want to clone to.)

- Restart windows under the old drive.

- Run regedit and browse to -> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SYSTEM -> MountedDevices

- Delete all the keys for DOS devices EXCEPT for A: and C:, you also have to delete all the /??/Volume{....} keys that have the EXACT values in the data column as the drives you are removing. All I left were the ones that had the data column the same as my A: and soon to be old C: drive.

- From there it should be easy enough, shut down, reconnect the new drive to clone to, and boot back up into Ghost.

 

The basic idea that I gathered from this whole drive letter designation problem is that when Windows gives it a drive letter, that's what it sticks to. Even when it's the bootable drive later. And once all you're old registry info is on it, all those values are still pointing to a C:/ directory for data and files, when that's not the drive letter anymore.

 

Hopefully that helps some, I'm just glad linux doesn't use a registry like that. =-9

 

--

Klostrophobik

Posted with Firefox 1.0 on Linux 2.6.11

[Xk0N 0]

ill telll you wot i keep telling everyone hu has XPSP2 and ghost 9

 

 

 

 

 

j00 F00!!

 

if u be runing XPService pak 2, then these are classic symptoms:

 

 

you would have needed to turn off some fangled anti virus function built only into service pak 2.

 

=============== INFO AS IMPORTANT AS YOUR GENITALS==============

you must do somthing to (i dont know what it does BUT IT WORKS!!!)

data execution Prevention (DEP) before you backup!!!!!!!

 

Right Mouse Button on [My Computer],

 

Goto the [advanced] tab, click [settings...] for performance options,

select

 

[Data Execution Prevention],

 

then select the dot toggle thingy, (radio button?) which is labeled,

 

[Turn on Data Execution Prevention for all programs except those i select],

 

 

 

and im sorry to be the bearer of bad news, that image has been 0wnzed by fate.... sux i know... wev all been there.

[paulbagshaw 0]

After experiencing exactly the same problems with ghost 9.0, I just used "Therip"'s suggestion above with resounding success.

 

Thanks mate.

 

[Handssolow 0]

Originally posted by therip:

Quote:

Skippie and others,

 

I had the same problem with Ghost 9.0 and Windows XP, but found a SOLUTION that turned out to be pretty simple (finding the solution was hard, invoking it was easy).

 

Similar to those of you in this post, I Ghosted my existing 30 GB drive to my new 80 GB drive and then cabled the drives to make the 80 GB the master and the 30 GB the slave. It booted up just fine and all the files from the old drive seemed to have correctly copied to the new drive. However, I found that the C: drive is still the 30 GB drive and the D: drive is the 80 GB. Huh? So, I unhooked the 30 GB drive and cabled just the 80 GB drive (setting the jumpers correctly, of course). Now on boot up it hung at the initial Windows blue screen and went no further.

 

I did some exploring on-line and tried fixmbr and fixboot and turning off System Restore. All with no luck. However, from this and other message boards I became convinced that the issue is that the 30 GB drive is "locked" as the C: drive and the 80 GB is locked as the D: drive. Of course, Norton or Windows XP doesn't even talk about this.

 

Now, here is what I found that worked. With the 80 GB as the master and the 30 GB as the slave, I booted into Windows (of course, I am booting into the 30 GB drive). From there I modified the registry by running "regedit" from the command line and traversing to:

 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SYSTEM -> MountedDevices

 

Looked for \DosDevices\C: and \DosDevices\D:

 

I changed these names by right-clicking on the Name, choosing Rename and changing the names as follows:

 

Renamed \DosDevices\C: to \DosDevices\X: (where X is not a disk drive that is in use).

Renamed \DosDevices\D: to \DosDevices\C:

Renamed \DosDeivces\X: to \DosDevices\D:

 

After booting up, the 80 GB is now correctly the C:\ drive and the 30 GB is the D:\ drive. Just to make sure, I unhooked the 30 GB drive and booted with just the 80 GB drive. It came up with no problems.

 

I am now using the 30 GB drive as my backup. I assume that I will need to do the same funky stuff if I ever need to restore the data from the 30 GB drive.

 

Hope this helps as this has caused me tons of grief this weekend. But, persistence does pay off.

 

[Handssolow 0]

Originally posted by Handssolow:

Originally posted by therip:

Skippie and others,

 

Many many thanks folks. I think I've got my cloned HD working.

I had a similar problem being unable to get Ghost 10 or Ghost 2003 to produce a working cloned HD C:\ to D:\ . Norton emails and chat weren't helpful by the way.

 

I had a similar situation with my PC booting into the old HD on D:\ despite moving the clone to be master on C:\ .

 

Following therip's advice I used regedit on the active drive D:\ then after rebooting I was finally running XP on the clone on C:\ .

 

System Restore then needed attention. It still reported (Control Panel >System>System Restore)that the old HD was Master. So I turned off Sytem restore and then after rebooting it reported the correct HDs situation. I then turned restore back on.

 

Finally the clone needed it's name changing back because Ghost had named it the same as the source HD. So in My Computer I used rename to enable me to identify the two different HDs.

 

I also followed XKON's advice prior to using Ghost.

[Handssolow 0]

Using Norton Ghost to clone HD to HD and effects on wpa.dbl

 

Sorry about repeating therip's original posting in error, I had hoped that the moderator would have deleted my repeat posting. I want to add that my XPpro system is legit but when I've had to replace bad memory and the HD's SMART reports on boot "imminent failure back up your data etc", you hope that the tools out there will give solutions and not more problems.

 

I've just repeated the clone again this time from floppies using Ghost 2003. First booting with a downloaded DOS W98 boot disc then another floppy with Ghost.exe on it. Eventually I got it to clone. I reversed the drives and it booted from the new Drive C: so I didn't need to change the registry this time. I had to rename the Volume and Serial numbers as they had been transfered in the cloning process. I then got System Restore to work by booting with only the new HD as master and creating a restore point. I then added the second HD as slave and XP's Restore recognised both HDs.

 

Windows records changes to your hardware in the file wpa.dbl and cloning your HD will alter its Volume label and Serial number. If you have already altered some your PC's hardware then cloning and HD switching might trigger a request to phone MSoft to re-activate your copy of XP.

 

http://aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm

 

Next time I'll make backup copies of wpa.bdl and perhaps also wpa.bak as suggested. Booting into Safe Mode is required to copy them back.

 

Next I want to change the motherboard!!!