Ghost Disk-to-Disk Copy. New HDD problem

[rounder]

I have installed a second HDD that will become my only HDD when I am done with a "Ghost Disk-to-Disk Copy".

Ghost did not recognize my new HDD. I thought maybe I could format it and set up my partitions first with Partition Magic. PM isn't working the way I thought it would, either. It acts as if I need to set up some partitions and format my HDD first through a usual windows boot type format. Hell, I don't know. I have read the Partition Magic manual looking for something that references a blank HDD, but I did not find anything.

What do I have to do to get my new and totally blank HDD ready for Partition Magic and a Norton Ghost "Disk-to-Disk Copy" state.

I'll say one thing, "It sure is nice to have a second drive that is setup and allows me to come here and ask questions!"

Gotta Love it!
rounder

[Sterling_Aug]

What version of Ghost are you using?

I have never had a problem with Ghost copying entire drives and having them bootable.

You may also be able to find a drive copy utility on the hard drive manufacturers' website.

[BipolarBill]

I can't believe that you didn't mention your HDD brand. I've said this a thousand times - either use cable select or watch the jumpers on WD and IBM drives. There is a specific setting for lone drive on both.

[rounder]

Well, hello Mr. Happy. Here, let me pull the cotton from my ears. There, now. Thats better! :D

The Seagate(new drive) jumpers are set at cable select.

I thought it would be simpler to do the Partition Magic work before anything was loaded. Maybe I should just forget about the PM work for now and focus on the Ghost copy. My original drive has two partitions. C: 30 Gig and D: 15 Gig.

Quote:
"What do I have to do to get my new and totally blank HDD ready for Partition Magic and a Norton Ghost "Disk-to-Disk Copy" state."

I used Ghost and first I received an error about an "invalid cluster". I did a scan-disc and defrag on my original HDD. No more "invalid cluster" errors after that. The next time I started to do the disc-to-disc copy all seemed to be going fine until just after the point where Ghost designated the new drives partition sizes; C: 50 Gig and D: 25 Gig. Before it started to copy it gave an error maessage that I can't remember exactly, but I was under the assumption that I needed to prepare the drive first. Format?

I know, I should have written down exactly what the Ghost message was. If I haven't given enough information, I'll try again and have a better description of my situation for you.

Thanks,
rounder

[BipolarBill]

You can always create your partitions first and then load the individual partitions from the greater drive image. Try it.

[rounder]

Bill,

I used Partition Magic to partition the blank HDD (Disk 2), then formatted each partition. I maybe should have formatted the entire HDD first, then did the partitioning, but didn't think of it. I partitioned the Seagate 80 Gig (actually 76+) in four partitions:

"Disk 2":
Primary: Part 1 - 31 gig

Extended:
Logical: Part 2 - 15 gig
Logical: Part 3 - 15 gig
Logical: Part 4 - 15 gig

As I said, I then formatted each drive and PM said, "All completed successfully." My "Source Drive" (Disk 1) is a 45 Gig Maxtor with a Primary and a Logical (C: 30 gig and D: 15 gig).

I then booted from "Ghost" and cloned my Primary (C:) partition from my original HDD (Disk 1) to the primary of my "Disk 2" and my Logical of my "Disk 1" (D:) to my "Part 4" of "Disk 2".

I was told by Norton Ghost, "All completed successfully."

I rebooted and entered "Setup". Assigned my "Disk 2" as the 1st boot device and booted. I received an error message stating, "Cannot Boot from previous device, looking for boot files on CD-ROM".

I am now working from my Maxtor HDD.

Why would my cloned drive not have what it needs to boot?

rounder


EDIT:

I went into the PROPERTIES of the "CLONED" drives and found an 820 MB shortage in the cloned drive. Windows, itself, was 164 MB short in the cloned drive. That would account for more than an MBR.

Isn't Ghost supposed to make exact copies? There really is no room for errors when working with Operating Sytems. Why the discrepencies? The process went over without any glitches.

rounder

[rounder]

I guess all I can do, at this point, is reformat the HDD and try again.

Thanks
rounder

[rounder]

OK, here is what I have learned. You have to do a "Disk to Disk" selection when creating to a new HDD!

What I had done was a "Partition to Partition" clone. I was sitting here at my PC and thinking, "Why will the clone disk not boot?" Number one reason, NO MBR. Then it hit me. I should had done a "Disk to Disk" clone, as I was making my image from one disk to another. Ghost is "smart" enough to know you can't have two MBR's on one disk! I booted from my Ghost floppy again and did the same thing I had done before, only selecting the "Disk to Disk" option.

I entered setup, after a reboot, and disabled all boot devices, except the new HDD. Viola! it booted from the clone drive. There are still some discrepencies in the "used" space on the two drives, but I can guess that some of that could be bad clusters, etc. on my old drive (800 megabytes, though?). Only thing is, the clone drive now has 50 megabytes more in the WINDOWS folder that the source disk WINDOWS folder.

I learned that even if you are transfering partition data from one Diskpartition to another, you MUST select WHAT YOU ARE DOING, the DISK to DISK option.

I am going to run this for a while before I claim success. I did not reformat the destination disk before overwritting it. Could have been a mistake. Cleaner after a format.

Bill, I apologise for not being clearer in how/what I had done earlier. If I had clearly stated that I had selected Partition to Partition intead of Disk to Disk, you guys would have caught my error.

I hope others find this post when attempting to use Ghost and maybe save thenselves some frustration. :confused:

Thanks,
rounder