Problems trying to Ghost mirror my c drive.

[curtisannev]

Yes I’m sure we all relate to the pain of rebuilding your failed c drive .. not fun .. usually takes me about 25 hours or so to load 25 programs and the data again.

Please never again; now I have a dual hard drive machine
2X 120 gig identical hard drives and ghost 9 to make a mirror ghost.

If c: drive fails I want to boot up from the ghosted drive

The ghosting seems to be complete with all the files, but when I make the ghosted drive the boot drive windows xp will not allow me to log in .. just keeps resetting to ask me to log in again and again.

Was thinking a xp repair might be in order.

I don’t care if I have to re-initialize my Microsoft office software, I just want to make sure this back drive loads

Can anyone help me here!!

Thanks alot

Thanks a lot Bill

[whitebomber]

Hi Bill, any luck resolving this issue? I too am experiencing exactly the same problem. I have a 40G and I'm ghosting to 200G. The boot will only go to the point of showing the login screen but no users, shutdown option etc.

Does your original drive have multiple partitions? Mine has two, Win98 (which will boot fine after the clone) and WindowsXP.

I have tried the following with no success:
- Ghost and the utility that came with the drive.
- Turning off the pagefile prior to the ghosting
- Booting from the load CD and doing a repair.
- Disabling the login screen. Then it will let you put in your login information, start to login then immediately go back to the login screen.
- Kept the partition sizes the same as the originals.
- Tried disk to disk. Then also went to image files and back to the disk.

All of the above yields the same results. One additional caveat, if I put the original back in the system as the slave, it will boot from the new drive.

My two thoughts right now are:
- it's an issue with the larger drive. I have an extra 40G drive I'm going to clone to and see what happens.
- This has been a multi-boot machine for all kinds of OS'es in the past so my current drive letters are "C" (Win98) and "J" (WinXP). When I reboot with the original drive as the slave my, drive letters are D and E respectively and the slave original drive is the C and J.

Well any thoughts are much appreciated.

Originally Posted by curtisannev

Yes I’m sure we all relate to the pain of rebuilding your failed c drive .. not fun .. usually takes me about 25 hours or so to load 25 programs and the data again.

Please never again; now I have a dual hard drive machine
2X 120 gig identical hard drives and ghost 9 to make a mirror ghost.

If c: drive fails I want to boot up from the ghosted drive

The ghosting seems to be complete with all the files, but when I make the ghosted drive the boot drive windows xp will not allow me to log in .. just keeps resetting to ask me to log in again and again.

Was thinking a xp repair might be in order.

I don’t care if I have to re-initialize my Microsoft office software, I just want to make sure this back drive loads

Can anyone help me here!!

Thanks alot

Thanks a lot Bill

[curtisannev]

No luck on ghosting my hard drive using the copy files method.

Was planning to set ghosted drive as the master, then using windows xp disk to repair or reinstall , noticed you all ready tried that. ( disappointing but I will still try it )

second choice .... NOT prefered.. give up on mirror drive idea, ghost to a another 2nd drive, pull my master and restore to a 3rd new drive. test the restored drive. Now everyone tells me this should work , but I DO NOT WANT TO TEST IT when I have too, then find out it didn't work I just want to have a totally tested/ running backup drive that I can switch to master and fire.. total down time 45 seconds.

I am a dreamer of course.

no partitions
original back in the system as the slave, it will boot from the new drive .. bet you it is booting from slave.. mine did same thing.. you are going to have to disble windows in the orginal to really test that. like change the windows directory to windowsHOLD

Originally Posted by whitebomber

Hi Bill, any luck resolving this issue? I too am experiencing exactly the same problem. I have a 40G and I'm ghosting to 200G. The boot will only go to the point of showing the login screen but no users, shutdown option etc.

Does your original drive have multiple partitions? Mine has two, Win98 (which will boot fine after the clone) and WindowsXP.

I have tried the following with no success:
- Ghost and the utility that came with the drive.
- Turning off the pagefile prior to the ghosting
- Booting from the load CD and doing a repair.
- Disabling the login screen. Then it will let you put in your login information, start to login then immediately go back to the login screen.
- Kept the partition sizes the same as the originals.
- Tried disk to disk. Then also went to image files and back to the disk.

All of the above yields the same results. One additional caveat, if I put the original back in the system as the slave, it will boot from the new drive.

My two thoughts right now are:
- it's an issue with the larger drive. I have an extra 40G drive I'm going to clone to and see what happens.
- This has been a multi-boot machine for all kinds of OS'es in the past so my current drive letters are "C" (Win98) and "J" (WinXP). When I reboot with the original drive as the slave my, drive letters are D and E respectively and the slave original drive is the C and J.

Well any thoughts are much appreciated.

[whitebomber]

I'm going to try something now that I'm hopeful will work. I'll keep you posted...

Originally Posted by curtisannev

No luck on ghosting my hard drive using the copy files method.

Was planning to set ghosted drive as the master, then using windows xp disk to repair or reinstall , noticed you all ready tried that. ( disappointing but I will still try it )

second choice .... NOT prefered.. give up on mirror drive idea, ghost to a another 2nd drive, pull my master and restore to a 3rd new drive. test the restored drive. Now everyone tells me this should work , but I DO NOT WANT TO TEST IT when I have too, then find out it didn't work I just want to have a totally tested/ running backup drive that I can switch to master and fire.. total down time 45 seconds.

I am a dreamer of course.

no partitions
original back in the system as the slave, it will boot from the new drive .. bet you it is booting from slave.. mine did same thing.. you are going to have to disble windows in the orginal to really test that. like change the windows directory to windowsHOLD

[whitebomber]

I was using Ghost 6.5, so I tried 7.5 and had the same issue. One thing I did find out between 6.5 and 7.5 is that 7.5 is much faster. It would take about 2.5hours cloning 40G with 6.5, with 7.5 it takes only about 40minutes.

I also tried cloning to a similar 40G drive versus the 200G, thinking maybe it was some incompatibily with the larger drive, however same problem.

At this point I've tried obvious and obscure potential solutions with no success. So unless someone has some thoughts I'll probably be relegated to reload! Yuk!

Any ideas?

Originally Posted by whitebomber

I'm going to try something now that I'm hopeful will work. I'll keep you posted...

[curtisannev]

Don't give up!! Never give up!!

did you ever try a reinstall of the windows xp os over top?? does it just go into repair mode??
I have a front line tech support membership with microsoft .. maybe I'll try that


Bill

[whitebomber]

Yes, I did try the XP over top. Same results... Basically choose to continue a new install at the screen that gives you the option to do a repair. Then it will offer you the choice of doing the load over top. It just replaces all the OS related stuff like Win98 did. I don't believe Win2000 offered that option.

I had been wanting to keep the Win98/XP dual boot as is, because both are configured as I want them. However I really only ultimately care about the XP, so I am next going to try ghosting the XP to a .gho. Then ghost it back to the new drive as the first and only partition.

And no I won't give up! Heck the best way to learn is when things don't go as advertised.

Good luck!

Originally Posted by curtisannev

Don't give up!! Never give up!!

did you ever try a reinstall of the windows xp os over top?? does it just go into repair mode??
I have a front line tech support membership with microsoft .. maybe I'll try that


Bill

[whitebomber]

Just a further FYI. I tried cloning only the XP partition, both from a partition to partition and a .gho file and in both cases it exhibited the same problem. As stated it boots all the way to the point where you would get the login screen, showing the usernames, and it shows the blue screen with a Windows logo but no login names.

The interesting thing is the machine is up and you can access shares over the network etc, but you can't login.

It's certainly looking more like a complete load, yuk!

[SteveVaiRules]

I'm glad i'm not the only one that is having this problem with norton ghost.
i too have to problem of the non booting new drive, it gets to the welcome screen then the xp logo then nothing it just freezes.

when i set up the copy i did check the "copy MBR" but to no avail

not to mention having problems setting the jumper settings on my maxtor drives. I set them to what www.maxtor.com said but it still boots from my original drive unless i disconnect it all together than thats when i get the non booting problem.

oh well heres hoping i fix it

[whitebomber]

Steve,
I too hope you fix this, then share the answer! It's pretty annoying, as I really want to keep my current load.

Is your XP on the C: partition? From what I've seen and experienced, it seems to be more prone to happening when it's not C:. I'm really at a loss at what to try next. I've learned alot and tried so many things but now I'm not sure where to head next.

Again good luck!!!

Originally Posted by SteveVaiRules

I'm glad i'm not the only one that is having this problem with norton ghost.
i too have to problem of the non booting new drive, it gets to the welcome screen then the xp logo then nothing it just freezes.

when i set up the copy i did check the "copy MBR" but to no avail

not to mention having problems setting the jumper settings on my maxtor drives. I set them to what www.maxtor.com said but it still boots from my original drive unless i disconnect it all together than thats when i get the non booting problem.

oh well heres hoping i fix it

[riptyde]

Hi all.

I think I figured it out.

I've been reading several forums on issues with norton ghost 9.0 and problems with copying one hdd to another hdd, and one forum was this one. I did manage to make a successfull copy with a successfull boot. (in fact I did this five minutes ago and I am currently running off the "destination" disk).

Any way I wanted to let you guys know what I did in case it can help you in your efforts.

This is my set up:

win xp pro sp2
a single hard drive with clean completely redone install of winxp and all my software. (I will be keeping this in storage as a "master" disk for when ever I want to wipe my hdd clean and start over).

I have a second hdd that I want to copy this to and use as my everyday hdd. This is also in my comp set to "slave" on the same IDE channel as my "master" disk

One of the problems that I was having was that I could make a clean copy, but when I attempted to boot off that copy I would, as someone else also got, get a screen with the win xp logo and nothing else.

When I was setting up the copy I wanted to change the drive letter but was unable to as it was greyed out. What I did was this.

with both hdds in plugged in. My "master" disk as my boot disk (c and my spare as a slave disk (on the same IDE channel) I then went to "start", right click on "my computer", left click on "manage", left click on "disk management". This will list both hdd's. I selected the slave disk, right click and selected "delete partition" and deleted it. It came up with some warning messages and asked if I wanted to force the deletion of the partition (or something along that line). I chose yes. Then I right clicked again to create a new partition. Under the options to create a new partition you can either choose a new drive leter or have no letter associated to it. I chose to NOT have a drive letter. Then it proceeded to ask if I wanted to format. Again I chose not to. After this was done I went back to Norton Ghost.

In the copy drive option in Norton Ghost 9.0 I now could choose a drive letter. But there was also an option for "none". I chose the "NONE" option as I fiqured this information would be copied durring the process, and it was. After copying was done I took out the "master" drive, changed the jumper settings on my "destination" drive to master and booted with no problems.

I hope this helps you guys.

[whitebomber]

Hey riptyde,
Thanks for taking the time to share your results and resolution.

I will try again this weekend using your information and keeping my fingers crossed that it works! I'll post back with the results.

Originally Posted by riptyde

Hi all.

I think I figured it out.

I've been reading several forums on issues with norton ghost 9.0 and problems with copying one hdd to another hdd, and one forum was this one. I did manage to make a successfull copy with a successfull boot. (in fact I did this five minutes ago and I am currently running off the "destination" disk).

Any way I wanted to let you guys know what I did in case it can help you in your efforts.

This is my set up:

win xp pro sp2
a single hard drive with clean completely redone install of winxp and all my software. (I will be keeping this in storage as a "master" disk for when ever I want to wipe my hdd clean and start over).

I have a second hdd that I want to copy this to and use as my everyday hdd. This is also in my comp set to "slave" on the same IDE channel as my "master" disk

One of the problems that I was having was that I could make a clean copy, but when I attempted to boot off that copy I would, as someone else also got, get a screen with the win xp logo and nothing else.

When I was setting up the copy I wanted to change the drive letter but was unable to as it was greyed out. What I did was this.

with both hdds in plugged in. My "master" disk as my boot disk (c and my spare as a slave disk (on the same IDE channel) I then went to "start", right click on "my computer", left click on "manage", left click on "disk management". This will list both hdd's. I selected the slave disk, right click and selected "delete partition" and deleted it. It came up with some warning messages and asked if I wanted to force the deletion of the partition (or something along that line). I chose yes. Then I right clicked again to create a new partition. Under the options to create a new partition you can either choose a new drive leter or have no letter associated to it. I chose to NOT have a drive letter. Then it proceeded to ask if I wanted to format. Again I chose not to. After this was done I went back to Norton Ghost.

In the copy drive option in Norton Ghost 9.0 I now could choose a drive letter. But there was also an option for "none". I chose the "NONE" option as I fiqured this information would be copied durring the process, and it was. After copying was done I took out the "master" drive, changed the jumper settings on my "destination" drive to master and booted with no problems.

I hope this helps you guys.

[bluetilu]

riptyde,

Great job! Your drive letter fix for Ghost 9 made my copied disk bootable as well. It sure seems like Symantec should have tested and fixed this glitch before just re-releasing Drive Image under their name.

Thanks a ton,
Bluetilu

[ishoottrap]

BRILLIANT!

riptyde, I was about to tear my hair out until I read this post. It never dawned on me that the greyed out selections on the copy menu were meaningful until you pointed out the exiting partition and partition name. Then it made perfect sense! I followed your lead and I too am posting from a machine (Compaq laptop in my case) with the newly installed 60GB 10k rpm drive. I had a flaky 40Gb that would quit responding intermittently and I knew I had to get rid or it eventually it would leave this world all together.

Here's the Symantec tec support response to my question regarding the failure to boot past the mostly blue XP screen after a copy. (Note the complete lack of detail regarding the partition issue, thank you for sharing!)

Thank you for contacting Symantec Online Technical Support.

I understand the difficulties that you are currently facing.

I gather from your message that you are unable to boot from the destination hard drive after copy.

Please be aware that this issue can happen due to errors while copying, it can be either on the sourrce or the destinastion folder. So I recommend that you please run Windows Defragmenter and Microsoft CHKDSK for both source and the destination before copying the image file.

To run Windows Defragmenter:

a. Click Start menu, go to Programs
b. Go to Accessories and System Tools.
c. Click on Disk Defragmenter.

To run Microsoft CHKDSK, please refer the document below:

Title: 'How to run Microsoft CHKDSK from the command line'
Document ID: 2004066687571562
> Web URL: http://service1.symantec.com/support...04066687571562

Note: The above article is a generic document.

Please be aware that you can copy your operating system, applications, and data to a new hard drive. If the hard drive you are copying contains more than one partition, you must copy the partitions one at a time to the new hard drive.

You can use the Copy Drives feature when you upgrade to a larger hard drive or when you add a second hard drive and keep the original. You should not use the Copy Drives feature to set up a hard drive that will be used in another computer.

For more information, please refer to the document provided below:

Title: 'How to copy disk-to-disk using Norton Ghost 9.0'
Document ID: 2004111701520562
> Web URL: http://service1.symantec.com/support...04111701520562

Please be aware that this issue can occur when the system partition's drive letter changes. When migrating an OS, this usually occurs when the destination of the copy had a drive letter already assigned, or if the machine was rebooted with both the source and destination drives still in the machine. To resolve the error, it is usually necessary to run the copy operation again.

To prevent the error from reoccurring:

- It is preferable to have the target location formatted as unallocated space with no partition present, as Drive Copy will copy the partition information from the source drive. Although it is possible to copy into an already existing partition, this can cause boot issues if the destination already has a drive letter assigned, as the letter assignment will carry over when the drive is switched.

- Disable Windows System restore. The document below would provide you with more information in this regard:

Title: 'Disabling or enabling Windows XP System Restore'
Document ID: 2001111912274039
> Web URL: http://service1.symantec.com/support...01111912274039

- A copy of a system partition should also occupy the same relative location on the destination drive that it does on the source. If the system partition is the second partition on the source drive, it should be copied as the second partition on the destination drive as well.

- After the copy is complete, shut the machine down.

CAUTION: Do not reboot the machine yet. Booting from the hard drives at this time can damage program installations and trigger configuration changes that you might not be able to reverse without restoring backups.

- Remove the source drive from the machine, and physically adjust the destination drive so that it is now the first physical drive on the computer. This might require switching jumpers or attaching the destination drive at a different location. If the computer's BIOS is not set to "auto" for drive detection, or you are moving a drive to a different channel, you might also need to update the computer's BIOS. Once you have done this, restart the machine with only the destination drive in the machine.

- If you wish to keep the source drive for use as a backup drive or slave drive, the operating system partition on the source drive will need to be deleted or hidden before you boot into windows with both drives in place. This can be accomplished by connecting the source drive as the primary slave, and then running a partition formatting utility on the source drive before rebooting into Windows.

Please be aware that Norton Ghost 9.0 is compatible with Windows XP Service Pack 2. However, you need to modify the Data Execution Prevention (DEP) policy to allow Norton Ghost 9.0 to launch its services during startup. Please refer to the document linked below for more information on resolving this issue:

Title: 'Norton Ghost 9.0 compatibility with Windows XP Service Pack 2'
Document ID: 2004101410380862
> Web URL: http://service1.symantec.com/Support...04101410380862

Originally Posted by riptyde

Hi all.

I think I figured it out.

I've been reading several forums on issues with norton ghost 9.0 and problems with copying one hdd to another hdd, and one forum was this one. I did manage to make a successfull copy with a successfull boot. (in fact I did this five minutes ago and I am currently running off the "destination" disk).

Any way I wanted to let you guys know what I did in case it can help you in your efforts.

...

I hope this helps you guys.

DID IT EVER!

[ginnydon]

Ishoottrap, did you use one of those IDE to USB setups for 2.5" drives? Recently I had to get another laptop and would like to just put everything I had on my old laptop's HD to this new one. I had planned on just switching, but they have changed the way the laptop's HD are connected. They still IDE, but the connectors have changed. Aren't companies nice! How did you do your setup when you had them connected?

Thanks,

ginnydon