How the heck do you Ghost a system drive? 3

[jsteph]

Hi all,
I hope this is an appropriate forum for this.

I have Ghost 2003, and WinXP sp2. I will first state that I do *not* have a floppy drive and haven't for years. Everything ghost related seems to want to use a floppy drive.

Here's what I want to do:

I have two disks--my current C: drive (120 gig IDE), and a D: drive (250 gig Sata).

I've emptied the 250 gig D drive and I want to use it as an emergency replacement drive if/when my current C: fails.

I've done the Norton Ghost "Clone" option via the Windows interface--it rebooted the computer and came up in PCDos and ran Ghost, and I booted back up (with original 120 gig C and saw that the D: drive *appeared* identical to the C: drive--except Ghost partitioned it to an 80gig primary, active partition with the contents of my C: drive, and the rest was unallocated--which is fine.

So I then shut down, unplugged C:, and set cmos boot option to use the old D: as boot. It went to boot, but said "Error loading operating system". So I used my XP setup CD and booted to the Recover Console, got to the new C: (the 80gig partion from the old 250 gig D drive), and did the Fixboot, the Bootcfg /rebuild, etc, etc, and it said everything was fine and that this was an active, bootable disk. Still the "error loading os".

Can anyone tell me how to correctly and reliably make my 250 gig D drive a bootable disk that I can rely upon when my current C: fails? I don't care how it's partitioned, etc, I just want a drive that I can store in a safe place and plug it in and be rolling immediately.

Thanks,
--Jim

 

[Freestone]

Are you certain the 250GB partition is truly marked as active? I suppose you could try resetting CMOS to boot from C: and place the 250GB D: drive onto the interface that your C: was on. You know that interface path works.

 

[jsteph]

Freestone,
When I look in the xp Disk Management tool (still using the original 120 gig as C, I see the 250 gig listed as Healthy (Active). The original C: says Healthy (System). So when I shut down and unplug the original C, I'm assuming (especially after doing the fixboot and bootcfg) that the sata will show up as Healthy(System). And it does show as C: in the setup/recovery console.

I can't do the same interface, since the 250 is a Sata, the origianl is IDE. I happen to have it as Sata2, just because another drive had been sata1 but that's gone. I'm not sure if that matters--when I go to the Boot Priority menu in Cmos, (after unplugging the original C it lists that 250 sata as the first drive, then the F8 boot menu, which gives me yet another chance to select that as the boot drive, lists it first and I select it just to be sure. But still the error.
--Jim

 

[wahnula]

This may or may not be your problem: When you run a clone through Ghost's Windows GUI, you must shut down the PC after the DOS clone and before it reboots and remove one of the disks to prevent Windows from marking the clone as anything but C:. Simply shut down when Ghost is done and it wants to reboot, then disconnect the source drive and boot to the destination drive. Windows will find the new drive, and install drivers for it. You will then need to reboot to the clone to make the changes permanent.

After this step you can do whatever you like with the clone; should you choose to boot to it, it will be the boot drive. Should you boot to the other drive, it will be available as a second drive. Try this and report back. I've never had a failed clone when I've done this step (shutting down before reboot after the cloning is complete).

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[Freestone]

I agree that removing the C: and leaving the D: on its SATA port should assign the SATA drive the letter C: upon boot.

I guess then a question is do you need a SATA driver to access the 2nd drive during boot when it is the only drive? I am not sure that because you see it as D: in Windows when using the old C: drive that the proper drivers are loaded on the image. I would tend to think so if you are seeing it as C: drive in the Recovery Console.

Where in the sequence is the error occurring? Is Windows even starting to boot?

 

[jsteph]

As soon as the cmos bootup sequence begins, it shows the "Detecting IDE drives...." and shows correctly no IDE, and the sata drive listed below it. Then that screen closes as usual, then right before I'd normally see the Windows XP logo, the cursor sits at the bottom of the screen, then it blinks and the text comes up at the top 'error loading operating system'.
--Jim

 

[jsteph]

Wahnula,
I will try that now, and let you know. Before I'd just let it boot by itself because it takes so long, but I'll keep an eye on it and attend it when it gets close to finishing. Thanks,
--Jim

 

[jsteph]

wahnula,
Perfect!

I just hit the power button as soon as ghost went to black, unplugged the original C:, and now I'm running on the ghosted drive fine.

Thanks very much!
--Jim

 

[Freestone]

Good info Tony. Another star. Glad you recognized what Jim was missing in Ghost's process. I've only ever used Acronis to clone, but the procedure is nearly identical.

 

[wahnula]

Thanks for the stars guys, even though I'm just passing along info that I probably learned right here. It always feels good to know you've helped someone, that's why we're all really here.

Tony

Users helping Users...