Other Norton Products

[erik_carlstrom]

Image and Clone are definitely different.  Copy my hard drive does do a sector by sector clone.  Whichever options you chose can impact what you see (how you're checking the size of the new drive may tell me why you are seeing a difference). 

The v2i versions of Ghost are definitely much different then the old ghost32.exe DOS version of Ghost that you previously used.  There are updated versions of that for Vista (including Vista64), but they are only in Ghost Solution Suite (which is an Enterprise product). 

Is that making more sense? 

[lilewis]

Yes to a degree.   You've cleared up a major misunderstanding I had of the program.

I kinda wish Norton supplied a paper manual rather than the pdf, but I've installed the pdf now on another pc placed next to the laptop so I can follow it step by step as I try to copy the drive again which I'll do later today, but will probably first list, on this thread,  the exact steps I plan to take to insure I will accomplish what I intended to.

[erik_carlstrom]

That was a recent development.  Let me know if you have any problems. 

[lilewis]

The copy "one hard disk to another hard disk" is now running with the following options set:

check source for file errors  - checked

check destinat for file errors - checked

set drive active for booting OS - checked

disable smart sector - checked

ignore bad sectors - NOT CHECKED

copy MBR - checked

If this is the best /appropriate options, please acknowledge this post so I will then print it out and save it for future reference

Thank you for spending the time to help me here. 

[erik_carlstrom]

That would be what you would want to use.  Again, when you reboot make sure you only have one drive connected.  That will ensure that crosslinking does not occur. 

[lilewis]

Didn't work...

Got error messages

 "ec8f17b3 cannot complete copying..cannot copy source to destination drive"

 "e7c3001f volume \\?\volume ............... .....cannot be dismounted"

I must have mounted it when I first opened up Norton Ghost.

Right clicking on the drive in explorer did not show the dismount command so I'm going to reboot - avoid mounting, and try again.

I have admit, this program requires a fair amount of learning.

[lilewis]

Another question:

Shouldn't I be shutting down all windows programs while Ghost is running?

If not, can I continue to work on data files? 

My logic tells me no programs should be open but I sense that the Norton programmers found a way around that and I could in fact be using programs like Outlook and Excel at the same time it's copying to the destination drive.

[erik_carlstrom]

If you want an absolutely exact copy, shut everything else down.  If you can accept slight differences, you can keep working.  We can take advantage of the volume shadow copy service to minimize the impact of updating items during the copy process, however this is not 100%.  If you make large changes the copy will either restart or fail. 

[lilewis · Accepted solution]

It took 6 hrs to run but I think it made a good copy.

The source (c:) drive is 80,284,340,224 bytes and the copy is 79,914,092,032 bytes.

I guess I won't know for sure how successfull it was until I have to replace the source drive and boot up from it, but I feel a lot better now than I did 2 days ago

Thanks for your patience and help.