My first attempt to "Clone" a drive NOT copy one resulted in failure, the drive was cloned ok but it failed to boot, I did cancel the drive letter through Windows Disk Management.
I am attempting this on my "Testbed" machine where I have Win 98SE and Win2K loaded on a dual boot, power and memory is not an issue here
I think I desperately need the help of DaveH and BrianK to point me in the right direction.
I am following up on a comment made by jstuart regarding "Cloning" a drive expecting once cloned should work.
So I need to know what I must do to the drive to prepare it, (must be spelled out in layman's terms) and am I correct in saying the "Clone" option is only available with Ghost 2003?.
I can see "Copy a Drive" in G12 and G15 but a "Copy" is not a "Clone" is it?
I can see "Copy a Drive" in G12 and G15 but a "Copy" is not a "Clone" is it?
Deric,
A clone is an exact duplicate of the original, regardless of whether it's a partition or a whole disk. Even if you create an image and then restore the image, you have a clone.
Quoting Dan Goodell...
"As for the distinction of a 'copy' vs. a 'clone', things get fuzzy. By a rigorous definition, a clone is an exact duplicate, indistinguishable from the original. Usually, however, an exact duplicate is not what we want; we want a copy that works like the original. So, if we alter the clone slightly to make it work--such as tweaking the registry, or boot.ini--or resize the partition, do we not have a clone? If files end up on the destination partition in slightly different sectors, do we not have a clone? Technically, that's true ... but it works just like the original. In the common vernacular, a very close copy that works like the original is typically still accepted as a clone. As the original and clone become less and less identical, at some point we have to stop calling it a clone and refer to it as a copy--but exactly where to draw that line is a bit subjective."
What software did you use to create the clone, did the target HD contain a partition, where were the HDs during the procedure? What error did you see when the cloned HD failed to boot?
I used Ghost 2003 to Clone the drive, I deleted the drive showing unallocated space and No drive letter but it wouldn't clone it in that state,so I had to make the drive usable and complete with a drive letter for Ghost 2003 to "See" it because it was connected via a USB-IDE adaptor only then would it Clone it.
The destination drive and source drive were both IDE and both 20 gig capacities and I cloned D: drive the setup is as follows :-
Dual boot C: and D: separate physical drives (IDE) running Win 98SE and Win 2000 Pro respectively, the machine is my "Testbed" laid out so that I can easily experiment with different hardware, by today's standard it is not a supercharger but is enough to tinker with.
The error message I got when I connected the drive in place of D: drive was "Disk Boot Failure,Insert system disk and press enter".
To make sure I had connected the cloned drive correctly I swapped them over and got the same error message.
To cut a long story short I don't have a problem cloning the drive, the problem is making it work because it should be an exact copy of the original.
I just had a look at Ghost 2003 and I can do a Disk to Disk clone when the target HD contains unallocated space.
Also, your target HD was connected via USB and the geometry issues created by this situation may lead to failure to boot. The target HD should ideally be mounted internally. Make sure you change jumpers and IDE cable position after the clone process and remove the source HD before the first boot from the new cloned HD.
I don't think drive letters really matter on those operating systems because they don't boot by disk signatures.
When I use Ghost 2003 I boot it from a flash drive and my flash drive becomes C and the existing drive letters on the system get pushed back temporarily. I don't even recall Ghost showing drive letters, I always have to recognize the drive by the sizes.
I'm not sure if I ever did a "disk to disk" copy or clone with Ghost 2003, I always used Drive Image for that and it would give you the choice of what drive to "hide" when it was done. I think the main reason it made one of the drives hidden was because windows didn't like 2 active partitions at the same time.
That error your getting with windows 98 seems like it's not the active partition, you may want to start fdisk and check it next time you get the error.
Maybe I didn't understand your post the first time but I think the problem is the same.
If your not touching or cloning the C drive (Win98) and only cloning the D drive (win2000) and the system doesn't boot with either the old D drive or the cloned D drive then C is no longer the active partition. Nothing else has changed on that drive, all the boot files should be untouched.
If your using the standard windows 2000 boot loader you should be able to boot into windows 98 regardless of if the copy of the second drive worked or not.
Perhaps my explanation was a little misleading, the testbed machine still boots ok when I attach the original drives C: and D: to the 1st IDE channel.
When I said I swapped them over I meant only to determine I had coupled the destination (cloned drive) in the correct position on the cable.
I think I need to play with it a bit more to give you positive steps I have taken so that you can assess properly what I am trying to do and more importantly I need to understand cloning.
What I will do over the weekend is take D: drive off and see if it will boot into 98SE and note the steps I take, it is going to have to be Saturday afternoon because tomorrow I might be p****d because it is my birthday and I am rather partial to a bottle of plonk
The good news is that I have managed to clone the drive and make it work.
I have used a combination of both of your suggestions in experimenting to complete the clone.
I used Norton Ghost 2003 installed on drive D: ( Win 2000 Pro) and because I have a spare IDE channel I coupled the destination drive on Port 2 on channel 2 along with the optical drive on channel 1.
The Optical drive was the master and the destination HD Drive the slave (jumper fitted in slave position).
I then prepared the HD Drive by deleting it in Disk Management creating "Unallocated" space.
Opened Ghost 2003 in Win 2000 Pro (drive D:) selected "Ghost Advanced" then "Clone" followed by highlighting "Source drive" and "Destination" drive and finally ticked the box "Assign a drive letter".
Ghost then rebooted ran the clone in 5.5 minutes (20 gig drives) and booted up again, checked that the drive was cloned and lettered as (E:).
Shut down and swapped the drives (D: for E:) and rebooted and I now have a working "Cloned" drive relettered D:.
So thank you both very much for your help, I now understand much better now on how to clone a drive and make it work.
It is not as straight forward as one would expect but by following the above procedure it should work every time.
I would also think the same procedure could be used for Sata drives as well.
I used Norton Ghost 2003 installed on drive D: ( Win 2000 Pro)
Opened Ghost 2003 in Win 2000 Pro (drive D:)
Deric, nice work. You must be pleased.
One comment, Dave said...
"and it's booting to that funky hidden partition thing."
I agree. You can get stuck in the Ghost Virtual Partition and be unable to boot into Windows without a lot of work. I always use Ghost 2003 from a boot disk and I never have it installed.
Yes very pleased now that I understand it better, and many thanks for your input, it got me there in the end.
My copy of Ghost 2003 is on my Norton System Works disk that is why I have to install it.
On a multi boot machine I always install Ghost on the last drive.
I did try cloning from the floppy created with the installed software but at that stage ( a long story) it cloned it but it wouldn't work. Perhaps I might have another play with it and see what I come up with from the floppy now that I understand the drive preparation required.
The boot disk you mention is that the one we created a few years ago to test with so that we didn't have to install Ghost on the test drive?
The boot disk you mention is that the one we created a few years ago to test with so that we didn't have to install Ghost on the test drive?
Deric
Yes, you don't need anything installed and it's always better to do it outside of windows.
But floppy disks suck are are pretty outdated.
Does that old system support booting to a flash drive? I'm pretty sure your others do.
I remember a year or so ago I mentioned that Brian and I were multi-booting different things from a flash drive and suggested it to you because of your Ghost 15, Ghost 12 issues. I also mentioned that I used it to boot DOS and Ghost 2003 as well.
Yes I have a few flash drives but the test bed won't boot from one I don't think, I will check it out tomorrow. I do have a copy of Ghost 2003 MS-DOS that will only "see" internal drives so I don't use it very often.
I know what you are saying about floppies but I clean all my drives with Fdisk so I cannot be without the reliable old floppy, they never fail me.
When I upgrade I always make sure I have a floppy drive installed, but when we were talking about bootable flash drives a few months ago I managed to do it but I will have to look back in my notes I can't remember all the detail 'cos the memory suffers a bit with age.
Got to go now, football is on so I will get back to you tomorrow.
This "superbowl" thing you mentioned is that what you put your big helping of pudding in
By the way we also call it "The Beautiful Game" .
Thanks for the link mate, I have downloaded the USB disk format tool and I have the Win 98 files on a startup floppy is that what you mean?
Reading your comments I like the idea of using the USB flash drive, the testbed won't boot with a flash drive even changing the sequence in the bios, my other machines support it though, so I haven't got a problem with that.
I am all for trying out different procedures so if you don't mind I will have to leave it now because at 4:00pm the family are coming round for dinner at 5:00pm and I have a lot of prep work to do before they come (I can't cook but I know who can) so its dinner at 5, a bottle of plonk or 2 and p****d again at 7:00pm.
I should be back in the saddle though by tomorrow afternoon after a long walk to clear the fuzzzz.
