Ghost 15 Disk Copy Mystery
Computer user experience level: 6+, 20 year computer mechanic, built 20+ systems
Cloning notebook hard drive using desktop, ide/usb adapter, external usb drive and Ghost 15.
System 1: Desktop
Windows 7 Home Premium, 2.60 GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core, 4 GB ram, dual NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT Display adapters, dual 22” monitors
System 2: Desktop
Vista Home Premium, 2.10GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core, 2 GB ram, Nvidia GeForce 6150SE Display Adapter, 20” monitor
System 3: Notebook
Acer 1660, 160GB IDE HD
Scenario: Cloning from notebook 160GB WD 2 ½” HD (10 GB Partition) to partition on 320 GB WD HD.
System 3 got a bad bug that I was unable to eradicate. I was planning to update to Windows 7, but it was an upgrade so I had to re-install XP Pro operating system first. Once I did that I decided to install all XP upgrades first then make a cloned copy just-in-case. I had Ghost 2002 which I’ve used many times in the past, but I ran across a deal on Ghost 15 I couldn’t pass up. I installed NG15 on System1. I had a 320 GB SATA drive mounted in an external USB adapter and partitioned some space for the copy. The notebook had very few files from the install so I connected it to system1 with an external IDE USB adapter. Then using Win7 disk manager I shrank the WinXP partition so it wouldn’t take a lot of space on the back up clone drive. I ran NG Copy My Hard Drive with no compression and all went well, UNTIL I wanted to look at the cloned files. The drive wasn’t there. I looked in Win Explorer, I used Ghost and then Win7 Disk Management. I could see the drive and partitions, but it said “offline” and I couldn’t do anything to change that. Then I noticed I couldn’t see or access the notebook drive either. WHA…? I did all the usual troubleshooting all to no avail. All of my other USB devices worked fine. Then I plugged the USB adapter with the notebook drive into System 2 and it worked! Hoping it had reset something, I plugged it back into System 1 and IT WORKED! So I figured if it worked for this drive, it would work for the ‘cloned to’ drive as well. I plugged the USB adapter with the ‘cloned to’ drive into System 2 and it worked! I’m on a roll. So I moved the ‘cloned to’ drive back to System 1 and NOPE, NADA, ZIP. SOS.
I have ordered another copy of Ghost for the System 2 computer in case it’s needed in the future, but in the meanwhile, I’m stumped.
I’m about to put the notebook drive back in and start the Win7 install. Wish me luck.