I have some new Dell Precision T7500s that were ordered with 2 hard drives and mirroring enabled. However, the machines were not configured with mirroring enabled. As enabling the hardware mirror wipes out all existing data on the drives, I have purchased Ghost in an attempt to resolve this problem myself without sending the systems back to Dell. Using the SRD, I have done separate backups of the diagnostic and OS partitions. After enabling mirroring on one system, I have made several attempts to restore the diagnostic partition in a working state. I can restore the partition but I am not able to access it. I compared the partition tables on the restored machine to a factory system and most of the information is different. I suspect that the system is looking for the diagnostic partition to be in a particular sector (and it's not there) but that's just my guess.
I also tried restoring the diagnostic and OS partitions at the same time. Got most of the way through the process but then Ghost started asking me to replace the CD or some such (can't remeber the exact message now). I could not get past that error message to complete the restoration of the OS partition. Ghost then threw some other error about not being able to find drivers.
Btw, I am making the backups on a Maxtor OneTouch for what that is worth. Systems are quad core with 4GB of RAM, XP Pro.
I hope someone can help me make this work. I don't have a lot of previous experience with Ghost.
I took up the "restoring the OS" error in another thread where someone reported the same message I was getting on restoring the OS. Note that while there was an error, the partition was restored and working as described in this other thread:
As for the diagnostic partition, there were never any errors, It just would not load. The restore process seemed to work fine, without error, but the partition was not accessible or would not load when I tried to do so. I tried several things to get it to work, but this was finally how I got it to work (for anyone else that may wish to do the same thing).
I found another website that talked about how to recreate the dell diagnostic partition. One section in particular explained how to use a Dell "Drivers and Utilities" CD to create a diagnostic partition on a new hard drive, which is essentially what I had once I had enabled the hardware mirroring on my machine.
I did not get a drivers and utilities CD with this machine but I found one that I had for another recent desktop which I used to create a diagnostic partition on this drive. When I tried to load that diagnostic partition I found that it got a bit further attempting to load but was still unable to do so (this time I had an error which I cannot recall at the moment). I found I had to set the partition type to DE and change the partition so that it was not bootable. I then used Ghost to restore the diagnostic partition image I made originally from this computer into the partition I created using the "Drivers and Utilities" CD.
After all those steps I was finally able to get the diagnostic partition restored and in a funtioning state.
I have some new Dell Precision T7500s that were ordered with 2 hard drives and mirroring enabled. However, the machines were not configured with mirroring enabled. As enabling the hardware mirror wipes out all existing data on the drives, I have purchased Ghost in an attempt to resolve this problem myself without sending the systems back to Dell. Using the SRD, I have done separate backups of the diagnostic and OS partitions. After enabling mirroring on one system, I have made several attempts to restore the diagnostic partition in a working state. I can restore the partition but I am not able to access it. I compared the partition tables on the restored machine to a factory system and most of the information is different. I suspect that the system is looking for the diagnostic partition to be in a particular sector (and it's not there) but that's just my guess.
I also tried restoring the diagnostic and OS partitions at the same time. Got most of the way through the process but then Ghost started asking me to replace the CD or some such (can't remeber the exact message now). I could not get past that error message to complete the restoration of the OS partition. Ghost then threw some other error about not being able to find drivers.
Btw, I am making the backups on a Maxtor OneTouch for what that is worth. Systems are quad core with 4GB of RAM, XP Pro.
I hope someone can help me make this work. I don't have a lot of previous experience with Ghost.
Thanks for the update. This absolutely can be done and in most cases Ghost can do it alone. It is really all about understanding the partition layout of your source drive and which one is the bootable partition, etc.
During restoral there are options in Ghost to allow for proper recovery of multiple partitions. As a normal rule you would restore the diagnostic partitions first and then restore the OS partition and choose the option to resize drive upon restoral so that you can get full use of the extra space on your new HD. Other options in Ghost allow you to restore or not restore the MBR but it is crucial to know your source partition layout first, so that you restore the MBR with the correct partition.
The most common problem by far most people run into with multiple partitions is not undersanding the partition layout of the source HD and you end up with partitions on the new HD which are not laid out the same. For example you restore your diagnostic partition and OS partition but now (because the correct options were not chosen in Ghost during restore) you end up with the OS starting at a different sector than the source. The MBR would still be referring to the old location so it won't boot.
These are preventable in most cases by choosing the proper options during Ghost restoral. Also in most cases they can be fixed after the fact by modifying the MBR through BCDEdit or other utilities.
The most important thing is that you got this working.