I've used earlier Ghost before on windows xp to make a drive image, then restored it to disk multiple times with no problems.
Now my newish windows 7 boot drive is failing and I need to replace it. How in the world do I do this? REALLY wish there was a "clone drive" like before that would I've read 20 posts and they all say something different.
IF I clone the C drive, DOES it clone the system partition as well? Or will I be dead in the water? I have another empty 1TB drive just like boot ready to go.
Put simply, what does one DO to "Ghost" the boot drive in win7?
And to whine a little, why does this need to be so confusing? That's rhetorical :)
Thanks for any help, hopefully someone will just say "Yes, hit clone drive, it will copy the DRIVE not just the C partition, and you can boot to it as soon as you tell the Bios it's the boot drive"
First off, make sure you are running Ghost 15 SP1. There was a problem with the drive copy function in the original Ghost 15 release.
Since you are running Windows 7, I'm assuming you have a System Reserved Partition (SRP) along with a partition that Windows resides on (the C:\ drive).
The new drive should be blank (The current Windows install should have never seen it). If it is not blank, use disk management to delete all partitions.
You will need to copy the SRP first, then the Windows (C:\) partition second. The SRP will be marked Active and Primary. You should also copy the disk signature (if that's an option) and MBR. The Windows partition will be marked Primary and copy disk signature (if that's an option).
After the 2 partitions are copied, shut down the PC and disconnect the original drive the first time you boot. If you do not do this, the drive letters will likely get hosed up and cause a no boot situation the first time the original drive is out of the system.
Most of the members here prefer to make a backup and restore it to the new drive. It seems to be friendlier than the copy drive function.
See THIS POST for more information on the partition settings (thanks Brian K!).
Well, I did copy disk, first the SRP (system reserved 100gig) to my new unpartitioned 1TB drive, then I went back to copy disk and copied the C boot disk to the new unpartitioned 1TB drive.
I did not see any option to copy disk ID?
I've ALSO done a full backup of the SRP and the boot drive to another drive, my F drive.
My thought on how to proceed now (I'm scared to reboot now, d/t norton ghost's new lack of clarity, thanks norton) anyway, my current thought is
1: shut down, pull out C drive and put the new 1TB on it's SATA cable (thus avoiding going into BIOS, as it will have same SATA ID).
2: reboot
and it SHOULD boot ok?
If THAT fails I boot to the Ghost 15 disk and try a "restore data" and restore the SRP and boot partition to the new drive, and THAT should work too yes?
I think as long as you shut down and remove the original drive, it will boot. After it is booted, you can shutdown and reintroduce the original drive. If it fails, you can recover from your F: drive and that should work. If that fails, you can reinstall the original drive.
So, shut down last night, pulled the boot drive out, moved the new drive to it's sata cable... and the machine would not boot. said bootmgr was missing. Tried using the windows7 disk to "repair startup" and it failed repeatedly.
SO, then tried restoring from the backup I made to another drive, restoring to the new disk. This too failed and resulted in an unbootable system.
after 4 hours of messing with this I gave up for the night, this morning I put the old failing drive back in on the boot sata cable, and it booted at least.
AGAIN, how do I clone my failing drive? Windows7 already does backup, I purchased ghost specifically to be able to Ghost my boot drive.
Where am I going wrong? I've followed the instructions (clone System 100G partition and c: partition, backing both up etc.)
Is the drive you are copying to unallocated space? If you are creating the partitions that is the problem.
With only the new drive connected, boot the Recovery Disc.
Point the cursor to the upper left corner of the GUI and it should change to a finger. Click it to open a command prompt (see below).
Now type...
DISKPART
LIST DISK (The new drive should be listed.)
SELECT DISK 0 (substitute the number shown above for the 0 if it is different.)
CLEAN DISK
Now plug in your USB drive and type LIST DISK again. If both drives are shown, close the command prompt and do the recovery. If the USB drive does not show, reboot the PC into the Recover Environment again and do the recovery.
the backup isn't on a usb drive, it's on another sata drive further down the sata chain.
your instructions (
DISKPART
LIST DISK (The new drive should be listed.)
SELECT DISK 0 (substitute the number shown above for the 0 if it is different.)
CLEAN DISK)
after this, try the restore to the disk again I assume?
On the restore, I have some confusion, it doesn't let me choose to restore both the SRP AND the boot drive, what/how do I DO the restore to the new disk?
Note that no changes are done to any drives until you commit at the end of the wizard.
From the Recovery Environment open the Recover My Computer wizard.
Read the stuff shown then click next.
The wizard should search for recovery points. When it is done, it will have either found some or will say it can't find automatically them. On the next screen choose to view files by Filename.
Browse to and select the SRP .v2i file....
Click Next. Now click Edit and if the target drive is blank, it should show as unallocated space. If not, choose the partitions and click Delete (make sure you are not choosing the wrong drive!). Check the boxes as shown below...
Click OK. Now click the ADD button and add the C drive .v2i file...
Click Edit again to edit the C drive parameters. NOTE: If you want to resize the drive, click the Delete Drive button. You can then put a check in the Resize drive after recover box and choose the new size.
Check the box as shown. Click OK...
Click Next...
Verify the settings and click Finish...
Click Yes on the next screen and Ghost will restore your image to your new drive.
it didn't give an option for the SRP, I think before I try again I will redo the backup and make SURE i have a good SRP backup. The "backup browser" on the norton boot environment just listed dates and wouldn't let me select the SRP to restore (which would easily explain the unbootability...
garbage in garbage out (can't restore to a bad backup)
so... that'll be my first thing when I get back to that system. Thanks for going over all these basics ad nauseum, but SOMEWHERE in here something's going wrong. And luckily the drive is just STARTING to fail, so there's time to trial and error like this!
Unfortunately I'm at work, that computer's at home, I'll have to get back to you later on with that.
Basically I'm just starting all this over. So I'd LIKE to give the "clone disk" method a try, hrm, maybe not actually, in general I will more need the restore method (I'm MORE concerned with recovery from a sudden failure)
so nevermind on "clone disk"
I'll get back to you later on with the v2i filenames. I DO know that prior to last night, I was just backing up the C partition (use of the word "disk" had me thinking it was the disk, not a partition oops) And when I did the manual backup, it DID pop up requesting a filename for the v2i, i selected the default and overwrote...twice... so it's completely possibly in my rush to get to bed I may have overwritten my backups or something.
In short I'll look up the v2i's and go more deliberately when making the backup of the SRP and C: partitions.
Still learning windows7, had xp down pretty well, but by trade am a *nix admin. So long as I keep patient, this is an interesting learning experience. And worst happens (drive fails fully), I should be able to reinstall win7 and still restore to one of the C backups I've been making weekly, yes? (though I'm still going to stick with this restore stuff until that happens)
OK, worked on this a bit more over the weekend, the original boot drive is now nonfunctional so it's disconnected, the replacement drive is in system, and I have my "Norton Backups" folder on my F drive.
Boot to Norton Ghost 15 disk (cd) and select to restore system to a point where it worked. I see what I'd done wrong last time, somehow missed the "ADD" button and hadn't restored the two partitions, rectify that this time. MISS only setting the system reserved partition active so get no bootable os, guess correctly what I'd done wrong...
Reboot to cd, use the utilities to edit partitions and set the System Reserved Partition (SRP) to be the one booted.
Restart. NOW, it gets to "Starting Windows" and just sits there forever with the 4color windows logo on screen and nothing further.
Hate to bother you more... but any ideas now? Boot to Windows7 dvd and try a repair?
Did you set the check marks like this POST suggests...
Restore to a new HD if a SRP is present
For the SRP
Verify recovery point before restore Partition type : Primary Check for file system errors after recovery Set drive active (for booting OS) Restore original disk signature Restore master boot record
For Win7
Verify recovery point before restore Resize drive after recover (unallocated space only) (ONLY if you want to) Partition type : Primary Check for file system errors after recovery
SRP
I don't see why it would hurt to boot from the Windows 7 disc and try a startup repair but I think it the problem has something to do with one of your restore settings.
Yes, those are the settings I used during restore. I can try another restore tonight just to be sure though, I think I'll try the Windows7 disk boot repair first, just in case.
Any other things to add to the evening's attack plan? :)
Restart. NOW, it gets to "Starting Windows" and just sits there forever with the 4color windows logo on screen and nothing further.
awoodby,
I've seen that too and I can't recall what caused it. I certainly couldn't fix it and I suggest you restore the images again. Delete all partitions from the new HD before you start,
So windows7 disk startup recovery did nothing, the error as shown trying to boot safe mode was with the upnp.sys driver.
I did another restore, and with little optimism, booted it late last night, and it came up juuuust fine!
I will reboot it a couple of times tonight just for confidence's sake, then return and post my thank you's and final info. Thank you a ton for all the help! Not that a reinstall of windows is the end of the world, but it's certainly nice to not have to take the 2 weeks to reinstall alllll my applications!