- I am just curious as to how you know that Symantec is aware of this bug and the details we have on it? Are you with Symantec; and if not, is there a bug reporting system somewhere that you have access to?
- The IDE hardware is a bit more painful to deal with, than the SATA hardware was. I will not have time to open up the hardware again (in order to fulfill your request) until the weekend.
OK. Thanks again.
There is a special section for Gurus. I'm not with Symantec but I've discussed this issue with Symantec staff and the issue is being investigated. We'll have to wait and see what eventuates.
Thanks. However, for those of us that do not have your Symantec access, how do we find out that Symantec has published a fix, as they could easily release an update that does not fix this specific problem?
I believe that you can only have one active HD in a system at a time. One of the things I noticed in Diskpart and pmagic is when you set another drive active the first drives boot flag is removed.
So, this sounds normal to me.
Moveover, it would be nice if you could tell Ghost which HD to activate. (Which you were leaving in the system.)
Bruce
Message Edited by brucehobson on 01-08-2010 05:35 PM
I also had the problem were I added a pair of 500 GB drives as a mirrored drive to my system. After everything was working fine. I then asked Ghost 15 to clone the Startup drive over to the new Mirrored drive. Ghost did the work and never complained.
Afterwards I took out the old startup drive. And tried to come up on the new mirrored drive. No Luck...
After, trying many times I finally reinstalled Windows 7 on the mirrored drive and used up another activation. And then spent many days reinstalling every program all over again. What Fun!!!!
I think Ghost needs a little more work on the copy drive function when using Windows 7...
Bruce
Thanks. Having more than one active HD was always okay in the past. Not that I liked Vista, but all of this worked just fine in Vista with Ghost 14. However, Ghost 15 and Win7 seem to have trouble with cloning an HD.
Just thought I would checkpoint with you to see if you are hearing any news / status from the Guru channels of Symantec regarding this issue?
Nothing yet. When I have further information I’ll start a new thread.
So, I take it that there is no way to find out about what Symantec is doing with this issue, other than constant checking of the forums?
I hope a fix is close at hand. Even so, it only takes a minute to make each HD boot.
I don't use Copy Drive even for upgrading to a new HD. I only use it for testing. Here are my reasons for not using Copy Drive for backups.
Images vs. clones as a backup.
Images can be created on a schedule so no manual effort is required. Clones have to be done manually and ideally the new HD should be disconnected from the motherboard after the clone process unless you are using a boot manager which can hide each OS from the other.
Images are files, so you can keep multiple generations. A clone gives you just one generation.
Images can be stored anywhere a file can be stored. Even a USB flash drive, SD card, network drive or optical disc. Clones cannot.
Images can be compressed and only capture sectors in use. Clones are not only uncompressed, they also duplicate free space in the partition.
A clone doesn't always boot just by removing the old HD. If you have broken the rules of cloning, the clone won't boot at all but will require some type of repair to get it to boot.
Understood, on the wait and see for a solution to this problem. On a separate note, should there be a reason that I cannot burn a back up copy of the Ghost 15 recovery disk. It has not been a problem in the past; however, I cannot seem to create a back up copy of the CD that boots properly.
Hi All,
I just heard from the team that a defect has been raised in our internal bug tracking system. Our team is currently looking into the issue.
Thanks,
TomV
Norton Forums Moderator
Symantec Corporation
Since someone new just posted what appears to be a somewhat official Symantec acknowledgement of the issue in their bug reporting system, I am just curious if you are hearing any status updates on this issue through your contacts?
Mike, I guess you are asking me.
You should see something next month.
I've been cloning drives for many years with many different products (including Ghost) and I would definitely agree that this is a serious problem.
I have been looking into getting Ghost 15 either for clients or family members and this thread has seriously put me off.
I'm wondering if there is something going on with Windows 7 and copy protection features. For example, Microsoft product activation technology for quite a while now has had the ability to enumerate the hardware components of a PC in order to attempt to discover illegal software usage.
One of the hardware components that Microsoft looks at is the hard drive. HDD's have unique identifying numbers associated with them, even two 'identical" HDD models. The PC can query this over the IDE or SATA interface.
I wonder if Windows 7 writes a hash of this "HDD serial number" into the registry somewhere when installed or first booted, and then if the OS installation is cloned onto a HDD with a different "HDD serial number", when it initially starts booting it discovers the discrepancy and kills off some bootfiles until someone inserts the original OS DVD to repair it?
This could be tested by cloning the current boot disk (call this drive A) to a 2nd, identical model HDD (call this drive B), ERASE the partitions on Drive A, then use either Ghost or some other imaging/cloning software or hardware to clone Drive B BACK to Drive A.
If my theory is correct, it would then boot normally, since it is back on the HDD with the same "HDD serial number" it was originally installed on.
(BTW - another thread on this issue suggested that the problem was a deleted "Winload.exe" file.)
Phil
Phil,
If you use the image/restore method, Ghost 15 does a good job and the new HD boots on the first attempt.
The cloning engine is at fault and I gather an update next month will fix this. When using Copy Drive the Disk Signature is not being copied from the old to the new HD and erroneous BCD stores are written to both HDs. If you are adept at fixing these issues, it takes less than a minute to make each HD boot. But of course you shouldn't have to fix it yourself.
Noting your post of 1/14 comparing "copy drive" with "image/restore", I'm not familiar with the terminology Ghost is now using re: "copy drive", as I have historically used either the older Ghost versions or other products. (I bought Ghost 14 a while back for one client using XP on a laptop but haven't installed it yet and have been wondering whether I should upgrade it to 15 before installing it)
Historically I have tended to use what I guess Symantec now refers to as "cold" imaging - ie booting from a dedicated backup OS image, so the host OS is not running during backup. (Although I have also used "v2i Protector" - the Powerquest product that current Ghost products were originally derived from - and Acronis live image backup products.)
I'm not quite sure why "image/restore" could not be flexible in terms of where the image files were stored - outside of the limitations imposed by the fact that it's running "live" on the host OS. Most of the tools I have used in the past allowed me to save images of either partitions or entire drives to any storage device visible to the environment they run under.
I'm now starting to get up to speed with Win7 and have been looking into backup options - but this issue (and other reports of issues like freezes while backing-up and inability to restore NTFS junction points) has spooked me away from Ghost 15 so far.
Phil,
There is no doubt that Cloning from Windows is more error prone than Cloning in DOS. But if you follow the rules it is rewarding.
One point that is easily missed is that none of the Windows Ghosts can clone a whole HD. They do partition clones. In DOS Ghost terms, there is no Disk to Disk. Copy Drive is Partition to Partition in DOS Ghost terms. I don't mind a partition to partition copy but I prefer the image/restore method.
With the Windows Ghosts you can only do Copy Drive from Windows, not from the boot disk. With Ghost 15, images can be created from Windows or from the boot disk. Hot or Cold. Ghost 14 can't do cold imaging.
You mentioned storage and saving Ghost images. Yes, anywhere a file can be stored.
I'm looking forward to the update and I'll report on whether it is satisfactory.
A definition so we can confirm we are using the same terminology...
What is the difference between an "image" and a "clone"?"
http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/notes.htm#note14
I've actually never really experienced a major functional difference between what you are calling "image" and "clone", as long as the user didn't do something inadvisable like changing settings in the imaging utility to something that caused the copy to differ from the original. (newer imaging products typically hide most of these "knobs and switches" from the user so it's harder for people to do something dumb like that. :P ) I'd be inclined to think the main distinction should be between "hot" or "cold" imaging. Good to know about that new feature in v15.
"There is no doubt that Cloning from Windows is more error prone than Cloning in DOS."
Actually I think most modern "cold imaging" products tend to use Linux these days. (Well - other than Terabyte Unlimited I guess..)
Phil,
I can see that we aren't on the same wavelength regarding image and clone. An image is a file. After it has been restored the result could be called a clone.
For example, creating an image with Ghost will create a v2i file. There is no "clone" until that image has been restored to a HD. Image/restore is a 2 stage process. Copy Drive is a 1 stage process.
Quoting from Dan Goodell....
Pleonasm said:
"So, the scope of “cloning” is an entire physical hard disk whereas the scope of imaging is a partition – right?"
No, you're talking apples and oranges here. A clone is an exact duplicate of the original, regardless of whether it's a partition or a whole disk. An image is a file whose contents can be used to create a clone, but it is, itself, not a clone. You can have an image of a partition or a whole disk, but in neither case would you have a clone--you would have an image, which you could use to create a clone of the original partition or a clone of the original disk. The scope of either--image or clone--could be one partition, multiple partitions, or whole disk.
El_P. talks of:
"the final results of performing either (1) a "disk-to-disk" cloning operation of said disk; or (2) a complete "disk-to-image" backup/"image-to-disk" restore cycle would be the same."
That's true--the result of both is a clone. But I would emphasize that scenario (2) is actually two separate steps, and it's only 'cloning' if both are performed. And that's not always the case. It's common to make image files that never get restored. That's not cloning, that's imaging. Put imaging together with restoring, and now you've got cloning. Whether it's back to the same hard disk or a new hard disk is irrelevant--apples and oranges.
Nightowl said:
"When you use 'cloning software' to create an 'image file'--'disk-to-image' for example--you are introducing an intermediate step--a 'file' creation--but it is 'cloning' just the same--just not re-creating the HDD structure directly onto another HDD."
I have to disagree a bit with this. The intermediate step is itself an end result--the image. But it's not 'cloning' until you take the separate step of restoring the image back to a hard disk or partition.
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.