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Message Edited by Tony_Weiss on 08-27-2008 10:23 PM
Is a different capacity hard drive considered "different hardware"? I am trying to move from a 40gb to a 160 gb drive on my IBM Thinkpad T40. The original drive is partitioned with a C, D and a hidden service partition. I successfully created a recovery point with the original drive on an external USB drive. I then installed the new drive and tried to recover after booting with the recovery CD. It gave me the option to restore C and D but said that the hidden partition was invalid. I selected C and D drives. Some 14 hour later the process was completed but it will not boot windows. I can use the recovery CD's Explore to see the C, D drives and all the data. When I reboot to the drive I get TWO choices to run XP Professional and asked to select the OS. One selection says that the HW config is wrong and it can not read the disk. The other (same title but with a "#1" after it) says it is missing "hal.dll".
When I select "change active partition" I get a error 5017 but it shows ID as the entire drive, and ID 2 as the service partition.It reports ID#1 as primary and bootable. It reports ID 2 as not visible.
Any suggestions?
George
Looking from this section of English, my understanding is, he wants shifts in the 40g hard disk’s system and the data to the new 160g hard disk on. Realizes specifically the method, first uses the 40g hard disk initialize the system, under clear spatial HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ MountedDevices registry information, after the close-down, uses ghost immediately disk to the disk clone hard disk, if the 160g hard disk already contained the data, keeps fully approximately the 40g space before the 160g hard disk’s part, uses partition to partition to duplicate the hard disk, then meets the 160g hard disk in the notebook, the system initiation discovers the new hard disk, starts once more, the data shift finished.
Uses ghost disk to disk or partition to partition time, the district size may redefine, so long as is bigger than in original partition the document actual capacity then
No, different size is not considered different hardware. It sounds like the manufacturers troublesome hidden partitions – they sometimes seem to be more trouble than they are worth. When you created the recovery point, did you back things up with just one job or with multiple jobs? Also, on the Restore which option did you use to select the recovery point (by Date, FIlename, or System)?
With the original drive installed, I selected "one time backup". The wizard shows the C, D and hidden service drive (had show hidden checked). Selected all three for backup. Backed up to external USB drive with standard compression but not sure if I selected "verify recovery point". I did not run any command files. Since I selected everything at once, I assume that this is one job
I then removed the original HD and installed the new 160gb and booted with the recovery CD.
Selected "recover my computer". I was presented with the recovery point stored on the USB drive. It say it contained C, D and service disks. I selected all three even though it said that the service partition was invalid. That didn't work. I tried again and selected only the C, D drives. That didn't work. Now if I try to recover as above, the "Recover My Computer Wizard" says all drives and target drives are invalid, probably because it no longer sees the original C drive (confirmed by using "explore my computer"). If I reinstall the original HD, all recovery points are valid. I did not see an option to select a recovery point. The wizard presented a list sorted by date - and there was only one created.
All I want to do is clone the 40 gb onto the 160gb. I realize that some translations need to occur because of the different geometry, but I though Ghost did that stuff.
At the point that you are presented with a recovery point, there is just above the area where the recovery point is listed a little drop down list box. The default value is set to Date. In the list you can choose Filename or System. I would try System first. Then browse to your USB drive and select the .sv2i file. That should set it up to restore everything. Let me know how it works for you.
To answer your question, yes Ghost does all the things necessary to lay and image down on a different drive which has a different geometry, i.e. the sectors per track, cylinders, etc. However, what you are running into is not geometry related. It sounds more like the OS is setup to boot out of the second partition (because the hidden partition is the first). And then when it gets laid down as the first partition, there are things in the OS making it think it is in the second which, of course, it can't find in the second partition since that is now the D: drive or it doesn't exist if you have not restored it yet.
gizmoman,
I think the trick is to use a blank (uninitialized) disk with no partitions. You need to make sure all the hidden partitions are removed too. To make the disk totally blank I used diskpart (http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/02/29/delete-and-remove-to-unlock-eisa-hidden-recovery-or-diagnostic-partition-in-vista/). If you don't have any hidden partitions, it maybe easier to do it with Disk Manageent in Windows.
I was was struggling with this myself for few weeks now, trying to use the Copy My Hard Drive tool, but that of course did not work because that would be too easy to make the tool do what its name suggests. Thanks to your post I finally found the route (however obscure and illogical) do it and it worked for me.
This is the procedure that allowed me to clone entire hard-disk on a DELL Vostro 1700 laptop:
1) In Ghost 14.0 use the One time backup tool.
2) Check Show Hidden Drives check-box in the upper-right corner of the window.
3) Select all partitions/drives on the disk.
4) Performed backup onto the second HDD.
5) Replaced first HDD with new blank one.
6) Booted with the recovery CD.
7) Selected Recover My Computer.
8) In the drop-list-box above the list of recovery points, I selected System.
9) Browsed to find .sv2i file where I made the backup.
10) In the next step Ghost showed me the list of backup drives/partitions and automatically assigned them to the blank disk. I proceeded with the restore without altering any settings.
11) One hour later computer booted from the newly created HDD.
Note! As of this posting I did not verify if other partitions were recreated correctly, but at least the bootable C: drive was OK.
It baffles the mind, how come a multi-billion company like Symantec could not make a simple and clear process that would make cloning the disk possible without wasting weeks on searching the Internet. It also baffles the mind that Symantec experts don't know how to use their own products. Right after purchasing Ghost I contacted Symantec via their web-chat session asking for help to clone the disk because I could not find a way to do it myself. A technician offered to connect remotely to my PC to show me how to clone the drive. Unfortunately, after 30 minutes of looking at all the partitions and fiddling with Copy My Hard Drive, he concluded it could not be done i one easy step and I was offered a refund. Searching the Internet I came across quite a few people who had the same problem and were misguided by Symantec support. Some even suggested to buy Ghost Solution Suite, the business version of the application. I am a software developer myself and I know how difficult it is to make a product that is easy to use by everyone out there. But the lacking of any clear explanations how to make this cumbersome "disk cloning" procedure work just plain sucks. Other than that, Ghost is a very good tool.
Message Edited by bartuniek on 09-28-2008 02:37 AM
Message Edited by bartuniek on 09-28-2008 02:42 AM
Thanks Bartuniek, Starting from an unpartitioned drive fixed the invalid drive problem for the most part.
I remove all partitions from the target drive and then try to recover using the system file. I did this by installing the target drive as a USB and then using Disk Management, delete all partitions. PQ then showed that the partition was deleted.
Tried to restore with the system file and got an error that the hidden partition was not found… " There are problems with some of the entries in the system index file. Entry3: E0BC002:object SME~computer!Sg31B9D75A~M31B9D75A~M31B9D75Aregion-0~P72960000 not found.” Requests that I selected each entry with a problem and then click the “change” button to resolve. Entry 3 refers to the hidden recovery partition. If I select the entry, a red “X” appears. It appears to allow me to continue with the recovery process so I initiated the restore with all three checked. It will take about 5 hours to restore all three partitions. Stay tuned!
George
Well… 18 hours later and the system still will not boot.
when I select one I get an error “windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk…” I can see the service partition in the pqboot tool. It appears that the executable in the boot sector is pointing to the wrong place on the new 160 drive.