Norton Ghost 15. Cannot see new disk when copying drive

Archive
1

I am hoping someone can help. I am trying to use the Copy Drive Wizard in Ghost 15 to copy a C: drive containing Windows XP Professional from an old IDE drive to a new SATA drive. On running the wizard the second window, in which one specifies the Destination, does not show the new disk. I have deliberately left the new disk unallocated i.e without any drive letter or partitions because this is what I believe you are meant to do in order to copy a drive. The new disk is shown in Disk Management as Basic, Unallocated and Online.

 

How do I get the wizard to see the destination disk? Also when I get to the third window, in which the various copy options are specifed, should I tick the Copy MBR box? I have seen references to say that this should not be ticked for an XP copy.

2

Your correct that the drive copy has to be done into unallocated space because if it has a drive letter assigned then the system will not boot.

 

However, your going to have another problem going from ATA to SATA unless your system has the right SATA drivers installed.

 

Unless you have other SATA drives installed on the system you will need to setup the new drive like it was going to be used as a data drive so windows will load the correct drivers.  After your sure that works you can then use disk management to delete the partition on the drive and do the copy into unallocated space.

 

Dave

3

Thanks for the responses. After further fiddling around (swapping SATA cables around and rebooting the PC) Ghost Copy Drive Wizard was seeing the new disk and giving all the copy options. I then duly copied the original drive to the new one taking care to not allocated a drive letter to the new one, in keeping with advice in other postings in this community.

 

So far so good but then I made the mistake of trying to boot up from the new drive without first of all removing the original one. The result now is that PC will not boot properly from either the new drive or the old one. I guess the operating system has become confused and has written some unwanted stuff into the registry on the old drive which is why the PC will no longer boot from that one whereas it was fine before.

 

I am assuming the best way out now is to get out the original Windows XP CD and do a resinstallation from scratch, and then reinstall all the other applications which are on the old drive. This will be tedious and time consuming to say the least.

 

Can anyone suggest a quicker way of sorting out the mess?

 

 

4

I am hoping someone can help. I am trying to use the Copy Drive Wizard in Ghost 15 to copy a C: drive containing Windows XP Professional from an old IDE drive to a new SATA drive. On running the wizard the second window, in which one specifies the Destination, does not show the new disk. I have deliberately left the new disk unallocated i.e without any drive letter or partitions because this is what I believe you are meant to do in order to copy a drive. The new disk is shown in Disk Management as Basic, Unallocated and Online.

 

How do I get the wizard to see the destination disk? Also when I get to the third window, in which the various copy options are specifed, should I tick the Copy MBR box? I have seen references to say that this should not be ticked for an XP copy.

5

Pete,

 

It should be easy to fix. Can you describe what you see when you try to boot each HD as the only HD in the computer?

6

Hi Brian,

 

Thanks for your offer to have a look at the problem.

 

Because I had messed up the copy to the new drive I (maybe foolishly) deleted the volume on the new drive so that is now back to 100% unallocated. I decided to try and fix the original installation and then have another go at copying it.

 

The original drive is now showing two problems:

 

Firstly, the PC is initially coming up with a boot choice screen where it invites me to choose between Windows XP Professional (which is what the OS is) and Windows XP/2003. It hs only started coming up with this boot choice screen since I tried to boot from the new disk.

 

Secondly, after choosing XP Professional the boot up gets as far as a blue background with the Microsoft Windows XP coloured quadrant logo, and there is gets stuck. It should go on to give my user name and invite a password.

 

If, by the way, I choose the Windows XP/2003 option it goes to a screen where it says "Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. . . . . . " There should'nt  be a XP/2003 option anyway and I don't know where it has come from.

 

I noticed before I deleted the volume on the new disk, that the new volume had been assigned with drive letter C, which I presume is what was required. The old volume had been shifted to drive letter I. Now that bootup is impossible however, I cannot see any drive letters or anything else!

 

I hope all this makes sense to you and that I haven't burned too many bridges with my attempts so far.

7
PeteHutch wrote:

Secondly, after choosing XP Professional the boot up gets as far as a blue background with the Microsoft Windows XP coloured quadrant logo, and there is gets stuck. It should go on to give my user name and invite a password.

 

Pete,

 

We'll fix this first and you will be able to boot into WinXP. Then use msconfig to delete the incorrect boot menu item.

 

Freezing on the blue WinXP screen is due to WinXP not taking the C: drive letter. If you zero the disk signaure it allows WinXP to reassign partition signatures and take the C: drive letter.

 

Here is a cookbook approach to zeroing the Disk Signature. Two methods. Take your pick.

 

1... Using Method #3   http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm#method3

 

Use a Win98 floppy (or a Win98SE floppy). At the A: prompt, type fdisk /mbr and press ENTER. You won't see anything happen. It just goes back to the A: prompt.

 

As most people don't have floppy drives, you can also use a Win98 boot CD from...

 

http://www.allbootdisks.com/download/iso.html

 

Get the Win98SE_bootdisk.iso. Burn the ISO file with ImgBurn. Use the same method. Type fdisk /mbr at the A: prompt and press ENTER.

 

 

2... Using Clear Sig. Download BootIt NG. There is a one month trial usage. Unzip the file and make a boot CD.

 

 double click makedisk.exe, next
 dot in I accept the agreement, next
 no tick for Registration, next
 dot in Mouse Support Enabled, next
 dot in VESA Video, next
 dot in Partition Work (Don't put a dot in Normal), next
 don't choose any Default Device Options (if necessary, these can be chosen in BING), next
 leave Registration strings blank, next
 select your CD burner drive letter (you can use a CD-RW or a CD-R disc)
 Finish

 

Boot from the CD....

 

 the BootIt NG CD boots to the Work with Partitions window
 Using the radio buttons on the left side of the Work with Partitions window, select the appropriate hard drive. (It should  be HD 0)
 click the "View MBR" button.
 click the "Clear Sig" button. Then click OK on the Notice.
 click the "Apply" button.
 click the "View MBR" button again and confirm the number in the left bottom corner is 0x00000000
 click Cancel
 click Close on the "Work with Partitions" window
 click Reboot and remove the CD

8

Many thanks Brian. Your solution was spot on. I downloaded BootIt NG, followed your instructions to the letter, and the orginal XP Professional disk booted up straight away.

 

And then a bonus! I spotted that BootIt NG has a facility for undeleting a volume. I used this facility on the new disk from which I had deleted the volume containing the newly copied XP (as I said in my earlier post I did this thinking I was going to have to start again with the copy). I then cleared the signature in the MBR on the new disk (in the same way as for the old disk) and the new disk is now booting up XP without problem, except....

 

Just one problem remains now. When I turn the PC on it goes to a DOS screen saying:

        Please select the Operating System to Start

                Microsoft Windows XP Professional

                Windows XP / 2003

         Use the up and down arrow keys ......etc



Such a screen should not appear at all because there is only one OS present now. If you could give some advice as to how to get rid of this screen it would be much appreciated. I will make this remaining problem the subject of a separate post for the benefit of other Community members and visitors.

 

Regards,

Peter

9

That dual boot screen is easily fixed by editing C:\boot.ini. It should be read-only, so you will have to change it temporarily so you can modify it.

10

Since you have BootIt you can edit boot.ini from the CD. Select the WinXP partition, click Edit File, select boot.ini, OK, etc.

 

But you really don't need this method if you can boot into WinXP and use Red's method.

 

Red, my boot.ini files aren't read-only. Yours are?

 

And then a bonus! I spotted that BootIt NG has a facility for undeleting a volume. 

 

Excellent! I didn't think to mention the Undelete function.

11

By default, boot.ini is a hidden, read-only, system file.

.

 

 

12

Dave,

 

Is yours read-only? I just looked at 4 WinXP and none have boot.ini as read-only.

13

No, mines not anymore.  But on a new install it is.  I think once you access it through "startup and recovery settings" it changes it since that edit option opens it in notepad.

 

But I do recall it being read only on a new install, trying to change it gives me the read only error and I had to change the attributes and edit it again.

Dave

14

The Windows install I looked at was years old. It was actually a Ghost image that I converted to a VHD for use in Virtual PC. It was hidden and read only. I forgot I had it set to be able to see hidden files.

15

Microsoft Help and Support article 314081 says "By default, Boot.ini is not  flagged as a read-only system file . . . .

I just successfully edited the file on my machine.

16

Hi Brian,

 

I have duly edited Boot.ini using the simple method of opening the file in Notepad. Useful explicit instructions on how to do this are given in Microsoft Help and Support article 289022. Some further information about Boot.ini is given in article 314081. Note that the latter article says "By default Boot.ini is not flagged as a read-only system file . . . . . ". Mine was editable without problem.

 

All is working fine now. XP is booting up from the new SATA disk much faster than from the old IDE disk, as you would expect. Thanks again for your help.

17

I have the same problem with a new PATA drive installed as a slave to my old IDE drive.   The system Device Manager sees the new drive but the Copy Drive wizard in Norton Ghost 15 does not.  I'm running Windows XP Professional.

I see that a solution was declared for this invisible drive problem somewhere in this reply thread but I wasn't able to discern what it was.  (..was it the 'further fiddling around'?) 

 

Could someone please be more explicit on how I make this new drive selectable as a Copy destination?  Or perhaps offer some suggestions on what I might try next?

 

Thank you.

 

 

18

jrw55,

 

Have a look in Disk Management. Is your new HD "Unallocated Space" ? It should be. No partitions.

 

Can you see that same amount of Unallocated Space in the Ghost wizard for HD 1?

19

If you can't see the unallocated space in Ghost I think I know what is wrong.

20

My new disk is visible in Disk Management.  It's not listed in the upper pane with the Volume names but it is captured in the lower pane.  There it shows as Disk 1  Unknown ... Not Initialized.   The partition pane says 'Unallocated'.