I brought an SSD, which came with a norton ghost cd for cloning my old hard drive.. However, the norton ghost doesn't show EFI system partition, which is the primary partition to clone..
I also tried to bypass the EFI system partition, but when I turn on laptop only shows "error" after UEFI screen..
what can I do??
CookieQ,
In Ghost have you ticked "Show hidden drives"?
Can you post a screenshot of the remainder of Disk Management?
I did tick "show hidden drives", still not showing up the EFI partition..
CookiiQ,
I think Brian is refering to the full "Disk Management" view.
If you right click the Computer Icon and then click Manage and "disk management" it should look something like this shot.
Deric
Looks like the 100 mb partition wasn't backed up, I would run another full backup onto your destination drive and highlight all the partitions including the 100mb partition and ghost will backup up the lot.
Then you will need to use that backup to "clone" your new drive but this time run them one at a time transfering all of the partitions if you want a complete copy.
Deric
The pics in message 3 weren't approved when I posted my pic.
Deric
How big is your SSD?
Do you plan on using it for just the windows partition or did you want everything on it?
We can see that although your drive is less than 2.5TB you have 6 primary partitions and thats not possible with MBR partitions.
Did you set it up that way for that reason, you wanted all primary partitions instead of logical drives in an extended partition?
Dave
Re your disk Management. Are we looking at a roughly 320 GB SSD? Did you install Win 7 yourself and create GPT partitions?
I just want to clone my C and D drives to 128GB SSD..
I don't know much about cloning, I just followed instruction that comes with the software, which I need to clone EFI partition first if I want my OS.. and i do want it..
what is MBR partitions??
and I have no idea about primary and logical partitions, I didn't care about it because I don't know which one is better..
I just set them as default I guess.. I just want 6 partitions..
the disk management shows my stock HDD which is 320GB..
I installed win 7 myself but I don't remember that if i created GPT partitions..
I don't even know what is GPT partitions..
well, I am new to this software, and your suggestion seems too difficult and too complicated to me..
I just installed Norton yesterday, didn't back up anything yet..
the only thing I want to do is cloning my C and D to new drive..
Before you even think about "cloning" a drive what you must do is backup your primary drive as I said earlier onto an external destination drive.
That image can then be used to transfer onto your new drive, but the new drive has to be prepared properly to enable a "image transfer" to succeed.
In the past I have tried to post simple instructions on how to do this so if you read this post Here you should be able to do a drive copy or image transfer.
In this case do not select "copy my hard drive" follow those instructions and it will work ok.
When you do the transfer select each partition individually and don't forget to use the edit function to delete the phantom drive.
Deric
Deric, you may be overlooking the fact that it's a EFI system partition.
I'm not sure if it would work like a regular partition. I was waiting to see what Brian thought about it.
It would be nice to be able to simply image/restore or copy drive the 2 partitions and then fix the boot but I have no idea if you could do that and end up with standard MBR partitions or not.
It's almost like you would need to make a soup bowl and then pour the soup into the bowl.
Or find a way to copy the EFI partition and leave it like it is.
CookieQ wrote:I installed win 7 myself but I don't remember that if i created GPT partitions..I don't even know what is GPT partitions..
CookieQ,
Unfortunately you have made things difficult for yourself. You have created a GPT drive rather than a MBR drive and I think Ghost 15 is incompatible with EFI partitions.
I think we can copy Win7 and your data to the SSD but it will have to be a MBR drive. Would you like to try?
Can you tell us about your computer? Perhaps it doesn't support MBR drives.
Thanks a lot guys..
Brian, I would like to try.. But are MBR drives disbenefit for SSD?? Is the procedure complicate.. Actually, I am thinking about shift to other clone software, if you guys have any suggestion which one is better than Norton Ghost..
My laptop is Lenovo ThinkPad X120e with E-350 APU, 6G ram, win 7 ultimate SP1 64-bit, HDD 320 WD blue..
It's about one year old laptop..
The Samsung SSD's model is : MZ-7PC128N/AM
I called Norton customer service this afternoon.. I wasted about 3 hrs with a stupid technician, who remotely controlled my laptop, and did the same thing as the way I copied my disk, and he had no idea why it still didn't work..
This is second time that I am so disappointed with Norton's product.. Last time was few years back with norton's antivirus product.
CookieQ,
This test won't take you long. Most folks use SSD as a MBR drive.
Install your SSD. Boot into Win7 and delete any partitions on the SSD (use Disk Management). If Disk Management or Ghost asks to Initialize the drive then say Yes but don't choose GPT. You want the whole SSD to be unallocated space.
Start Ghost and run Copy Drive. Copy the Win7 partition (only) to the unallocated space on the SSD. Use these options...
Check source for file system errors
Check destination for file system errors
Set drive active (for booting OS)
DON'T SELECT Disable SmartSector copying
DON'T SELECT Ignore bad sectors during copy
Don't Copy MBR
Destination partition type : Primary
Drive letter : None
Shutdown and remove the old HD. Only have the SSD installed. Power on and you should see a Windows Boot Manager error. That's expected.
Boot from a Win7 disc
On the Install Windows screen click Next
Repair your computer
Repair and restart
Boot from a Win7 disc again
On the Install Windows screen click Next
Repair your computer
dot in Use recovery tools....., Next
Startup Repair
Finish
Restart
Fingers crossed. Does Win7 now boot from the SSD?
Edit... If it doesn't work we may have to confirm whether the SSD is a GPT drive or not.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/574314-what-needed-switch-bios-mbr-uefi-gpt-2.html
You should investigate this before trying the above procedure.
DaveH wrote:Deric, you may be overlooking the fact that it's a EFI system partition.
I'm not sure if it would work like a regular partition. I was waiting to see what Brian thought about it.
It would be nice to be able to simply image/restore or copy drive the 2 partitions and then fix the boot but I have no idea if you could do that and end up with standard MBR partitions or not.
It's almost like you would need to make a soup bowl and then pour the soup into the bowl.
Or find a way to copy the EFI partition and leave it like it is.
Dave,
Yes you are right, I had definitely missed it, I am lost on that one though, I haven't got a clue what a EFI system partition is,
my concern really was to get the primary drive backed up safely before trying a "clone" and messing about.
This is of course where I can learn a lot from Brian and your good self so I will be very interested in the outcome, I honestly thought that Ghost 15 would backup-copy any partition, you live and learn.
If I did purchase a laptop I would be more inclined to simplify the primary drive and get rid of what I would call complicated partitions.
I have had no problems in the past relying totally on Ghost to safeguard the pc and will continue to do so in the future.
As long as the laptop was shipped with the recovery DVD containing the O/S and utilities could that be done?.
Deric
It is mentioned above that he is using Windows 7 Ultimate. If Bitlocker is being used, he still needs the System Reserved Partition. If not, disregard.
Brian's link above is correct. There may be some ways to work around the EFI issue, but in the end, EFI is currently not supported by Ghost.
