Re: 'Copy Drive' feature of Symantec's GHOST 10

WQ: The various ways to create a working clone of an OS
do have confusing names. The process of creating a
"drive image", a condensed non-bootable image of the
Master, and then "Recovering" that to an exact clone
of the original, bootable, is a two-step process which
I have made work...dependably.

The process known as "Copy Disk" is a one-step process,
whereby a Master is supposed to be exactly duplicated on
a Slave drive, which then is supposed to be a bootable
exact clone of the original. I'm trying to make that work
because it's easier than a two-step time-consuming process.
Funny thing about my lack of success is that the "Copied Drive"
will boot and function smoothly in Slave position on the IDE
cable, but hangs in the light blue Logo screen when booting
as a Master. Obviously the MBR or something up front like
that is not being copied, but half a dozen Symantec techies
haven't been able to get it fixed. I'm still pursuing this
because so many people say it works.....and Symantec owes
it to me. As I said, I can make clones by the two-step
Drive Image and then Restore (old PQRE in PowerQuest language)
but Mount Everest is still there to be climbed.

Wquuinn wrote:
Brian you need to read my message again. The copy of one hard drive to another hard drive is not restoring an image. And yes I know you can boot from the Norton CD, but I choose not to boot with the CD when I can use a floppy with PC DOS. DOS is still a great avenue to copy disks.

Again I say - my system works for me and has worked for years.

Bquinn

"Brian A." <gonefish'n@afarawaylake> wrote in message news:OohMLF$nGHA.764@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Wquuinn" <wquinn1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:%233fHbV%23nGHA.4864@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I have two drives in my computer and they are the same size. Drive D is used as a backup in case I have trouble booting with C drive or some software problems.

I have been using Ghost for years to copy C drive to D drive as a backup and I must tell you that I have had to use D drive to copy a working system back to C drive a few times when I have had trouble.
It appears that you are restoring an image of the drive, not copying or cloning. If you were to copy/clone a drive partition to another dirive/partition, you are essentially creating a working bootable disk and there is no need to copy the files back to the original drive. All that one needs to do is swap out the active bootable disks. When you create a backup image of a drive/partition, you are not copying/cloning the destination drive to be bootable, you are only saving a restorable image on it in case something goes wrong with the source disk, which can then be rstored by the saved image.

Currently I am using a floppy disk which starts PC DOS to run the program. This disk was made by using Ghost 2003. And yes I installed a floppy disk drive in my new computer just to run Ghost.
You don't need a floppy Ghost boot disk w/2003, you can boot Ghost from the install CD or a command prompt path to ghost.exe on the drive. As well, if one wishes they can create a CD/DVD startup disk w/Ghost to access images.

I do this each weekend to insure that I will be able to copy D drive to C drive if I have any booting or software problems occur with C drive.
What if you make any critical system changes, install/uninstall software, update apps/files, install MS Crit Updates and something goes bang on Thursday? You have lost at the least 4 days of work/changes that aren't recoverable from the last backup image. The safe way is to create an image before any critical changes are made and after any critical files/docs are created/updated you need are in case something goes bang. Of course, instead of creating an entire image every time just because a file/doc was created/updated, it's best to have a separate incremental image for those.

It works well for me. If you have problems it takes any where from 10 to 50 minutes to copy the files (depending on the size of your disk drive.
Lordy, I wish mine would complete in that time. Those days are Scarlett O'hara.


--

Brian A. Sesko { MS MVP_Shell/User }
Conflicts start where information lacks.
http://basconotw.mvps.org/

Suggested posting do's/don'ts: http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375







--
William B. Lurie
.

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