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j walker · Guest

I am having some problems attempting to clone a single partition drive
to a new drive I purchased. The cloning finishes and when I switch the
drives the system will boot but some of the drivers do not function. I
doubt that it matters but it is a 500 MX system.

Has anybody successfully cloned a drive using Ghost and XP Home?

Edward J. Neth · Guest

Which version of Ghost are you using?

"j walker" <SC@alltel.net> wrote in message
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j walker · Guest

On Fri, 12 Dec 2003 13:01:01 GMT, "Edward J. Neth" <ejn63@yahoo.com>
wrote:

Bill · Guest

Ghost worked for me when setting up a new drive back in May (using XP Home
Edition), but it was the 2002 version--which came with a Norton Systemworks
2002 Professional Edition disc that I had purchased on Ebay.

I did have some odd issues when trying to reload two XP partitions onto the
new drive--my Bootmagic partition selector program would not function
properly afterwards. The solution involved not using the partitioning
software that came with my new Maxtor drive. I used the Windows XP disc to
set up partitions instead.

"j walker" <SC@alltel.net> wrote in message
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Ben Myers · Guest

Bill,

Your experience prompts further commentary. Well-intended though it may be, the
software provided by drive manufacturers to set up partitions etc often has
undesirable side effects like you experienced. And, following industry trends,
the hard drive software is rarely documented to explain what the side effects
are.

As a consequence, my long-standing recommendation continues to be to avoid using
said software to partition hard drives. Why? Because one of the side effects
can often be the creation of a non-standard partition recognized by the drive
overlay software which gets installed on the drive. The motive for this is
laudable: Many systems have BIOS limitations which either limit or prevent
installation of a hard drive with a capacity exceeding the BIOS limit. The
non-standard partition and drive overlay software is the method to overcome the
limit, hence the packaging of this software with new retail hard drives. Just
because the software is in the package does not mean one has to use it. In
fact, the package should explain in plain English when to use and when not to
use the manufacturer's software.

But if you have a newer system, it is unlikely to have a BIOS limitation for a
replacement or add-on hard drive. Even if it does, an add-on card such as those
made by Promise is often a more foolproof way of adding a large capacity drive.

One more comment: I rarely use Ghost to clone a drive. Instead, I have found
that Seagate's SeaTools does a fine job and is often easier to use. SeaTools
installs a Windows program on a hard drive to clone the drive. If a computer
can still boot Windows, then SeaTools is the ticket. I use Seatools plus other
software to scavenge data from a failing hard drive, but that's beyond the scope
of this message thread. Seatools warns you if the drive is not a Seagate, but
works just fine anyway... Ben Myers

On Sat, 13 Dec 2003 12:44:58 GMT, "Bill" <wsh@hotmail.com> wrote: