Norton ghost 2003/partition magic 8.0 [cloning a hard disk]

Ghost 2003 should be able to clone Disk-To-Disk the original to the new. It should recreate the partitions and resize them proportinally. By that, I mean a 100 GB hard disk in two partitions, 25 GB and 75 GB which is cloned to a 200 GB hard disk will have the partition sizes 50 GB and 150 GB. Ghost 2003 will give you the opportunity to change the sizes but not allow a partition size into which the data won't fit.

The original hard disk should be unaffected by cloning to the new and you must disconnect the clone before restarting Windows. To do that, DO NOT let Ghost reset the computer but tell it to continue and choose "EXIT ". When Ghost has shut down, turn the computer off at the power switch. Next, remove the clone.

If you want to verify that the clone works, SUBSTITUTE it for the original. Both must not be connected at the same time.

An alternative to cloning Disk-To-Disk is to create an Image > Disk-To-Image. The whole backup hard disk won't be "wasted ", only the space needed for the used space.

(I edited yout thread title to be more descriptive.)

Christer

 

You must open the case and physically disconnect the original and connect the clone on the controller. They should not be connected at the same time, except for the time when cloning.

(I don't think that you can set the boot priority in BIOS to boot from an USB hard disk but you can find out in the motherboard manual.)

Christer

 

The reason for not having both hard disks connected at the same time (when Windows boots) is that both hard disks will have the same volume identifiers. Windows can not have that and will rewrite the identifiers for the hard disk not connected to the original controller. This will render the clone not bootable.

Christer

 

There are different ways to "clone" one hard disk to another:

1) Sector by sector which gets all boot information and every single byte on the hard disk. It requires a target hard disk of the same or larger size. Ghost 2003 can do that but ...

2) File by file which is the way Ghost 2003 "by default" does the job. You can clone to a smaller target as long as the data fits.

3) In both cases, the use of command line switches (see the Ghost 2003 manual) can "tailor" the way Ghost 2003 does the job.

Creating an Image can be done Disk-To-Image or Partition-To-Image. All files on the Disk/Partition will be "merged" into a single file or a number of files depending on the data size. Each image file can be 2 GB but not larger. Larger than 2 GB and several files will be spanned. From the Image, individual files can be extracted using a utility included in Ghost 2003, Ghost Explorer.

My personal approach is to separate the system and programs on C: from the data on D:. I backup C: using Ghost 2003 and D: using a different software (the freeware Replicator) but Ghost 2003 can be used for both partitions.

I NEVER create or restore Images from the installed Ghost 2003 but ALWAYS from the created Ghost Boot Disks.

I only use the installed Ghost 2003 to create the Ghost Boot Disks and to view the Images in Ghost Explorer (and on rare occasions, extract individual files).

Christer

 

A quote from the page you linked to:

Some people don't trust an Image created of a running system, with a lot of files in use and in an "unknown state ". I'm one of these people, simply because I don't understand how any imaging software takes this "snapshot ". If you boot from a boot disk, the installed operating system is not running and all files are in a "known state ".

And a bit further down:

This tells you that it needs a boot disk for some tasks.

Christer