os ghosting probs

gobby

okay, im sure a lot of you are familiar with my new hard drive and the problems that came with it.

i wouldnt have been able to get to the stage that im at now without all the help ive been getting from the boards clan, so once again thanx a mill!

im trying to ghost the contents of my old maxtor 60gig to my new samsung 160gig including my os, windows xp pro (with sp1 installed).

after i ghosted the 60gig to the 160gig, i tried to boot from the 160gig by plugging out the other drive and setting the 160gig as the master drive.

it almost worked. i get past the first windows screen (the black screen with the blue bar that scans back and forth) but the system just hangs on the next screen. the screen it hangs on is the one with a blue backround and the windows xp logo on it. right before, on a normal boot, it would say 'welcome'.

at first i though it might be something to do with the 1024 cylinder limit but i dont think that anymore as im sure i would have problems with the 60gig if it were the case.

the bios supports 48-bit LBA and the drive is fully recognised as a 160gig.

i need to get this fixed soon cos im moving to germany in about four weeks (for a duration of 6 months) and i wanna build a system over there using this 160gig drive.

anybody got any ideas? t'would be a real help...

Capt'n Midnight

What is the message ?
Don't forget XP has better copyright protecion then other versons of windows and so is harder to clone. - SYSPREP is the way M$ want you to unserialise it before cloning on first boot you have to enter the serial no again.

PS. booting into a BSOD is not remotely close to "it almost worked. "

BTW: is the other drive in the system - or does the original drive have a factory installed utility partition ~50MB ahead of the main one - if so edit boot.ini to change the partiton(1) number.

gobby

Originally posted by Capt'n Midnight

SYSPREP is the way M$ want you to unserialise it before cloning on first boot you have to enter the serial no again.

i think i know what you are saying here. there is a utility whereby after running the utility and ghosting you have to put your key in again. am i right? could you clarify this for me please?

Originally posted by Capt'n Midnight

BTW: is the other drive in the system - or does the original drive have a factory installed utility partition ~50MB ahead of the main one - if so edit boot.ini to change the partiton(1) number.

im not 100% as to what you are saying here but the other drive is in the system. both drives are. but when i want to test the bigger drive i just unplug the smaller, original drive. i put the rig together myself so there was no factory set utility partition. there is just a FAT32 partition and an extended partition for linux.

Ryaner

Disk to disk clone in ghost by floppy should do it all without a hitch. The worst thing that could happen is it gets to windows and has to reboot because of installing the new main drive.
When you say it hangs how long did you give it? Also did you remember to restore setup defaults on the mobo. I've noticed this causing problems when changing the drive size.
In regard the key, it shouldnt make a diff provided the new and old system arent booted together on a network.
The disk to disk method should copy any other system boot utils that are on the disk and any partions or anything. It writes bit to bit pretty much.
Actually what version of ghost are you using?

gobby

Originally posted by Ryaner

Actually what version of ghost are you using?

im using norton ghost 2003.

Originally posted by Ryaner

When you say it hangs how long did you give it?

bout 15/20 mins.

Capt'n Midnight

Originally posted by gobby
im not 100% as to what you are saying here but the other drive is in the system. both drives are. but when i want to test the bigger drive i just unplug the smaller, original drive. i put the rig together myself so there was no factory set utility partition. there is just a FAT32 partition and an extended partition for linux.

If both copies are booting off the first partition then not an issue.

SYSPREP - it's in one of the files on the XP cd - but not called sysprep - google - you run it and choose factory
shutdown - clone reboot from new drive and choose reseal - XP is set to need re thingy ified if it detects more than three? changes or major changes in the drive geometry - it's copy protection what ever anyone likes to call it. NB. Sysprep does NOT clone you still need ghost etc. and it does effectively remove the serial no from the master.

Ryaner

I agree with capt's method then. Because of linux and everything is on the disk, if it just copying windows it's gonna hit a number of problems with the security checker.
Try the norton site for the detailed steps for removing the serials etc on xp before cloning with 2003.

gobby

thanks lads. done a bit of looking around and found out what i need to know. thanks for pointing me in the right direction. ill try sort it tonight and ill let you know how i get on.

gobby

okay, ive done a bit of looking around but i cant really find anything!

i had a look on the windows xp disk too but theres nothing thats obviously what im after. there was nothing helpfull in the support documents either.

Ryaner

Firstly I just wanna know are you trying to copy the linux partion too and is the windows partion in fat32?

Ryaner

Check out this link too.
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/pfdocs/2001032917165825

It's the instructions on what to do. Go thru the dos disk. 2003 does actually support it so that is the way to do it. Read the whole thing first at least once and then print it out or write it down or something for the actually time your doing it.
Good luck and post any problems or results

gobby

Originally posted by Ryaner

Firstly I just wanna know are you trying to copy the linux partion too and is the windows partion in fat32?

im not trying to ghost the linux partition. the bootloader is on the MBR however. when i cloned the disk i used fdisk to change the MBR so that the machine tries to boot windows.

the disk is FAT32.

thanks a mill for the link. i will try it out soon.

Ryaner

If your just trying to do the windows one then (provided you can get enough disk space for this) backup the windows partion to a file. Fully format the new disk to fat32. Dump the image on it. BEFORE it boots go into fdisk and set partions as active. The ghost tool may be better at setting it up. Make sure to remove the other disk before you let the system boot. Windows will lock with security issues normally if it's see both of them.

gobby

joy! got it going!

i didnt end up using fdisk to sort out the MBR. i just reinstalled linux, including the boot loader after the drive was ghosted.

thanx a mill to anyone that has helped me out with my new drive and all the hasstles that came with it. it took the best part of two weeks to get it going but boy, is iworth it. what a sweet, quiet drive.

im chuffed now!

cheers again...

Ryaner

Why you install linux after if it was already on the disk?
Anyway glad to hear it's all sorted now.

gobby

Originally posted by Ryaner

Why you install linux after if it was already on the disk?

Because the bootloader was messed up. when i booted i just got a load of garbage on the screen so i reinstalled linux to get the bootloader reinstalled. after that, no probs.

Ryaner

Thats a good enough reason. Glad it all working anyway.