Ghost 2005 - Problem cloning

[barryng]

I previously used Ghost 2002 to periodically clone my hard drive as a backup. Ghost 2002 ran from DOS and a floppy and was very reliable. I never had a problem with the cloned drive not being a true bootable clone.

For a number of reasons, using the floppy/DOS method has become much less practical. Norton System Works 2005 has a Windows version of Ghost that supposedly allows me to "Copy One Drive to Another". It states that "it duplicates your drive directly to another drive." I have tried using this on two machines running Windows XP. In both cases the duplication process seems to proceed normally. However, when I test the backup drives, they boot only up to the blue splash screen with the small Windows logo that appears directly after the screen with the moving dots and just before the desktop. At that point nothing else happens.

I am hoping someone has some advice as to how to make this work and create a true clone. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[dunkster]

Like you, I used the same Ghost version for a long time - but when I decided to change to writing images to DVD media, I had to change programs.

I highly recommend Terabyte 'Image for DOS': http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/

30-day trial is fully functional, price is less than $20. You'll be very comfortable with this product, if you've used Ghost 2002. It will write image to CD, DVD, HD or HD partition, and recognizes hardware RAID controllers, IEEE, USB and network drives. Byte-for-byte image verification is excellent.

It's totally reliable. I've restored my OS partition from DVD several times with this product.

Hope this helps!

 

[barryng]

Thanks for the suggestion dunkster. I am trying to get away from a DOS based solution for a number of reasons. Some of these reasons are a result of SATA drives and the lack of DOS SATA drivers needed to recognize drives not on the two primary SATA ports. My wife now needs to back up the drive on her machine and a Windows based application is much friendlier (She never previously used DOS based applications). There is also much less chance of inadvertently cloning the backup to the primary because the Windows application shows the drive lables, the DOS based do not. My Paperport database alone is almost 15 gigs so DVDs are not as practical as simply cloning all 90 Gig stored on my HDD to another HDD. For not much more than $100 for a 160Gig HDD cloning is really an inexpensive solution. I have two backup drives, each in Vantec removable cases, that I alternate. The the idea of having a complete ready to plug and play backup drive appeals to me and really proved its worth a year or so ago when my HDD got into harm's way. I was up and running again in about 15 minutes with the only loss being what occured in the few days since the last backup (and easily reproducable).

 

[PENNSYLVANIARON]

barryng:

Hi. I just got my copy of ghost 9 and am also a former user of ghost 2002. I received the same exact error as you did. My backed up drive seems to boot perfectly until the blue windows screen comes up and then it just freezes there.

I have tried getting rid of the pagefile on the source drive and still no good. I also tried checking the option of copying the MBR. Either way I get the same results. What a piece of garbage this is. My setup is the source being an Sata drive and the destination a Pata drive. My next scenario was to try and get this to work with RAID 0. What a joke. I can't even get it to work in this simple environment. Think I'll check out the program Dunkster mentioned. Regards...