Laptop HDD upgrade - Symantec Ghost?

[SuperSix]

Currently I have a 4.3GB in my Acer Travelmate 505DX. The drive is showing signs of dying. I want to upgrade, but would like to smply dupe the drive I have in there.

Will this work?
2 Laptops (2nd is a Toshiba)
Ghost 9.0
USB or Serial cable

I was thinking using Ghost and boot floppies, with either cable.

Install new drive in Toshibe, hook them up, run the Ghost boot floppies on each - and copy them?

TIA
Mark

 

[DakotaEpic]

I attempted to mirror a hard drive that had gone bad in my Inspiron, to a WD firewire external HD. It went terribly wrong, let me tell you. None of the data got sent over to the WD and I am almost sure it wasnt the WD that failed because I had been using it to store extra files from my desktop that week. Be wary, and good luck.

 

[TheCanuck]

I recently tried ghosting my laptop hard drive to my desktop and then back to the newer 5400rpm drive. For some reason the re-imaged drive would just not bootup...not sure exactly what happened as it should have been an exact copy with ghost. I think that ghost is probably pretty good for partition backups but I don't trust it 100%.

You might want to try this backup kit: http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?s...781&hdwt=30411&loc=101&sp=1&dcaid=1688

It includes all the software you'll need to clone your drive and you also get a USB 2.0 enclosure so you can use the old drive for additional storage. Extremetech gave the Apricorn kit a decent review as well: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0%2C1558%2C1252650%2C00.asp

 

[jr77ok]

I do this at work all the time, image your drive to a file on another machine on your network. Pop in the new drive and pull the image back down..

Example: PC1 is the machine you want to image your failing drive too..
Share a folder on the C: call it "ghost" place the ghost.exe in that folder.
create a local account on this machine called ghost with a password of ghost

Boot your laptop to a floppy that has DOS drivers for your NIC and initializes it.
http://www.nu2.nu/bootdisk/network/

at the command prompt type:

net use z: \\PC1\ghost

z:

ghost


you run the ghost and first do a disk TO image and place that file in the z:ghost dir which is on your other machine...

after that completes , put in the new hardrive, follow the same steps and this time do a disk from image.


PM if you need any other help..

 

[SuperSix]

Wow.. lots of good info - I'll update when I get it done.

Thanks!
Mark

 

[SuperSix]

I suppose if I could get the fvcking NDIS drivers to work with my maptop NIC, I would be OK.

Screw it - I'll just do a new install. DOS drivers suck.

And it's not some obscure NIC, it's an INtel Pro/100 PCMCIA.

:mad;

 

[corkyg]

Many laptops allow a second HDD module. Mine does. It is easy to replace a drive - especially using Acronis TrueImage 8's clone function.

1. It auto creates a bootable CD.

2. Connect both drives and boot to the TI CD.

3. Select "Clone" on the menu and do it.

Norton Ghost is clumsy, and an image file is not necessarily bootable because it first has to be restored so that things like the MBR are correctly located in the right sector.

You can also get some 3.5 to 2.5 HDD adapters and clone the two drives using your desktop. Think cloning - not imaging.

I do it every week on several systems. Each has at least one reserve drive that I put away in a safe place.