Windows XP Ghosting

[m at]

I got a new hard drive yesterday and I've been having nothing but trouble. After hours of trying to figure out how to set it up (I needed to get data to it from two different hard drives, only one of which having an OS on it), I finally decided to make a new partition roughly the same size as my old C drive and use Norton Ghost to copy over the contents. The copying process went along without error, but when I try to boot with my new drive set as the master, it hangs at the Windows XP welcome screen and won't go any further. Normally at that point of the login it says "Welcome" but now instead it displays the Windows XP logo (but still with the familiar blue welcome bootscreen background).

Were there additional steps that I needed to take to get a clone of XP running on a different HDD? I already set the partition as "active" and changed the jumper pins to "primary master." I don't know if there's something else I'm missing, or if I need to do something at the Windows XP repair prompt or what.

Thanks in advance for any information leading to the successful solving of this problem

 

[RGPHNX]

Hi Mat,
unfortunately Norton Ghost isn't all that user friendly OR bug free.
Just put you new drive back in the computer as slave.. then.. reformat & partition it..then.. install WinXP to the new partition..then transfer your data (without rebooting).. you know the rest.
Hope this helps
RGPHNX

 

[SGtheArtist]

So you got a new HDD that you want to make the new system HDD & you need to copy the OS from the old system HDD to the new HDD. If I understood you correctly and this is indeed the action in question then this is really simple.

You would first download a copy of the disk formatting software for your respective new HDD. (Seagate, WD, Maxtor, etc.) Then you would create a bootable CD or floppy discs and from there you would have your old system HDD set as the master on the primary IDE controller & the new HDD anywhere else.

You would boot to the CD or floppy so you could load the formatting software and it will recognize both your old & new HDD. You would tell it to setup the new HDD (distinguishable by its capacity) and the formatting software will ask if this is simply a storage drive or to be the new boot drive.

You tell it that the new HDD will be the new boot drive & the formatting software will then format & copy the contents of the old HDD to the new HDD.

You then physically remove the old HDD & move the new HDD to primary IDE controller as a master & the system should boot.

Norton simply copies the files where as the formatting software makes some changes to the boot partition for the new HDD. This maybe why its not working with Norton because its trying to boot with the old HDD's boot sector & not a boot sector modified for the new HDD once the files have been copied over.

 

[m at]

Thanks for the help guys. I managed to clone the drive simply and easily using a freeware tool called XXClone. Figures the freeware would do what the retail software couldn't!

 

[SGtheArtist]

I'm glad it worked for you, just a note for future referrence: last I checked the HDD manufacture formatting software I refer to is free also

 

[m at]

Awesome, I'll give that a try next time. I managed to find XXClone before you had posted, but thanks anyhow