RADIFIED
Guide to Norton Ghost

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Cloning Drives with Norton Ghost

Let me preface this section by saying I have never cloned anything. I've only created & restored images. If I was going to clone either a disk or partition, I'd first want to talk to someone who has real-life experience.

Cloning is like copying. No image file is created during the cloning process. During cloning, Ghost copies files from the source partition (or disk) to the destination (target). The thing that makes Ghost's cloning features so powerful is that ALL the files are copied.

Many people ask why they can't simply use Windows to copy files from one drive to another. Try it, you'll discover why: Windows file-copy won't copy the FAT (File Allocation Table), partition table, or boot files .. all of which you need.

You may hear about a utility called Xcopy. I've never used it, but have heard it mentioned & debated many times. Some insist that it works fine; others claim it's flawed. Here's a link called Xcopy Xposed that says it's flawed, and gives reasons why.

Another utility called xxcopy (no, not porn) supposedly works like xcopy, but without its (alleged) problems. I've never used it. You might also find helpful these links to disk utilities from several major hard drive manufacturers, including Maxtor, Seagate, and Western Digital. These utilities do essentially the same thing that Ghost's cloning feature does.

Ghost's cloning feature is typically used to copy the contents of one disk/partition (usually older/smaller) to another (usually newer/larger). Users have reported success with this method. Some caution that, if a boot drive is involved, you must set a partition on the new drive as the ACTIVE partition. You can do this with FDISK.

I was under the impression that the destination drive must be at least as big as the source, but Dharma Singh writes to say this is not true. He says that you can clone a larger drive (36GB, for example) to a smaller one (18GB, for example) as long as the *contents* (data) of the source drive do not exceed the capacity of the destination (target). He says he has actually done this.

He also notes that disk performance drops significantly after a disk is ~85% full, especially with NTFS. For this reason, he says it's best to buy a new drive with at least double the capacity you need.

Say, for example, you have an older/smaller drive that contains 3 partitions. If you clone one partition at a time, you'll first have to create the partitions on the new drive (destination/target). You'll have to repeat the cloning process for each partition. Doing each partition individually gives you more control over the cloning process. If you clone an entire physical hard disk, I don't think you have to partition it first .. but not sure.

Before we begin, you should be aware that the destination (target) partitions will be overwritten! [screen shot] If you make a mistake, and select the wrong disk/partition, you will lose valuable data. All the caveats from the preceding page on Image Restoration apply to cloning. If you have not yet read the preceding page, go there now and read about the hazards associated with overwriting either a partition or a disk.


To clone an entire (physical) DISK, select: Local -> Disk -> To Disk [screen shot].
To clone an individual PARTITION, select Local -> Partition -> To Partition [screen shot].

Notice that you cannot clone Partition -> To Disk, nor can you clone Disk -> To Partition. I don't have all the other steps listed here because I've never done this, and I don't want to give you the illusion that I have. But you will go through the steps or selecting the source and destination/target, just like you do with creating and restoring images. Les Burns writes to say:

Your section on Cloning makes no mention of removing the newly created drive from the system. Failure to do so before rebooting will annihilate your registry.

We were moving an OS to a second drive. When cloning, you must remove the cloned drive before rebooting into Windows. Windows will look at the system, scan the registry, realizes its duplicated and deems it's corrupt. Then it creates a new, blank registry, and carries on with that. I tried restoring the registry from the command prompt, but alas nothing. Live and learn.

In response to Les' comment above, Bob Davis writes to say:

This is true only with the NT-based OS's, not Win98SE and presumably similar OS's (Win95, Win98, ME). I always have a fully cloned drive in my system (D:), running Win98SE, and have never experienced adverse effects from doing so in about two years using Ghost.

To supplement my weekly ghosting of three rotated HD's mounted in mobil racks, I run a daily batch file with Windows Task Scheduler that updates important files to D:. This includes business databases, OE DBX's, WAB, etc. This system has been the best backup method I've found in 20 years of computing, and has bailed my butt out of trouble more than once.

Another bit of info you might find helpful when cloning. See Christer's note in this thread (5th post):

Was the cloning done (1) from within Windows or (2) from Ghost Boot Disks?

If (1), then computer B was automatically restarted with two identical hard disks (after cloning one to the other) installed. Windows reassigns a different volume identification to one of the hard disks and that hard disk will not boot.

If (2) and the computer B was "reset" after completion, then the same applies as above.

Use method (2) but when completed, do not let Ghost "reset" the computer but turn it off on the power switch and remove the "temporary" hard disks. When installed separately in different computers, they should boot.

Here's a quote from one of the forum's moderators, Christer (from Sweden). You might find it helpful:

As I understand this issue, Windows XP "knows" which hardware was installed when it is shut down. XP has attached a volume identifier to each volume. When XP is restarted, it redetects the hardware and if the same, all is well.

When a disk is cloned, disk-to-disk, there will be two volumes with the same volume identifier. If the computer is restarted with both harddisks (the "source" and the "clone") installed, XP will start from the "source", detect the "clone" as new hardware and change the volume identifier since there can not be two volumes with the same volume identifier.

Nothing will be detected by the user until he/she takes out the "source" and makes the "clone" the boot drive. Now, XP can not boot because of the changed volume identifier.

The solution is simple when Ghost 2003 is used to do the disk-to-disk cloning. You don't let Ghost reset the computer and restart Windows but turn off the computer and remove the "clone" before restarting. How this is done using Ghost 9 I don't know.

Cloning Partitions/Drives with Ghost9

For those of you using Ghost 9, Brian (our resident Rad Ghost 9 guru) thru together a little ditty on how to CLONE partitions using Ghost 9. See here: Cloning Partitions with Ghost 9.

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