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Ghosting hard drive to hard drive

penneck
Aspiring Pro
Posts: 1,089
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Registered: ‎03-08-2007

Ghosting hard drive to hard drive

The 60GB drive in my wife's laptop is full, I cannot reduce the content. I am trying to change the drive to one of 160GB by installing the new drive, fitting the old drive in an external USB caddy, and ghosting by running Symantec Ghost from a CD.
I use the setup process to pick on the 60GB drive as the source, and the 160GB drive as destination. The copy gets part way (at least 7%) then complains about not having enough contiguous space.
I am having to guess how to run Ghost, so I could be doing something wrong. The CD has supposed to have been used successfully at work, but it wasn't me using it there so I have no idea what my colleague did.
Any suggestions, or recommendations for some other way of ghosting, please?
TIA
12 REPLIES 12
Oldjim
Resting Legend
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Registered: ‎15-06-2007

Re: Ghosting hard drive to hard drive

One way round the problem may be to partition the new hard drive so that you have a data partition and a program and operating system partition as I suspect that the problem is that Norton is trying to write a large temporary file to the original disk
Then copy the data to the new drive data partition and once you are happy that it is correct with no problems delete the data from the existing drive and then mirror the remainder to the program and operating system partition
HPsauce
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Registered: ‎02-02-2008

Re: Ghosting hard drive to hard drive

Firstly, what OS is it running and what brand/model of laptop is it?
penneck
Aspiring Pro
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Registered: ‎03-08-2007

Re: Ghosting hard drive to hard drive

Reply to Old Jim - thanks for the suggestion. I will try to partion the new hard drive
Reply to HPsauce - its a version of XP - called Media I think, but could be wrong on the Media bit
MisterW
Superuser
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Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: Ghosting hard drive to hard drive

Clonezilla and Gparted. Smiley
Clone the disc using Clonezilla and then expand the partition on the new drive to use all the available space.
You can do both from live CDs http://clonezilla.org/ & http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

Superusers are not staff, but they do have a direct line of communication into the business in order to raise issues, concerns and feedback from the community.

HPsauce
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Re: Ghosting hard drive to hard drive

Quote from: penneck
Reply to HPsauce - its a version of XP - called Media I think, but could be wrong on the Media bit

There was a Media Center Edition of XP.  Wink
But what make is it? And do you have the install disks?
It might be better to do a clean install on the new disk and transfer data across as required.
penneck
Aspiring Pro
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Registered: ‎03-08-2007

Re: Ghosting hard drive to hard drive

I've gone back to the old disk, and checked the partition sizes. C: is 20G, and 😧 is 30G, so somewhere in what remains (10G) is the recovery software.
I then refitted the new drive and used Partition Magic 8 to check it. It lists the follwing:-
Partition              Type                    Size        Used          Not Used      Status    Pri/Log
RECOVERY        FAT                      4.86G      2 .57G      2.28G              None      Primary
??????????      NTFS                  57G          57G          0G                    Active      Primary
*:                          Extended            90.1G      90.1G      0G                    None      Primary
        *:                  Unformatted      90.1G        0G            90.1G              None      Logical
The Make and Model of the laptop is Advent 7105, and I dont think we have the recovery disks, but I will search the house for them
HPsauce
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Re: Ghosting hard drive to hard drive

Quote from: penneck
The Make and Model of the laptop is Advent 7105, and I dont think we have the recovery disks, but I will search the house for them

Read this then: http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/advent/laptop/7105.htm
CAREFULLY, especially the bit about using partition tools!
FAQ
How to Manually Run the Recovery Media Creator
If you've deleted the shortcut to Recovery Media Creator then don't panic. To run it manually open My Computer and browse to the C:\Windows\Creator folder and double click on CD Creator.

penneck
Aspiring Pro
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Registered: ‎03-08-2007

Re: Ghosting hard drive to hard drive

First - sorry about the state of the data table. I put everything into neat columns when I typed it in, and the smiley faces were a row of question marks. I have since booted up from Partition Magic 8 with the old hard disk fitted to compare results. The old disk shows 5 partitions against the new disk showing 4. The extra partition is of Type 'Unallocated'.
I guess that when trying to clone the old drive to a larger drive. the proportions of  the old partitions were transferred to the new (the two partitions are the second is about 50% greater than the first on both hard drives).
I am going to try to attach a comparison table of the two hard drives. The data is based on having one or other hard drive fitted in the laptop then booting up from Partition Magic 8
Second - I have found the recovery disk. Haven't tried it yet, but thanks for pointing me to where to get guidance to create a new recovery disk.
Third - you were correct. The laptop does have XP Media Centre
Now for the attachment (this is where I could use a smiley face)
Thanks
HPsauce
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Re: Ghosting hard drive to hard drive

Systems like that (and Dell and others) have a strange bespoke partition table that gets "mangled" by the BIOS (and some utilities) when you hit certain function keys on boot for example.
This is to support the various recovery/diagnostic options, booting into the "strange" partitions, running extended diagnostics etc.
That's why it's best to rebuild rather than clone.  Wink
colintivy
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Re: Ghosting hard drive to hard drive

I have successfully used HDClone4 to equip my Dell OptiPlex GX110 with a 160GB drive replacing the original 8GB very inadequate drive. The program, which has a very comprehensive Manual and is free, does a lot more than cloning it also can make copies of disks and act as a back-up. The new one, which was not formatted, worked straight away in every aspect.
HPsauce
Pro
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Re: Ghosting hard drive to hard drive

Yes, I use HDclone too; very useful tool.  Wink
penneck
Aspiring Pro
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Registered: ‎03-08-2007

Re: Ghosting hard drive to hard drive

Success!
A colleague has loaned me a copy of Symantec Ghost 11.5. I ran the disk-to-disk copy as before, but without adjusting the size of the two partitions it tried to generate (the same sizes as Symantec Ghost 11.1 tried to create) and it worked first time. There was a hiccup at the end when during the bit where it creates the the bootup (or whatever that  part of the process is called). It complained about a block, but gave me the option to ignore all subsequent faults, so I said Yes. It completed the process, and when I tried to boot from the new disk, it came up perfectly.
Thanks to all who tried to help