I have the following scenario:

A Hard Disk with 120 Gb - System Partition ( 20 Gb w/ 70% used) + Data Partition (80 Gb w/ 60% used) - we can call this disk 1

Other Hard Disk with 40 Gb - New Disk - Clean - disk 2

I need to make a copy of the System Partition from disk 1 to disk 2 and make the Windows XP works like it does now.

Before anyone suggest the Norton Ghost software, I have tried already with no success the 9 and 2003 versions. I have used this tip in vain: http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1110614006

Also I've tried the Casper XP software from http://www.fssdev.com/products/casperxp/ and nothing...

Any ideas???

Though I have successfully cloned hard drives with Norton and Partition Magic, I have yet to go from a large hard drive to a smaller one....which may be the reason why Ghost is not working for you.

The only suggestion I would have if no partition software will clone the drives, is to do a backup.  Create back up CDs from the first partition...then transfer them over.

You can use the "GHOST BOOT Diskette" and, instead of choosing "drive" choose "partition", as your Source Drive, and give your 40 Gb disk as your Destiny Drive.

Try it out , you will see that it works !

Post if you have any doubts !

 

 

AFAIK Norton Ghost can only copy a partition into a same size partition. So you should have a 20GB partition in Disk 2 before copying partition from Disk 1. Same FileSystem even better.

I have submitted that very question to Symantec.  I might even give them a call.....so check back to this post within the next few days, and you'll know if Norton Ghost 9.0 can create a clone of a smaller drive to a larger drive without having to partition the larger drive.

Yes, Ghost 2003 will clone a larger drive down to a smaller drive - if the smaller drive has enough room to hold all of the data on the source drive.  I have done this lots of times, and even cloned my 200GB SATA drive down to an 80GB IDE drive for backup purposes in my own home.

Here is the common problem: Windows "remembers" drive letters assigned to the hard drives and will maintain those drive letters the best that it possibly can.  For instance, my USB pen drive I assigned a drive letter of "U:".  If you remove the drive from the USB port, and reinsert it, Windows remembers that the drive was lettered as "U:", even between reboots.  Having two hard drives in the system works the same way, only people don't look at it in the same light.  If your drive C: is 120GB and drive D: is 80GB, when you clone the drive from C: to D: and swap the cables so that the 80GB is the primary and the 120GB is the secondary the drive letters will still remain the same, except now you are booting from D:.

Anyways, with this in mind, we need to make Windows "forget" about the drive.  Reboot the computer and go to the control panel.  Open the "System" control panel, and under the hardware tab enter the Device Manager.  Expand the "Disk Drives" node and locate the destination drive.  Right click on the destination drive and select "Uninstall".  Don't worry - this just removes the device from Windows' device node listing - you won't lose your data.  You have just made Windows forget the drive's existence.  Now close all the windows on your screen and SHUT DOWN.  Do not reboot.  If you reboot then the Windows plug-and-play enumerator will redetect the drive on the next startup and you will have to do this all over again.

Once the computer is off, remove the destination hard drive's power and data cables and turn the computer back on to make sure that the original disk boots alright.  Once Windows is back up and the desktop visible, shut down for the last time.

Reconnect both the drives and boot from a Ghost 2003 boot disk and clone the drive over to the destination.  Once that is done, remove the power and data cables from the source drive and move them to the destination drive, leaving the source drive completely unplugged so that the destination drive is the only drive available on the system and power up the system again.  Windows should now boot.  Once at the desktop, shut down and reattach the source drive using the cables the destination drive once used.  The transfer should now be complete.

And for what it is worth, the bastardization of Ghost 9.0 does not bode well with me .  It is simply a tampered with version of DriveImage with the Gold and Brown "Symantec" skin slapped on it.  I knew we would all regret Symantec purchasing PowerQuest and I was right .

So few people have been using Ghost long enough to even understand what it is or how it got it's name.  Ghost stands for Generic Hardware Oriented System Transfer and was intended to clone entire hard drives from one computer to the next, agnostic to it's operating system (hence the Generic hardware oriented part).  Symantec is now trying to turn it into a backup system.  Since when does cloning a hard drive require incremental changes?  Never.  Symantec should have left the original Ghost code alone and if they wanted to take advantage of PowerQuest's technology, release it as a seperate package that is a backup solution rather than an imaging solution.

So there.  I ranted. 

I use norton Ghost to clone larger hard drives to smaller drives all the time with no problem. An understanding of what the system and program is capibable of helps. I have cloned a bootable hard drive takeing a WD3200KS down to a WD800BB and To a Maxtor 6L200MO with OS being WindowsXP Media Center Eddition 2005, and they all BOOT properly. Even on HP with their recovery partition that they have listed in windows as D drive. On most new motherboards you do not have to change the drive letter and path if the hard drive you are cloning to is prepaired properly. If the version of Ghost you are useing doesn't have the feature, (Copy One Drive to Another), then you need to get the update from Symantec website. If you still need help let me know. Camo-c

I agree with gimpnuts about the drive letter in windows. Only if there is information or it has been formatted. If you disconnect your original hard drive and plug up the hard drive that you want to clone to, and restart your computer and use a WindowsXP CD and follow the prompts, when it gets to the hard drive where it asks you what you want to do as far as deleting any partitions DO SO. Delete everything it will let you, then press the F3 to exit and F3 again and it will try and reboot. At this point turn off your computer before it reboots. Disconnect that drive and reconnect your original in the place it is suppose to be, then connect the drive you just deleted and restart your computer remembering to take the WindowsXP CD out and when your computer boots up, Windows will not have assigned any letter to the hard drive you want to clone to. After you clone the drive and reconnect it in the place where the original drive was, when you restart the computer, Windows will recognize the new hard drive and assign it the letter C. Just like your old one. The only requirement as far as size of hard drive space that I have found is that with Ghost, when you have a large program like WindowsXP MCE 2005, even though it may only take up 6GBs of space it takes much more than that for that OS to operate, and that is why if you loaded The CD and nothing else onto a 40GB hard drive it probably wont act right. Ghost sees this and you will have to go up to like an 80GB to be sucessfull. Even if you have the Ghost with the copy one hard drive to another feature, you will still have to get the update for it to work right. Camo-c

You don't actually say much about the problem and what happens once you try and boot from the ghosted image.

I don't see why Ghost wouldn't work for you especially given your partition sizes look fine.

Can you please give us some more information about what happens and what the exact problem is.

Thanks...

try true image to migrate all data, operational system and other staff from your system partition to disk2, it can allow to do it automatically and very easy.

watch this:

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

I can only agree with the above comment.

 

Having wasted half a day trying to clone a new hard drive using Ghost 9 and continually getting a result that failed to boot, I tried the Acronis true image free trial version and hey presto, it worked first time on fully automatic setting.

Acronis wins hands down.