"Ghost"ing to a new drive

[RVH]

Windows XP Home SP3
Dell Dimension 2400

As I am outgrowing my original 80 gig drive, I decided to get a copy of Norton Ghost and a new 500 gig drive. I know that using Ghost's "Copy My Drive" feature should allow me to make an exact image of my old drive and then swap it for the new drive. Simple in concept, difficult to accomplish (at least for me).

I installed and formatted the new drive as a slave. I also noticed when I ran CompMgmt that my original C: drive had an unnamed partition of about 35mb, so when I reformatted the new drive I also made a 35mb partition.

I Ghosted both partitions successfully (at least Ghost told me it was successful). Screenshot of the settings I used is attached.

Then, I pulled the old drive and changed the jumper on the new drive to be Master and attached it to the correct ribbon connector and rebooted. It failed to boot and hung on the XP blue screen prior to showing the desktop.

I rebooted again and went to the BIOS menu and it wasn't finding the drive.

At this point I am not sure what to do. I reattached the old drive and here I am talking to you guys.

Here are my questions:

1. What did I do wrong?
2. Was I supposed to copy that 35mb hidden drive or was that supposed to happen automatically?
3. When I was booting the new drive it did a chkdsk and referred to the drive as F: Why was that?
4. Shouldn't the OS assign the first drive found a C: name?

Thanks, any help is appreciated.

Bob

[jbennet]

Does your machine actually support 500gb drives?
if its old it probably wont

[RVH]

The Western Digital utilities that came with it had a tool that did something (updated BIOS??) that enabled to to be seen. I played around it after formatting and partitioning it, placing and deleting files, etc, to make sure it was working. I have it attached as a slave right now and can access all files.

Bob

[gerbil]

You should not have let your Windows "see" the new drive.... it gave it a signature and a drive letter, and your OS now knows that that disk exists. Your OS does not recognise the disk [partitions, actually] by its drive letter but by the signature in the MBR and other charateristics, these are written into the registry and it is how the OS knows the drives [you can change the drive letters any time you like , but Windows still knows the disk and its contents..]. When you cloned to it it realised that it is on a disk it knows , and it won't make it C:, or let it be C:. It gets confused. Most of the registry entries will refer to C: as the System [and Boot] drive but the drive it is on will have the drive letter that Windows gave it when it first saw the drive. You can change that, but not to C:, it won't be an option. So your OS is then very unhappy. It can work while the original C: drive is connected because then it can use it, access the files it knows on it.
Start over is the simplest solution... there is a lot of reg stuff to change otherwise. Do-able, but re-ghosting may be the quickest. simplest option.

[RVH]

Thank you Gerbil. I understand but an unclear how to re-Ghost it so I give it the right "signature".

I have no problem re-formating and re-partitioning it and starting over. But, should I "un-mount" the drive prior to Ghosting it?

I included the Ghost setting screenshot in my original post, how would you suggest I change them, if at all?

Oh, and do you have a comment on whether I did the right thing on the 35mb partition?

Thanks

Bob

[gerbil]

Sorry, I don't use Norton, but you will have to remove all partitions from the new drive, make a boot cd with ghost, and use the Copy Drive feature. Don't run it thru your Windows, don't make any partitions on it with your Windows....