I also have had success copying from a larger disk to smaller one (NTFS) if I had done a disk defrag before the copy. For example, an 80GB drive with only 10GB data seems to work quite well on a 40GB disk in my experience, as long as there was not data stored beyond the 40GB point on the big drive.
If you haven't done so already, I STRONGLY encourage using empty-space wiping software, such as the free Heidi Eraser program. Just create a new erase type that is comprised of all zeros..and run a task to overwrite all free space with the zeros. This makes the image very compressable if you're going to put it on a network location (I use an FTP server on the same network). db -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, September 23, 2007 9:27 AM To: [email protected] Subject: g4u-help Digest, Vol 16, Issue 10 Send g4u-help mailing list submissions to [email protected] To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/g4u-help or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can reach the person managing the list at [EMAIL PROTECTED] When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of g4u-help digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: FAQ: Bogus info about Windows and NTFS support (Matt Smollinger) 2. Re: Bad link on home page to mail archive (Matt Smollinger) 3. Re: Bad link on home page to mail archive (David Balazic) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2007 10:51:43 -0400 From: Matt Smollinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [g4u-help] FAQ: Bogus info about Windows and NTFS support To: David Balazic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, <[email protected]> Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Hello David and thanks for posting to the forum. I have to take issue with your ?bogus info?. I work for a specialized industrial PC OEM, where we build locked down computers that utilize windows XP professional, and windows XP embedded. So lets go through the numbers here: My problem with your problem #1: You are correct that copying a NTFS partition in g4u will fail. This is because when you copy a partition, you do not copy the master boot record or the master file table(MBR and MFT respectively). These are stored as you said, in different areas of the disk from where you would regularly find partitions. That being said, when you perform the ?uploaddisk? and ?copydisk? commands, the MBR and MFT and ALL partitions are copied, regardless. This will ensure windows knows exactly what, when, where, and why stuff is on disk. When copying just a partition, you lose that guarantee. This is a problem with ALL imaging systems, including those from the major manufacturers. The only way around it is to read INSIDE the NTFS partition, and copy files by utilizing the filesystem. This is experimental though at best in most imaging systems, and I?m not entirely sure how it would work when you write it back without modifying the MFT. I?m sure Hubert could update the FAQ in that respect about NTFS, but honestly, you should know your filesystem if you?re going to be imaging it. I seriously doubt the website is intended to be the end-all resource on how imaging works, and how it impacts filesystems. My problem with your problem #2: Ok, this one I have a great experience with. So the woman who does the ordering made a mistake at one point, and ordered 40 gig hard drives instead of 60s (which is the minimum size that our computers come with). My images are made assuming a geometry of a 60 gig hard drive. So, I went to image a bunch of computers, and just assumed it was the right size because well she had never messed up before, and most of the time its hard to tell from the manufacturer label what the size of the drive is (especially with seagate for some reason). Anyway, so I imaged 5 computers using g4u. They all fail, complaining about running out of drive area, basically. So I looked up the model number, went and yelled at her, and then thought ?Well my image is only about 5 gigs in total size? so I tried booting one. And it booted!! Granted, windows thought there was a 60 gig drive, when really there only was a 40, and probably would die a horrible messy death as soon as it tried to write to one of those areas on the drive beyond the geometry of the current disk, but it works! I would say I got lucky, but, as long as your drive is not SMALLER than the drive you made an image from, it will work just fine. I?ve used 60s from all of the major manufacturers, and it just works. They all MUST have the same geometry because, when you add up the sectors and columns, that?s how you get a 60 GB drive size. Else they would be improper labeling and false advertising, and ever since the CRT size debacle (and maybe even before), IT people have been very good at suing manufacturers for false marketing. I look forward to your comments. Matt Smollinger Application Engineer for Convergence Tech. AdvancedAV ATG From: David Balazic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2007 15:39:57 +0200 To: <[email protected]> Conversation: Bogus info about Windows and NTFS support Subject: [g4u-help] FAQ: Bogus info about Windows and NTFS support Hi! At http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/#filesystems it says : 5.1 Supported filesystems One of the questions arising a lot is "what filesystems does g4u support". The answer is: "all of them". g4u reads the disk bit by bit, starting from byte #0 to the end. It includes any MBR, boot record, partition table and the partitions themselves without further investigating the structure of the data stored in these partitions. For NTFS and Windows, this contradicts itself ;-) Problem 1 : If you copy a ntfs partition to another partition (let say on the same disk) bit by bit, it wont work (at all, or will report errors; in Windows). Namely, ntfs stores some data related to its position on the disk. After days of debugging this problem, I found a web site explaining the background and also how to fix it. Unfortunately, I don't remember the address of that site. Basically, the start postion of the partition must be stored somewhere in the ntfs system data sectors, expressed as bytes from the beginning of the disk (warning, writing from memory). Problem 2: If you clone bit by bit a disk to another and it contains Windows, the clone will probably not work (fail right in the boot loader). This is again, because the Windows boot system has a dependency on certain crap that you surely know, called "geometry". Which can be different for different disks. In this moment, I have no idea how to fix this. I believe this info would clear up a few things for users cloning Windows related disks and/or partitions. Regards, David PS: I would be great if you propagate this info to other implementors of free disk cloning programs, so they can inform they users. (and by that reduce traffix on their mailing lists; this of course should hold also for this list) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ g4u-help mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/g4u-help -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2007 10:54:22 -0400 From: Matt Smollinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [g4u-help] Bad link on home page to mail archive To: David Balazic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, <[email protected]> Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Good find dave. I had meant to post about that a while ago. The alternative though does work, which hubert has posted: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Matt Smollinger Application Engineer for Convergence Tech. AdvancedAV ATG From: David Balazic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2007 15:47:00 +0200 To: <[email protected]> Conversation: Bad link on home page to mail archive Subject: [g4u-help] Bad link on home page to mail archive Hi! At http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/#support the link to the g4u-help list archive <http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=43203> http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=43203 leads to an error page. Regards, David ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ g4u-help mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/g4u-help -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2007 18:26:24 +0200 From: "David Balazic" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [g4u-help] Bad link on home page to mail archive To: <[email protected]> Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" The correct source forge archive link is http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_name=g4u-help ________________________________ From: Matt Smollinger [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sun 23-Sep-07 16:54 To: David Balazic; [email protected] Subject: Re: [g4u-help] Bad link on home page to mail archive Good find dave. I had meant to post about that a while ago. The alternative though does work, which hubert has posted: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Matt Smollinger Application Engineer for Convergence Tech. AdvancedAV ATG ________________________________ From: David Balazic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2007 15:47:00 +0200 To: <[email protected]> Conversation: Bad link on home page to mail archive Subject: [g4u-help] Bad link on home page to mail archive Hi! At http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/#support the link to the g4u-help list archive <http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=43203> <http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=43203> http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=43203 leads to an error page. Regards, David ________________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ ________________________________ _______________________________________________ g4u-help mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/g4u-help -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... ------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ g4u-help mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/g4u-help End of g4u-help Digest, Vol 16, Issue 10 **************************************** ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ g4u-help mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/g4u-help
