Other than the original message being 2 months old I'll take a quick stab
at answering your inlines.
On Tue, 27 Jul 2010, Soren wrote:
Inline...
Christopher Fisk wrote:
Hey Folks,
I've been using my old version of Ghost for years, with no problem.
Booting from a floppy and migrating my windows install from smaller to
larger and larger drives. I've finally got to the point where that version
no longer supports my hardware,
I still supports your hardware, you're only experiencing the usual BS from not
using a brand new HDD.
If it supported my hardware I would be able to boot from the disk and have
it see my SATA controller. The version I had did not.
I get some archaic error from
DOS saying it can't read my drives for some reason. Rather than mess
around with it trying to fix it, I've considered just getting a new program
to handle the job.
In your case, the "right way" to do it could be imaging only the O/S
partition, and nothing else.
Of course, because I don't care about my data being migrated at the same
time and have plenty of open SATA ports on my system? How can you assume
my right way and wrong way?
But doing so leaves the hidden partition made by the O/S (e.g. XP)
behind, and hence before doing a migrate, you'll have to wipe your new
drive, including the MBR, and then do a repartitioning. Check that the
new boot partition is at least the same size as the imaged partition.
I originally did a manual partition of my system, and actually the
partitions go as follows on the drive I was trying to ghost: Linux Boot
(50MB), Linux Swap (4GB), Linux Ext3 (150GB), NTFS (100GB). There are no
hidden OS partitions.
Disconnecting the IDE/SATA cables from every other drive in the system may
also help. The O/S wil find these drives again, don't worry.
Also, when entering Ghost, it'll ask you if you want to mark the drive(s) as
usable with Ghost. Deselect this option.
If my software can not detect the drive controller then disconnecting
those drives will not help.
Is Acronis True Image what I'm looking for? I want to boot from
(prefereably) USB thumbdrive and be able to make an image to an external
USB drive. Booting from CD or floppy is a close second choice.
Maybe, maybe not.
The boot game is like the game of "scissors, paper, stone", if you know
what I mean.
The priority levels are hard coded, and the old floppy has the main
advantage. Next comes floppy emulation on CD, next the HDD, and finally
the USB drive.
Right now I run XP from a 4GB 133x CF card on a CF to IDE bridge card (goes
right into the IDE connector on the MB), with swap file on a separate HDD
partition, and it boots from BIOS beep to login prompt in less than ten
seconds. That is seriously fast, so why use a USB pen for boot?
Because I want to store ghost on the USB pen in an effort to use it to
move my main system drive from a 250GB SATA to a 1TB SATA without
reinstalling windows. It is easy enough to do that with linux, just copy
the data over, doesn't work with windows.
For my internet system, I'll soon install a SD to IDE bridge card, making a
boot from a write protected .iso image possible w/30MB/sec.
Those adapter cards are only about ten bucks, about the same as for a 4GB SD
card that does 20MB/sec. Beats any USB pen any time, plus the system sees the
drive as a genuine HDD with all the benefits preserved.
About the back up to USB HDD, you'll need either back up from within Win,
which is OK using non-O/S partitions, or you'll need a DOS floppy supporting
USB 2.0, which is very hard to come by.
Or just get a version of ghost/acronis that supports my chipset, or do
what I ended up doing and add ghost to a Bart environment.
Splitting the b/u assignments therefore seems like a reasonable suggestion.
Making a reliable b/u of an O/S partition, You'll need something that
operates at a low level, like the floppy disk, or at least floppy
emulation (Nero). Or making a super-floppy image on a bootable USB pen,
meaning FAT12 formating, which XP does not support, but NT4 and 2K does,
as far as I remember.
While I haven't looked into DOS floppies with USB 2.0 support recently,
I know that IBM used to support this with PC-DOS. Forget about the
MS-DOS USB support, as it only reaches as far as USB 1.0.
Maybe bootdisk.com has something, I dunno.
I then want to take that USB drive and put it internal into the system and
take the smaller drive out of service.
What do you expect to gain from this?
Space. Replace my 250GB main drive with a 1TB main drive. Also I now
have a drive that isn't a couple of years old and I hopefully ward off age
related failures of the drive.
Running Vista Home Premium and have a few EXT3 drives on my main HDD.
Ghost 2003 works fine with Vista, done that about 35-40 times now.
I've not been impressed with Ghost 2003 or Ghost 10, but if Ghost14 is any
better than those I can go with that as well.
With Ghost 2003 most people overlook the fact, that back up of NTFS/*nix
partitions/drives only is supported when writing directly to CD or DVD, as
stated in the manual.
Used as intended, it seriously rokcz. My XP system fits on a single CD
(installation/configuration only, using hard compression), and the same goes
for my three *nix systems.
Following the link I found on the list a few weeks ago I can get Acronis
True Image for $30.
Knock yourself out :)
Though, you might want to consider that Acronis still has an unsolved history
of data corruption, which is well documented on the internet. The reason could
be that they are trying to pull off low level operations from a higher level,
which in theory could be done by using the right sys calls and the right
drivers. However, to my humble experience, this is not possible without making
shortcuts and thereby glitches.
Data corruption doesn't worry me. I am not using this to backup. I want
to clone a drive and if the clone goes bad I'll still have the original.
What do you think?
I don't think anything, besides what's your needs?
Pretty much stated in my first paragraph. I want to move from a
small(ish) drive to a larger drive.
Do you want data reliability?, Do you want a back up that you for a fact know
works?
Does it have to be through a mouse operated GUI, or can you accept that your
back up may not work when you need it the most?
IMHO, everything has its place, and for back ups, this place is the CLI.
HTH
Was a great thoughtout answer to a question I didn't ask. =)
Christopher Fisk
--
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Brian Griffin: I'll bet money / You'll marry a honey / Who's pretty and
funny / And her name will be Ted.
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