I need to know. I mean will this make a perfect image on cd's so I can then take that image and dump it to a new hard drive (formatted as same as other HD--NTFS). will it do all this? Copy all the hidden OS files?


Please let me know, I gotta do this asap. Hard drive is dying here on the server, and I gotta do something QUICK! How much does Norton Ghost cost? cheap?

Thanks!

Its what its designed to do. Ive never done it on NTFS, but Ive seen it done on FAT drives.

Of course, win2K forbids access to system files while its running, so youll have to work with another machine to do the copying, but thats a minor problem.

Dunno what it costs, but it shouldnt be that exorbitant.

This may seem stupid/blindingly obvious, but can't the normal Windows Backup prog be configured to copy everything to a chosen backup medium?

If so, then a solution may be to get hold of a HD, slot it in as a slave and copy everything to it.

It can then be removed and used as a new master HD. I speak from bitter experience as someone who suffered catastrophic HD failure and will never run a single HD system again [img]graemlins/wow.gif[/img]

Windows backup is not a integral part of windows, and it dosent have any authority to make windows relinquish a file lock.

So it cant read things like the password file, .dlls that are loaded into memory, the registry, lots of things. You get exactly the same result as if you xcopied the files or used explorer. Something resembling a workable OS, but it wont run.

Damn, andrewas, I bow to your experience on this. I just thought that the "All information on this computer" option would be a solution.

Btw, I know it's not loaded by default, but I set it up on my system and use this option to backup onto a 20gig secondary disk.

I've used Ghost 7.5 to copy a Windows 2000 image from a failing 20GB harddrive to a 40 just last week. There is an option to force Ghost an image if there are read problems and this drive had that problem. The last minute (estimated by Ghost) took about 3 minutes to finish. After a week the customer has reported no problems.

I also Ghosted a WinXP image for a friend of mine whose drive was so bad that it took 10 hours to copy (no lie). After several months his new drive is still having no problems.

I have a bootable 3.5 floppy with Ghost on it that boots in dos and allows a Ghost image to be made on one computer with a drive on each controller.

I too do not know the price.

Mark

[EDIT] Ghost can also copy multiple partitions from drive to drive. I believe it makes an exact duplicate of the whole drive.

[ 04-18-2003, 06:08 PM: Message edited by: skywalker ]

Wow! Thanks Skywalker, I'll buy it with the HD (NG is 80 bucks though), so we need some donations quick guys! I am thinking of turning off the server now. the event viewer is reporting continuing Harddrive errors :( :(

I'm sure you've already figured it out, but for the record:

Ghost runs under DOS, not windows and makes an exact image of the drive, bit for bit.

It is the defacto of backup utilities for power users.

I knew that [img]smile.gif[/img] You gotta do it in DOS, as so to have all the files 'unlocked' so you can copy the OS.

I used DOS so much and know it by hand. I always told people in the 90's to start off learning DOS. I used a nifty proggie called 'List' and it was awesome.. and d.com (enhanced dir command). [img]smile.gif[/img] I still use it a lot in XP, but it's not the same... sniff! [img]smile.gif[/img]

Anyone remember the command format C: /autotest ? Wasn't in the manual or listed anywhere. What it did was format without asking. you type THAT in, and when you hit enter, it's over. :D

I was shocked at how FAST NGhost cloned the drive! It usually took me more than 2 hours to copy some of the forum dirs that had 30,000+ files in them (doing this in Win2000's explorer).

I copied everything (4Gb) in 17mins!!!

The good 'ol days of DOS. Brings a tear to my eye.

I remember learning DOS on the 8086 platform, My Tandy 1000!

I think the proc speed was around 4MHZ, with 640KB of RAM, a 5 1/4" floppy and the latest 3.5" floppy that could hold an incredible 720K or data. Who could possibly need more than 720KB of storage?

And don't get me started on GW-Basic. :D