Norton Ghost puffs up hard drive?

[J.Clarke]

On 27 Sep 2003 08:43:01 -0700

I recently bought a new hard drive for my laptop and had the store
technicians use Norton Ghost to copy the entire old hard drive to the
new one. I have two questions.

They didn't format the new hard drive before copying the Ghost image
to it. Everything seems to be working okay, and Properties shows that
I have the gigs I'm supposed to have, but I thought the hard drive had
to be formatted first. Will I have any problems due to this?

No. Ghost handles the formatting when it restores the image.

Secondly, I think the size of the ghost on the new drive is bigger
than the amount of data on the old drive. Did Norton Ghost puff up
these files when it made its image? Are there now some Norton Ghost
hidden files taking up space on my drive? (I don't have Ghost
installed on the new drive.) If so, can I identify and delete them?

Most likely it expanded the cluster size to match the capacity of the
new drive, so there will be more slack space at the end of files that
don't exactly fill a cluster--that increased slack space is probably
what you are seeing.

 

[Lehar V. Osvald]

I recently bought a new hard drive for my laptop and had the store
technicians use Norton Ghost to copy the entire old hard drive to the
new one. I have two questions.

They didn't format the new hard drive before copying the Ghost image
to it. Everything seems to be working okay, and Properties shows that
I have the gigs I'm supposed to have, but I thought the hard drive had
to be formatted first. Will I have any problems due to this?

Secondly, I think the size of the ghost on the new drive is bigger
than the amount of data on the old drive. Did Norton Ghost puff up
these files when it made its image? Are there now some Norton Ghost
hidden files taking up space on my drive? (I don't have Ghost
installed on the new drive.) If so, can I identify and delete them?

Thanks for any answers.

 

[John]

By default, when you use Norton Ghost to do a DISK to DISK copy from a small
drive to a big drive, it will proportionally increase the size of the
partitions on the new drive (eg. copying from 40GB to 60GB drive, the
partitions on the new drive will be made 50% bigger to use up the available
space on the new drive).

When you copy a folder from a small partition to a big partition, it will
usually take up more space on the larger partition. I think this is because
bigger partitions usually have a larger block size, which results in more
wasted space.

 

[Lehar V. Osvald]

Thanks, both of you. I don't really understand partitions and such,
but don't like the idea of my files taking up more space. Is there
anything I can do to make the files smaller again? If I had not
ghosted the drive, but instead reinstalled the operating system and
programs and files on the new drive, would it still have taken up more
space than previously? Is this an artifact of the ghosting process or
of the larger hard drive?

 

[Rod Speed]

I don't really understand partitions and such, but
don't like the idea of my files taking up more space.

Bit pointless worrying about that.

Is there anything I can do to make the files smaller again?

Yes, have them in the same sized partition(s) they used
to be in would return them to their previous sizes.

Corse that also means that the extra space on the hard drive would
have to be in extra partition(s) and thats gets very messy very quickly.

You dont say what OS you are running or the actual size
of the old and new drive and how it was partitioned. If you
are running XP you may be able to do something about it. If
you are running Win9x or ME, your only option is more partitions.

If I had not ghosted the drive, but instead reinstalled the
operating system and programs and files on the new drive,
would it still have taken up more space than previously?

Yes, if you had used the same partition sizes as you
are using now, you would have got the same result.

Is this an artifact of the ghosting
process or of the larger hard drive?

Of the larger partition(s).

 

[John]

When you Ghost the drive with Norton Ghost Enterprise Editon 7.5, it gives
you the choice to specify the size of each partition (so you can make them
identical to the sizes on the old drive).

You could try altering the cluster size using Partition Magic? That might
help? If you do, run a backup first.

 

[Lehar V. Osvald]

Thanks again. Is this worth doing? I'm not sure how much space I've
lost. The old hard drive was 6.4 GB and the new one is 30 GB. There
was one partition on the old drive, dividing the HD into, I think, 4.5
GB and 2.0 or something. The new one also has one partition but I'm
not at my computer now so can't tell you the sizes.

I run Win 98 SE. Is the gain worth the effort to attempt any of the
fixes you suggested?

 

[John]

Thanks again. Is this worth doing? I'm not sure how much space I've
lost. The old hard drive was 6.4 GB and the new one is 30 GB. There
was one partition on the old drive, dividing the HD into, I think, 4.5
GB and 2.0 or something. The new one also has one partition but I'm
not at my computer now so can't tell you the sizes.

I run Win 98 SE. Is the gain worth the effort to attempt any of the
fixes you suggested?

Everyone's idea is different of what effort is worth what cost. Only
you can decide that.

I'd encourage you buy more hard drives. Having more hard drives always
provides more options, and usually better options.

 

[bill]

Thanks again. Is this worth doing? I'm not sure how much space I've
lost. The old hard drive was 6.4 GB and the new one is 30 GB. There
was one partition on the old drive, dividing the HD into, I think, 4.5
GB and 2.0 or something. The new one also has one partition but I'm
not at my computer now so can't tell you the sizes.

I run Win 98 SE. Is the gain worth the effort to attempt any of the
fixes you suggested?

That's highly subjective.
Here's my take:
With the costs of large new drives so low, andy loses through
increased slack space is more than offset by the reduced cost of the
extra storage space.
IOW, you are gaining so much new inexpensive storage space that the
extra hassle of using (and keeping track of) more logical drives just
isn't worth it.
IMO, it's much easier to simply rethink your folder organization,
making a few major folder hierarchies, and using subfolder names that
make sense. This makes folder management easier than having to deal
with more drive letters.

 

[Lehar V. Osvald]

Thanks guys. Since I have a laptop, it's not so easy to add hard
drives, and they're not nearly as cheap as desktop hard drives, which
is the reason I take it more seriously than a desktop user would.