"Katy" said:
Thanks Paul! I understand now that only 137gb will be recognized on my
P4S333 mobo. Thank you for the link and info.
With your 2nd alert about the OS, the Ghost idea might not be in my best
interest. I suppose it makes sense that if this OS is pulling in data
that shows there is a 'bad sector', then that same info will carry over to
the new drive with the Ghost image? I was thinking this was a 'hardware'
problem and that trading the hardware for something new would help. But if
the image sees a problem, then Ghosting would not cure what the OS is
seeing? Would this be correct?
A ghost image would be preferable for me, but not if I wind up with the same
problem on a new, bad-sector-free hard drive. That can only occur if a
fresh install of the OS is done, is that correct?
Thanks again and please verify my understanding? katy
I would attack the problem in a few steps:
1) Verify that the motherboard can actually run the disk in its
full 160GB glory. To do that, follow the instructions on the
48bitlba site, using either WinXP SP1, or whatever service pack
is required for your OS. Check that your OS has support for
137GB before wasting time on that option. Once the OS is installed,
fill the remaining space on the disk with 1GB sized files, as
a test. If you are truly in ">137GB mode", then as you duplicate
and fill the disk with files, the file system will survive.
If the install is incorrect, the file system on the new disk will
be corrupted just as a file is copied to the 137GB mark (128GB
binary math). The reason I recommend going through this exercise,
is to verify that your OS, your motherboard hardware, and your
BIOS are happy at >137GB.
You can use this to prove or disprove DaveW's assertion.
If you never plan on attempting to access the upper 80GB of
space on the disk (i.e. the new disk is just a replacement 80GB
for the old disk), then this exercise isn't needed. If you
do a bit-by-bit copy of the original 80GB disk, the disk will
look to the OS like it is 80GB in size (note that if you
attack it with Partition Magic, you could get yourself into
trouble if you attempt to expand the partitions, as Partition
Magic will make the rest of the space available, at your peril,
if you haven't proved the OS can handle the new configuration).
I would leave the original 80GB disk disconnected from the
computer, while doing this test install of the OS. You don't want
anything messing up that disk.
A cheating option, would be to Google on "set max address",
which is an option on IDE disks to change the declared size
of the disk. I don't know of any software that will do this
for you, but if you want to make the disk look like a 120GB
or an 80GB, there is a mechanism in the ATA standard to do it.
2) Step 2 is to copy the disk bit-by-bit
3) Step 3 is optional. If you did the experiment in step1, then
once you are booted from the new disk, do whatever 48bitlba.com
says to do, to make your OS ready to handle the >137GB disk.
(Since you already tested this in step 1, you know it works
Get a copy of Partition Magic and resize the partitions as you
like.
As for step 2...
Well, I don't know anything about Ghost, so all I can suggest is
to try to transfer the 80GB over to the 160GB and see if it works.
(Ghost manuals)
http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/files/ghost/index.html
I examined the Ghost 2000 manual (ngpe.pdf) and if you run
Ghost from an actual MSDOS prompt, it has a -clone option:
"To copy local drive one to local drive two:
ghostpe.exe -clone,mode=copy,src=1,dst=2 "
I think what this does, is copy 80GB from the first disk, to
the first 80GB of the second disk. This will make the second
half of the disk appear inaccessible (until you use Partition
Magic or a similar utility, to make changes later).
There is a later section in the manual "Examples of -CRC32 usage"
that shows how to generate CRC32 values for the files on the
old disk, and use that to compare to the image created on the
new disk. So, you can fashion a verify operation with a couple
of -CRC32 operations.
As I don't know a thing about Ghost, perhaps someone who does this
all the time can verify that this is the right thing to do
My recipe above is how I would attempt to tackle the problem.
As with _any_ operation, no matter how innocuous, have a backup
of your data as protection against an accident/catastrophy.
(Like specifying the wrong SRC and DST disk IDs.)
When a disk exhibits symptoms like yours, the _first_ thing
you do, is use some backup software and your favorite backup
method, to protect yourself. Even if it means a few boxes of
CD/DVD rewriteables
I learned my lesson already, about putting
off backups "until tomorrow", only to find my disk is dead.
About the only potential hitch I see in this whole process, is
what Ghost will do if it finds a really bad sector. I've had
disks that hung up on a bad sector, and wouldn't do anything.
If your disk is that bad, making backups or Ghosting might be
quite a challenge. It may require a file backup approach, rather
than a bit-by-bit clone of the disk.
Good luck,
Paul
