Recommendation / advice needed

  • Thread starter Thread starter Cuzman
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Cuzman

My brother has an old system with a 13GB Seagate drive which is showing
some occassional bad sector warnings. It came with an OEM copy of
Windows 98 on a partition, and he doesn't have a full Windows CD to
install from (just a "restore" CD).

I have a spare 13GB drive, but for all the hardware knowledge I have
I've never cloned a drive before. Can anyone recommend a small program
that I can run from boot floppy which will clone everything including
the partition structure across to this spare drive? It would be good if
it can format the spare drive to FAT32 as well, but I can do that
separately if necessary.

TIA
 
Cuzman said:
My brother has an old system with a 13GB Seagate drive which is showing some
occassional bad sector warnings. It came with an OEM copy of Windows 98 on a
partition, and he doesn't have a full Windows CD to install from (just a
"restore" CD).
Click to expand...
I have a spare 13GB drive, but for all the hardware knowledge I have I've
never cloned a drive before.
Click to expand...

Its not necessarily a very good idea to clone a drive that has
bad sectors, you are basically copying the bad sectors if the
cloner doesnt just give up on the first bad sector.
Can anyone recommend a small program that I can run from boot floppy which
will clone everything including the partition structure across to this spare
drive?
Click to expand...

Those bad sectors will be a problem if they are still present.

If not, the cheapest approach is ghost thats included in
systemworks pro 2003 thats available off ebay for peanuts.
Must be systemworks pro, ghost isnt included in systemworks.
It would be good if it can format the spare drive to FAT32 as well, but I can
do that separately if necessary.
Click to expand...

The clone operation copys the formatting at the time it clones.
 
Just make sure the target partition is exactly the same size as the source
partition; otherwise, Ghost will bomb.
 
I was taken aback by the negative reactions to my comment by people I
respect, for I had more than once failed to restore Ghost image files to
target partitions that differed in size from the source partition. So I
decided to get to the bottom of this matter.

I created two partitions, one slightly smaller and one slightly larger than
the source partition, then restored the Ghost image file to both. It worked!
So the objections were well founded. My apologies for giving people a bum
steer.

The question remains why I got different results in the past, and I can come
up with only one explanation. The motherboard in my machine has recently
been replaced due to a faulty disk controller. I assume that the faulty disk
controller on the old motherboard caused the problem. Is this a reasonable
explanation?

Andy
 
Andy said:
I was taken aback by the negative reactions to my comment by people I respect,
for I had more than once failed to restore Ghost image files to target
partitions that differed in size from the source partition. So I decided to
get to the bottom of this matter.
Click to expand...
I created two partitions, one slightly smaller and one slightly larger than
the source partition, then restored the Ghost image file to both. It worked!
So the objections were well founded. My apologies for giving people a bum
steer.
Click to expand...
The question remains why I got different results in the past,
Click to expand...

Some of the ghosts can be quite buggy, particularly ghost 9.

Not sure what you mean by ghost 2004.
and I can come up with only one explanation. The motherboard in my machine has
recently been replaced due to a faulty disk controller. I assume that the
faulty disk controller on the old motherboard caused the problem. Is this a
reasonable explanation?
Click to expand...

Yes, and the failure may not have had anything to do
with the relative partition sized, it may just have failed
and the size difference was just a coincidence.
 
Rod Speed said:
Some of the ghosts can be quite buggy, particularly ghost 9.

Not sure what you mean by ghost 2004.
Click to expand...

I meant Ghost contained in Norton SystemWorks 2004.
Yes, and the failure may not have had anything to do
with the relative partition sized, it may just have failed
and the size difference was just a coincidence.
Click to expand...

Thanks for edifying this technoklutz.

Andy

[snip]
 
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