Norton Ghost

[asdfguy]

I am posting this here and under Hard Drive's 'cause I'm not sure what it pertains to more....


This is what I plan to do, tell me if you think it will work or if you see any potential problems (or an easier route for that matter).

I am tired of reinstalling XP, all my programs, utilities, settings...ect. (I do it every so often just to keep things running smoothly). So, my plan is to partition my C: drive into at least 2 total drives, C: & D:. I would then install XP, all my programs that I use on a normal basis, my settings, My Doc's...stuff like that on to my C drive. I would use the D drive to install games, software that I don't care about having to reinstall, downloads, multimedia...ect.

Now, I would then use Ghost to copy only my C drive to some type of backup source...(a separate hard drive, DVD..whatever). When the time came for me to give my system a cleaning, I would then copy/extract the Ghost file of my C drive over top of the existing C drive and have a freshly installed OS and software w/o having to reinstall and re-register all my software. Make sense?

However, this is where it gets tricky. If I partition my C drive, will Ghost recognize this and only copy my C drive, or will it ignore my D drive since it is only a virtual drive and copy the entire hard drive?

Also, lets say I wanted to make a backup for my parents computer. Lets say I made an exact copy of drive C and copied it to drive D (no partitions - separate hard drives). Drive D has a bad boot sector. When it came time to reinstall the backup from drive D back to drive C, will I no longer have the boot sector information because it came from a corrupted source? Or will it not matter because if the boot sector is bad on drive D, then it won't have anything to copy over top of drive C's boot sector and continue to use the one on the C drive? OR, does the boot sector not get copied by Norton Ghost?

Does Ghost really copy everything I need to make a system run w/o having to re-register the components and type in the serial numbers and stuff like that? In short, I'm looking to do a one button fresh install of everything I want on my computer. The way I typically do it takes all day and I have to sit around the computer to 'press enter here and agree to that and enter the product serial number'. It sucks!

 

[4W4K3]

Why do you constantly re-install XP? It's not necessary just to keep the computer running good. If you use basic maintenance and cleanup tools you will be fine, even if you don't reformat for a year. Registry cleaners, defragging, etc.

I believe Norton does recognize partitioned drives, it wouldn't be much of a program if it didn't.

Ghosting is not meant to be used to take one harddrive and use it on a totally different computer. You will have all kinds of driver conflicts, as your OS will not be changed and will be looking for information that has either changed or is not there anymore. It's meant to be used on one machine, or a machine with EXACT same hardware (which is kind of hard to do).

 

[Geoff]

Yes Norton Ghost can see partitions, in your scenario if you make an image of your C drive, you can restore the image to that partition. However if you make an image of a partition, and then try to restore it to a different partition or to a different computer, it will most likely not work, since the file tables will be incorrect.