[dba-Tech] Ghosting an old HD to a New HD

John,

Oh, I don't mind the inquisition at all.  It focuses my mind on coming
up with the right answer!

I have used Ghost for some years as a quick backup.  Of course, it
isn't completely kosher since the "backup" drive is mounted inside the
PC rather than as an external drive.  In any event I fully expected a
Ghosted drive to simply boot up if my main C: drive went south.  All
I'd have to do would be to make sure the Ghosted drive's jumpers were
set properly and that it was on the primary IDE controller, and voila!
 Up and running.

I tried doing that once some time last year as a test and found that
Windows would not boot all the way and it presented me with a message
saying something about the PC's configuration having changed.  My
understanding from the first days of XP was that Windows kept tabs on
the equipment mounted in your PC, especially the hard disk, in order
to provide a bit more copy protection.  My understanding was that if
you dropped in a validly formatted C: drive from a different system
that Windows would recognize that the rest of the equipment didn't
match its internal record of the PC's configuration and would not
allow you in.  That was my experience the one time I tried it.

To overcome that barrier I just re-installed Windows.  "Just", he
says!  Install and then re-upgrade it with all the security updates
and such.

So your message and those of the others here came as a surprise to me;
that is, it sure sounds like all I would have to do is take my ghosted
drive -- which is SUPPOSED to be byte-for-byte identical with the
original -- and set it up as the C: drive.  That's what I TRIED to do
last year, but Windows wouldn't let me.

The ghosted backup drive wasn't crippled in any way.  As far as I know
it had everything needed for it to be bootable.  The original C: drive
was the master on IDE controller 1 and the ghost drive was the master
on IDE controller 2.  When I say that I swapped the cables that's just
what I did:  put the ghosted drive on IDE 1 and the original C: drive
on IDE 2.

It would just be nice to know that I'm doing something wrong or stupid
if I have to use a ghosted drive to replace a dead C: drive in future
-- without having to go through the travail of re-installing Windows!

Steve Erbach
Neenah, WI


On 3/8/06, DJK(John) Robinson <djkr at msn.com> wrote:

> Hi Steve
>
> I'm not at all familiar with Ghost, sorry, and I don't know why XP would
> 'choke' over a drive serial number; why should it, unless perhaps there was
> some OEM issue?
>
> As far as I'm concerned, XP just does as it's told, and runs from the new
> drive - done this several times with different machines and systems.  Maybe
> I'm just blissful because I'm ignorant!
>
> I think you need to bottom out the 'choking' issue.  What does Ghost have to
> say about this?  Was the "back-up drive" set up with an active partition and
> a copied MBR, both necessary for booting from it?  You say you swapped the
> IDE cables:  were the drives on different cables, or just different
> connectors on the same cable, in which case did you change the jumpers on
> the drives?  And what makes you think it was definitely something to do with
> drive serial number?
>
> (end of inquisition!)
>
> John
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
> [mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Steve Erbach
> Sent: 08 March 2006 14:45
> To: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues
> Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] Ghosting an old HD to a New HD
>
>
> John,
>
> I'm sort of confused by this.  I just had to do this, more or less, to my
> wife's PC, though instead of installing a new drive, I wanted to take her
> Ghosted back-up drive and make it the new Drive C:.  Well, of course,
> Windows sees the different drive serial number and won't boot up if you
> simply swap the IDE cables.
>
> Does this scheme solve the problem of Windows XP "choking" on a drive with a
> different "signature"?
>
> Steve Erbach
> Neenah, WI