Help About Norton Ghost - Please help

[ProTrader]

Hello

This forum is so cool, I just want to let you know guys how many hours I wasted trying to reload my whole OS. After that I would spend hours trying to install all the programs I use. I had no clue that with Norton Ghost we can do a recovery or an image disk http://images.thetechguide.com/forum/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\'\' /> I even had that program and I got rid of it.

I have a couple of questions about norton ghost since I have never used it.

If I install a new copy of Win 2000 and install all the programs that I use with it then I do an image of the hard drive. Am I able to put that image on another computer without having to partition or anything like that (for example if I have linux).
I don\'t care about saving my data since I have it seperatly on another hard drive. I am only interested in just loading the OS as fast as possible when it crashes or something. Or load it to a different machine with the same software.


Also, if the same computer that I made the image from crashed. is it easy to reload the recovery from the CDR.

[Anonymous]

Yes, you can do that, but you better have the W2k CD available for the installation of new hardware if the other box has different hardware. Also, there is no gaurantee that the image will be placed exactly the same as the origional (ie beginning of HDD). I had that problem with Ghost, it would never restore the image to the exact location, and even after I restored an image, not even a defrag would place files at the beginning of the drive. I finally switched to Drive Image Pro, which seems to work much better and a little slower, but it\'s worth the wait to have a perfectly restored drive.

[Anonymous]

Thanks a lot for the advice
I do have image drive I will give it a shot

[eekarum]

Win 2000 ties a security ID to your motherboard and it will bluescreen and refuse to load if you move the HD to another box.

to get around this, you have to do a refresher install of windows (over your existing installation)

actually, Drive Image has a much faster throughput by default than ghost (in my case, with a scsi drive) can restore an image in 50 seconds vs. 8 minutes in ghost

[Anonymous]

PT,

So you mean if I want to move my OS to another PC. I have to install win2k on that PC first then image my OS on top of it?

Thanks for all the help

[eekarum]

no, i mean the other way around.
just put your HD into the other box, and if it bluescreens,
you will need to re-run setup . however, all your programs will still be there

[Anonymous]

ok

what is the other box already have another hard drive and I have the image on burned onto CDRs would that be the same thing too ?

thanks

[eekarum]

other box, meaning somebody else\'s computer.
if you only have one computer, you\'re all set =)

however, you can configure ghost to strip out the windows SID and reconfigure a new SID when the image is restored to another computer

[Anonymous]

ok

That\'s what I wanted to know. and yes I meant to another PC. I have two PCs and usually by the time I finish installing my programs and copy all the files that I have it will be around  10 GB (I have a shared FTP server).

So, I want to image them all after a clean install then everytime I need them I will restore them back to the initial state without wasting time.

is that duable ? or will I encounter problems since it\'s a lot of files ?

thanks again

[eekarum]

no problems at all,
but i would recommend keeping your OS (WINNT and Documents and Settings folders) on a separate partition,
and your programs on the big partition.
usually, 99% of problems with the computer are with the operating system itself,
so it makes more sense to backup your only the OS, and not any program files,
you could re-install them anyway, in the event there might be  a problem.

To accomplish this, you need to begin at the beginning, installing Windows using an unattended script which will shift your \"Program Files\" folder to a separate partition.
see my post here:
http://www.thetechguide.com/forum/showthre...llapsed&sb=5&o=

[superimposer]

How do you separate your OS and Docs-n-Settings from Program Files?  Do you do this at setup or copy/move later?

[Twinkie]

Okay to move the Docs-n-Setting:
Create a folder on D:
Copy all existing profiles from the C:Documents and Settings folder to the folder you just created.   If you\'re copying from NTFS to NTFS, use the XCOPY command with the /o switch to maintain any ACLs on the files.)
Then edit the registry: go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionProfileList.
Double-click ProfilesDirectory and type in D:%folder%.

You can change the profile for default users by editing the DefaultUserProfile string value, and you can change the profile for all users by editing AllUsersProfile

Keep in mind when using one image for more that one machine that you need to check the cluster and sector count on the hard drives.  If they are different you can have serious issues with the image.  I try not to copy images from one harddrive to the next.

If worried about SID information use sysprep.exe to remove the computer name and SID histroy right before you image.

[eekarum]

during setup, using an unattended script.
or, you can run setup again in upgrade mode using an unattended script