Hi,
Ghost is an excellent program, but there are cases where it can cause
severe problems.
If you are going to use Ghost, there are a couple of situations you
should avoid.
1. NEVER use Ghost to duplicate NT based systems (windows NT, 2000, XP,
Server 2003) if those systems are ever likely to end up on a Windows
2000/2003 domain. Te reason is that every system is given a unique ID
during setup, which is used by the domain controllers. If you set up
the systems, and then Ghost them, when they join the domain, they all
appear to be the same system. The first inkling of a problem is when
you can't log on from certain machines. You can get round this but it
is a pain.
2. Do not use Ghost to move an NT based system to different hardware.
Windows is now particularly sensitive to hardware, and it is detected
at the start of Windows setup where it says "Setup is inspecting your
hardware". At this point, it is evaluating the Hardware Abstraction
layer to use, and depending on the results, it sets up the registry to
expect data based on the HAL detected. In particular, the power
management software makes a massive difference - the ACPI HAL uses a
totally different registry structure from the other HAL's. Also, if
the IDE chipset is different (Sis instead of Intel for example), you
will get an inaccessible boot device error.
3. If you want to move Windows to new hardware (such as when your
motherboard fails), the ONLY supported way is to back the system up
using the Windows Backup applet (it was written by Seagate and it's
actally quite good). Make sure you include the System State when
backing up. Then on the new system, install the operating system, and
service pack it to the same level as your original system. Then
restore from Backup. Now re-install Windows on top of this backup -
this ensures that the hardware is correctly setup. Finally, re-apply
the latest service pack.
I know it's a bit of a pain, but this is the only reliable way of
moving a system. As an IT consultant, I have probably done this about
20 times in the last year, and it has worked every time bar one. That
one time was when a fellow consultant here in Zimbabwe had tried to use
Ghost to transfer a Server 2003 system to a new motherboard. After two
days trying, we gave up trying to get the Dial up networking to work,
and re-installed the system from scratch.
So be careful how you use Ghost. It is a wonderful tool for moving data
from one disk to another. But please, do not rely on it as your only
backup mechanism, as if you have a motherboard failure, you may have
severe problems. Use the inbuilt NTBACKUP utility (except XP Home
edition), to back your system up to a file as well.
I also believe that Ghost has a problem with the new disk volume
structure being used by Windows. This replaces the old DOS based
partitions. You may have noticed when installing Windows, that you
can't use the whole disk - about 8Mb is reserved. This is used to
stoed information about the disk, for use by the dynamic volume system
now supported by Windows. In this 8Mb, they store the new volume
table, and the disk's unique ID. If you Ghost this area, Windows will
think that both disks are the same, and get very confused. I think
this is what happened when Martin (Mother) ghosted his disks.
Sorry about the length of this, but I think this is valuable
information, and could prevent a fellow LR enthusiast losing his life's
work!!
Cheers!
Graham Carter
Carter Computer Services (Pvt) Ltd
P.O. Box A1619
Avondale
Harare
Zimbabwe
Tel: +263 4 300082
Cell: +263 91 329310
Fax: +263 918 329310
email:
[email protected]
