Ghost Solution Suite

I am running out of space on my 100Gb harddisk on my Leneove thinkpad T60p. It has one large Primary NTFS partion (C:) and one small primary service partion, that I do not intend to use any more.

So I bought a new 200GB disk and partioned it into one 140GB NTFS primary partion (no drive letter assigned) and one extended partion with the rest, whiach has a logical NTFS drive H: taking up all space. It is mounted in a multibay inserted instead of the dvd-drive and is seen as an intern disk.

Then I try to use the copy partition function from the existng C: partition to the new unassigned partition. I specify that it should ignore filesystem checks and invalid sectors. I want the disk active and MBR copied, as I plan immediately after the copying to replace the existing system disk with the larger one. It fails with the message below. I try running CHKDSK C: /r and it finds a few minor problems. I reboot (cold) and try again. Same problem. This is what I get:


-Error EC8F17B3: Cannot complete copying of Preload (C:\) drive.
--Cannot copy source drive to destination location.
---Error EBAB0013: A test that safeguards the integrity of the program failed unexpectedly. PRECONDITION failed, WinNtDevice::Read: .\WinNtDevice.cpp(1947): ! IsSystemAccessRestricted().
---Cannot copy source drive to destination location.
----Error EBAB0013: A test that safeguards the integrity of the program failed unexpectedly. PRECONDITION failed, WinNtDevice::Read: .\WinNtDevice.cpp(1947): ! IsSystemAccessRestricted().


Yesterday (before the CHKDSK) I tried making a restore point on an external netwrok drive and restore from that instead of copying directly. I got into a similar problem:

Error EC8F178F: Cannot complete the restore of recovery point: \\ethernet_bd\backup\Lenovo\Image\LENOVO-8B39D286_C_Drive010.v2i. Error EC8F03F2: Cannot copy data from the recovery point to the destination. Error EC8F03FA: Cannot read data from the recovery point. Error EBAB0013: A test that safeguards the integrity of the program failed unexpectedly. PRECONDITION failed, WinNtDevice::Read: .\WinNtDevice.cpp(1947): ! IsSystemAccessRestricted().
Details: 0xEBAB0013
Source: Norton Ghost

I have previously restored drives in the exact same manner using the same machine (though the restore point belonged to a Dell M65). Does anyone see what is happening?

 http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/293250.htm

I suspect it's your hardware. Can you create an image to an external HD?

If you have an external HD enclosure that can use a laptop HD, you could try a reverse clone. IBM laptops usually need a reverse clone. New HD in the laptop and old HD in the enclosure. Make sure the new HD is NOT partitioned. If you clone into a partition, as you tried above, the new OS won't boot. With Ghost 12 you must clone the OS into unallocated space. (But that didn't create the error message).

 Hey Gizzle,
wat do u mean to say?
1: Does that mean that I should remove all partions on the new HD or that I should just have only 1 big one?

2: By your question about creating an image to external hardware, do you mean if I can create the image - not using the internal multibay, but an external (e.g. USD) bay - using the same disk?

3: By reversing the clone process I will no longer have my existing disk in my normal HD bay. That would mean that I would have to book form external enclosure (e.g. USB case). Does that work well, without the drive letters and boot disk letters gets mixed up?

 hi sufiyan,

On reflection, your partition without a drive letter is probably OK. I didn't try that with my clone testing.

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1148252120;start=

I used unallocated space. Partitions with a drive letter were a problem.

I must be spending too much time on the True Image forum. You can't do a reverse clone with Ghost 12 so forget I mentioned it. There are reports of conventional cloning to USB external HDs failing because of 240 head HD geometry with IBM laptops.

The internal multibay may be a problem. Just guessing in view of that link. I'd try writing a recovery point to a conventional USB external HD. Have two partitions on the 200 GB external HD. The first for the eventual OS and the second to hold the recovery point. Delete the first partition before creating the recovery point so the image doesn't know about a partition with a drive letter. After the recovery point has been created, install the HD in your laptop, boot to the Ghost 12 CD and restore the recovery point to the unallocated space. I hope it works.

 Thanks, I will try that. It is really weird, because I can access and view the files of the recovery point on the network disk. I can also read and wrte on the new disk in the multibay. I can even copy a file from the recovery point to the new disk (on hte assigned partion)

 hi sufiyan,
good morning....
Please keep us informed about your progress.
I haven't used True Image for a few years, except for tests. It worked well on my computer. Images always verified and restored.
Corrupted images is a recurring issue and some of the experienced posters do a test restore on every image as they don't trust the verify function.But if Ghost doesn't work for you, running TI from the boot CD (reverse clone) is what I'd try.

 I have not yet resolved the issue but am getting nearer :-)

To complete the picture, I mounted the disk in an external usb casing and tried my earlier approaches - with the same result. then I switched to the Administrator user - with the same result. then just to see what Norton would say I started a chat. Anticipating a long list of studpid questions, I sent them the above plus a little more.

I got the interesting reply that if I wanted to do the copy disk operation, the disk should not be initialized - i.e. no partitions. Support asked for me to check all file system integrety switches, resize partition, all boot realted switches, the ignore bad sectors and do not assign drive letter. Having nothing to loose, I dropped all partitions and lo and behold - Ghost started copying and I went to bed.

This morning, I happily exchanged the drives and started booting. I came past the thinkpad logon screen, ending up with the unfortunately, familiar black screnn with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner. No boot. If any of you has been there and has a good idea of what to do, please let me know.

I susspect that since the drive though various previous attempts have been boot initialized, something in the boot setup (MBR, Active, boot.ini) is invalid.

 familiar black screen with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner. No boot.

That seem typical for an IBM laptop clone to an external HD. Geometry issues.

You have two choices. My Ghost 12 image\restore technique outlined above or a reverse clone using your TI CD. Neither technique suffers from the geometry mismatch.

 This is the original thread outlining the geometry problem.

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1128609708/0

It's a BIOS issue. IBM laptops see internal HDs as 240 head geometry (CHS) and external HDs as 255 head geometry. When you clone or restore an image you really need the destination HD to be seen in its final geometry position. That's a very brief summary. It should make sense when you read the thread.


Quote:
Just make sure the source disk is seen in its proper geometry while the image is being created, and the target disk is seen in its proper geometry at the time the image is being restored, and it won't matter where the image is stored in between.



Quote:
What is the difference between image restore and cloning in Ghost.

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/notes.htm#14

 I'm pleased it was so easy.

I've learned something from you. I've always recommended that the destination partition on the second HD should be deleted before creating the image of the OS on the first HD. But it's not the partition that's the issue. It's the drive letter and you had a partition without a drive letter. So you succeeded.

If a drive letter had been present the restored OS would not have booted as it would have taken the drive letter of the partition as seen during the imaging process. After the image has been created it doesn't matter if you then create a partition with a drive letter in the destination space. You can restore into that partition without a problem.

 hey Gizzle,
But just so I understand what is going on. Why is Lenovo/IBM different from other brands. They use the same hard disks.

I can see that an older 100GB drive may have a different geometry than a new 200GB perpendicular drive, but I thought that that was what Ghost was there to overcome - especially when you only copy partitions?

Shouldn't a geometry problem make copying almost impossible. If that went fine (file system has been verified), the it is only the boot that is the problem?

What is the difference between image restore and cloning in Ghost. I thought it, in theory, just "piped" the back/restore processes onto the new disk?

This is somewhat out of what I usually work with, so I have probably misunderstood a few things here :-)

 hi Gizzle....good morning....
 It worked! To summarize what I did to save everyone to page up to owais description:
1: partition the new HD into one partition large enough to hold my old HD and one partition large enough to hold a restore point.
2: Assign a drive letter to the second partition
3: Create a restore point of my C disk unto the second partition (you can have the new disk either in the multibay or in a SB encasing
4: With the Disk management tool delete the first (and still empty) partition so that Ghost can recover into "empty space"
5: Turn off the computer and replace the old with the new harddisk
6: Boot from the ghost recovery disk. If you bought Ghost online - it is the ISO image you got and used when installing - not the Ghost 2003 DOS ISO image :-)
7: Start "Recover my computer" and point to the recovery point on the internal disk
8: Exit - and boot from the HD.
9 : Go to sllep

 Gizzle, Maybe I misunderstand you, but I did not restore the image to an unassigned (drive letter wise) partition. I deleted the first partition to which the new C:disk was restored (point 4).

So, the question remains if it had been enough just to keep the unallocation of drive letter or if you have to remove it. Had I had another disk I would have liked to try.

Also, and perhaps you can answer this, perhaps it would have been possible to "restore computer" i.e. the C-disk from an externally kept image. I guess this is what you called a reverse clone.

I know you said ghost 12 cannot do that, but I seem to remember that there was something in there indicating it was possible to select a USB disk. Perhaps, one has first to generate a new recovery disk. the help file describes a procedure for this, but I could not use it, since I do not have two CD players on my machine nor Daemon-tools or similar (I have some programs protecte with SecureRom vers. 7 installed, and SecureRom refuses to start if such tools are present - sigh). Has onyone out there tried this?

 Where you veered from my previous instructions was in step 2. I suggested that you delete the first partition before creating the image. You didn't delete the partition but as you didn't give it a drive letter, it didn't matter. So now I have two alternatives to recommend.
Quote:
do not let old-XP see the new partition before cloning.
Doing so would give XP a chance to assign a drive letter, it will be remembered by the registry when it is cloned, and the clone will adopt the wrong drive letter for itself.

This applies to imaging as well. If the first partition on the new HD has a drive letter and you then create an image, the drive letter will be remembered by the registry and the restored image will adopt the wrong drive letter for itself. It will take the drive letter of that partition and not C: and it won't boot.

As for the actual restore. It doesn't matter if you restore into unallocated space, a partition with a drive letter or a partition without a drive letter. It will work.

Yes, you can restore an image stored on an external HD. Much the same as what you did. Boot to the CD etc. It's just that it doesn't always work from a USB HD. But it usually works.

Symantec have crippled the Ghost 12 boot CD so that you can't create an image or perform a clone from the CD recovery environment.

I hope this makes sense.

 Yes, it most certainly did. Thanks again!

 Not that you need to, but Ghost 9 can get around the crippled CD problem.

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1119240262

For a good description of the problem with Windows taking charge of what your drive letters should be - and how to get around this - in case windows already has grabbed one - see:

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm
or
http://www.partition-saving.com/

okk....hope i helped you.....please help in my forums also....