Can recovery partition be moved to new hard drive?

[Porthos]

I've got a recovery partition on my current 80gig which has been brilliant for setting things back to normal. I'm going to ghost the image of my hard drive over to a new 120gig (which I'm told will work and windows won't have a problem with, right?) but I want to know if I can get that virtual partition over as well and if it will still work. It might work because it will still be called e: drive but it might not because it could have a different serial number. Can any one confirm if it will? If not thats fine I will just save the image of my clean harddrive, but its not as user friendly and, well, nice! :tongue

[Pegasus]

Ghost will do you just fine.

[Porthos]

Right I've done it and the computer just says 'error loading os' when it is the master and should in theory load it.

I'll just give some details here, some maybe superfluous but hopefully any of you guys reading this will be able to tell what's relevant and what's not.

I originally had a 70gig (5 full) c: partition and a 5gig (full) d: partition (recovery). I moved these to d: and e: partitions on a different physical harddrive, the partition capacitys are different but Ghost didn't mind and pegasus says that doesn't matter. I also have another one or two partitions on that drive ready for extra data.

When I was setting the jumper I didn't fully understand the diagram so I just left it. It seems to be recognized by the motherboard (and windows under the circumstances where it boots ie slave) when plugged in to the appropriately labelled part of the ide cable. I'm guessing thats not a problem then but just thought I'd put it in there.

To be honest it doesn't feel like a disaster, if I can't get it to work I'll try and install XP clean to the new harddrive, it's just nicer if I can do it this way and Pegasus says it should work. Cheers for the help :thumbs

[Porthos]

Come on please! I love you.

[tombott]

Right I've done it and the computer just says 'error loading os' when it is the master and should in theory load it.

I'll just give some details here, some maybe superfluous but hopefully any of you guys reading this will be able to tell what's relevant and what's not.

I originally had a 70gig (5 full) c: partition and a 5gig (full) d: partition (recovery). I moved these to d: and e: partitions on a different physical harddrive, the partition capacitys are different but Ghost didn't mind and pegasus says that doesn't matter. I also have another one or two partitions on that drive ready for extra data.

When I was setting the jumper I didn't fully understand the diagram so I just left it. It seems to be recognized by the motherboard (and windows under the circumstances where it boots ie slave) when plugged in to the appropriately labelled part of the ide cable. I'm guessing thats not a problem then but just thought I'd put it in there.

To be honest it doesn't feel like a disaster, if I can't get it to work I'll try and install XP clean to the new harddrive, it's just nicer if I can do it this way and Pegasus says it should work. Cheers for the help :thumbs

have you just done a straight disk to disk ghost ? i'm getting a bit confused by u saying u move c to d and d to e. how did u do this ?

[Porthos]

I did do a straight partition to partition ghost. It went from disk 1 1st partition (c:) to disk 2 1st partition (e:). I don't know if these drive letters change automatically so disk2 1st partition could become c: when its the only physical drive in (ie master, no longer slave).

Anyways I think the problem is that the boot record is on the first harddrive so without it my computer doesnt know what to do. While I might be able to copy it over to the new drive and re arrange the entries there will still be parts of the XP installation that expect things to be the way they were when I first installed so I don't think it will work. Can somebody (Pegasus?) reply to tell me how ghost is meant to do this straight image swop as its not working at the mo!

[Q-Buster]

As I understand it, you can make a ghost copy of a partition onto another one as you have done, this partition can have its name changed or be copied to any other partition too. When you want to restore your C drive, you boot your PC using a floppy, with Ghost on this or another floppy, either way, insert the floppy with Ghost program on it, start it up, and when prompted, browse to the partition containing the copy for the source, then the target partition, presumably your C drive and let the software do its stuff.

This is how I have used Ghost in the past without any problems, perhaps your case has some complicating factor I have missed.

Q-Buster

[big man]

I don't think this is possible with XP.

When you install XP, it creates a code based on your hardware. If this hardware configuration changes significantly, XP has a fit and just won't load.

I had something similar when i tried to swap my XP harddrive into a new machine

If this is the case, i assume that you'll need to get into the ghost image, and 'change' the relevant bit of info, but as to what needs to be changed and where i have no idea.

As i said, this is how i understand it, so this isn't gospel.

If i'm well off the mark, someone please let me know !

[Pegasus]

I did do a straight partition to partition ghost. It went from disk 1 1st partition (c to disk 2 1st partition (e.

That was your mistake Porthos, you need to select the "disk to disk" process mate.

Don't worry about the new HDD being bigger, you can specify the new partition sizes before imaging takes place.

I would personally leave the recovery partition at the same size and let Ghost assign the extra 40GB to the working partition.

I have Ghosted more XP installations than what I have had hot dinners and I can assure you that XP will not throw a fit about having a new HDD.

[Porthos]

Cheers mate, I'll do that once and if I can get my data back from this problem PartitionMagic f**ked my drive(!)