Anyone Ghosting their External Drive?

[Smith P.]

Since EHD use ordinary EXT2/3 Ghost allow to resize the type of partition.
I'm still wondering why you insist on own missed knowledge ? Why not download User Guide from Symantec and read it ?

All your worries remind me grandma in car garage - no help, but a lot of lost time.

 

[RandallA]

After having many problems with my USB controllers locking up the PC or being too slow, I gave up. Tried three different PCs, one of them was able to work but just running straight imaging gave me errors. I had to image sector by sector.

I started copying the drive sector by sector but it was gonna take too long so I decided that it was best just to move the recorded shows to the 722 (has free space) and then move them to the new EHD. Time was gonna be almost the same anyways.

Some things I learned:

You must do the image sector by sector, straight imaging won't work. The switch to use is ghost.exe -IR. Ghost should be able to image the drive just fine.

Partition Magic 7 saw the Linux drive and partitions. I could have resized the partition but I don't know if it was gonna work. The option was there though.

There's a utility called Explore2fs that allows you to view the folders in the EHD but it's only a read only utility so you can't move the recordings to another Linux drive or partition. You could move the folders to a Windows drive but can't move them back to another Linux drive or partition.

I was finally able to check make it to Satelliteguys just to find out that AMC14 is missing in action, now to read all the threads about it.

 

[Smith P.]

It well known advise - if you questioning your HDD - start from testing it, it could be spin-rite or MHDD.exe
Don't start moving/copy without solve low-level problem.
Perhaps to late for you RandallA, but next time be sure you did that check.
What version Ghost you using ?
Please explain in details the "straight imaging won't work".

 

[RandallA]

The problems I had was with the USB controllers in the PCs locking up while running Ghost. I don't think the problems were the EHDs. I also had to use a PS/2 keyboard since Ghost was locking up when I had my USB keyboard.

"straight imaging won't work". What I mean is just booting the computer from a floppy and running Ghost then select the drives you're gonna image. Or should I say the normal or regular way.

From Symantec:

"Normally, Ghost does not create an exact duplicate of a disk. Instead, Ghost recreates the partition information as needed and copies the contents of the files. Creating a copy rather than an exact duplicate reduces the time it takes to copy a disk and reduces the amount of disk space required."

That procedure will always give me errors so I went with the sector by sector option (ghost -IR) which takes a long time. It works but it was too slow for me. In all fairness it's about 200 GB of data so it was gonna take some time.

I have Ghost 2001 and Ghost 2003. I also try Drive Image 7 but it will not let me select the two partitions from the Linux drive, just one at a time so I didn't even try it.

 

[Smith P.]

OK, the back to that thesis - check your HDD surface - run MHDD with Remap=ON, then use Ghost ( 2003 works for me ) and copy partition by partition and do not allow Ghost to change a size of first part, 2nd part is up to you - increase/decrease if 622 OS will accept it fine.
Little secret for you - Ghost2003 run from CD w/out problem and it is best way to serve copy parts from one to another disk without creating image file.

 

[RandallA]

After the testing I did, I'm sure Ghost 2003 works. When I'm done transfering the data to the new hard drive, I will play around with the old EHD in Linux to see if I can move or copy folders to another EHD. That's my next project but for now I just need to transfer the shows to the new EHD.

Smith, have you heard or tried Ext2IFS? I installed it last night but to be able to see the drive in Windows I had to assign a drive letter, didn't like the idea so didn't try it. You can read/write ext2 partitions in Windows with this utility but just didn't want take a chance with the recorded shows in the EHD if I had to assign a drive letter.

 

[Smith P.]

I have it for long time - it can't write, Windows required the letter, so be it.
I'm using Linux PC for transfer - RHEL, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc.