Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss

Upcoming Upgrade & Norton Ghost

0 views
Skip to first unread message

Captain

unread,
Sep 22, 2001, 10:26:06 AM9/22/01
to
I will be buying XP for my Dad. He is running my old PII 400 with ME. I
guess since I have installed and uninstalled SO many different programs, his
setup is VERY unstable. Windows will often crash, requiring a hard re-boot
or two or three before it will come back to life.

So I want to do a clean install of XP. He has about 20MB of this and that on
his two 15 MB Hd's, and I don't know what I should save and what I should
delete. I guess I could just back up everything onto CD, but it seems like
that would take a long time (2x CD) and a lot of CD's.

Would this group recommend that I buy Norton Ghost and make an image of the
two HD's then format and install? If I do so, will I be able to restore only
selected files (if necessary)? Please note that the existing partitions are
FAT32 and I will likely want to switch them over to NTFS. The Norton Ghost
website does a horribly weak job of describing exactly what the product
does!

I am anxious to hear this group's input.

Thanks!

Craig Cole
(Captain)


Mike G

unread,
Sep 22, 2001, 6:20:57 PM9/22/01
to
Making an image of the CDs is not a good idea since they'd be useless under
XP. You can't Ghost them back since they'd just overwrite the partition you
just installed XP on.

What Ghost does is create a "snapshot" of your hard drive or partition as a
.GHO file, exactly like how CD images are saved as .ISO files. It's used so
that you can create a system that's stable, Ghost it, and if there's ever a
problem, you can always reload that Ghosted image back onto your hard drive.
Ghost doesn't backup individual files, only whole partitions and drives.
When you load a .GHO file back to the hard drive or partition, it completely
wipes the destination. Ghost does have a "Ghost Explorer" that allows you to
view and extract files from your Ghosted image.

You have several options, and the problem is that I don't know what you have
on each hard drive. Your best bet would be to make CD-Rs of all the junk you
don't use on a regular basis (MP3s, etc). Free up enough hard drive space on
the second drive so that you can either Ghost your ME hard drive, format it,
reinstall ME clean (that will help your stability issues) and then install
XP on the second drive and have a dual-boot system.

It's hard to tell you EXACTLY what to do because XP will work for some
people better than others. Gamers would still need a 9x/ME partition, where
people that use very plain Win32 apps might never need 9x/ME ever again.

Mike
winxpresource.com
--
"Captain" <Sir_C...@Excite.com> wrote in message
news:#PVQJK3QBHA.1444@tkmsftngp03...

John Wolf

unread,
Sep 22, 2001, 8:33:58 PM9/22/01
to
NG2002 is a very versitle program, but I don't think it would be
satisfactory in your case. It would simply clone your buggy system. Also I
recntly installed W2K. Minimal install 4.77 meg. added SR2 12.7 meg. XP will
be larger. That wouldn't leave you much free space.

"Captain" <Sir_C...@Excite.com> wrote in message
news:#PVQJK3QBHA.1444@tkmsftngp03...

Clif

unread,
Sep 23, 2001, 10:54:38 AM9/23/01
to
May I suggest going in a slightly different direction. From my own experience, I suggest you do the following:
 
1. Go to www.powerquest.com and read about the programs Partition Magic and Drive Image. Don't just take my word for it.
2. Buy Drive Image and use it to create an image of your drives. As far as I know, this is the only Image program that allows you to span the image across several CD's if needed. When you need to restore data you will be able to select individual files and folders.
3. Buy Partition Magic and partition the 2 drives into 4. (BTW, usually if you buy PM first, you will get email with a discount for DI.)
4. Install XP into a clean C:\.
5. Put your programs and downloaded install files onto a separate partition. This will help if you ever have to reinstall your OS.
6. Use a separate partition for data, music, picture or any other files you would like to keep.
7. Use the last partition for anything you want.
 
You will be able to resize, move, remove or create partitions without destruction of any of your data.
 
Sure, these programs may cost more but you will get a lot more than any others offer. At least this has been my experience.
--
Clif Holcomb
Nashville, TN
Windows XP RC2 2526
--

Captain

unread,
Sep 23, 2001, 11:03:16 PM9/23/01
to
Thanks for all of the tips everybody.
Looks like I have some more research to do to be ready for October 25.
Thanks again!

Ron Knights

unread,
Sep 24, 2001, 10:58:36 AM9/24/01
to
Norton Ghost allows you to span your ghost image over multiple CD's.
 
The problem I had was that my Hewlett Packard 7500+ was deemed "unsupported" by Norton Ghost.
 
That meant that I wasted a few days trying to make Ghost span over to multiple CD's.
 
The eventual solution was incredibly easy:
 
1.) Setup to make the ghost image on my second hard drive.
2.) Setup to break the image into 600MB chunks.
3.) Copy the resulting files to 10 CD's. (I have Metacreations Poser, a 3D Art program. Lots of files installed for that.)
4.) I now have an entire ghost image of my computer!!!
 
 

John Wolf

unread,
Sep 24, 2001, 7:31:34 PM9/24/01
to
How did Ghost know you had a HP CDRW. I made a gost floppy for creating a disk imageto CDR. It made no BIOS querry booted the system wrote 3 ISO closed session CDR spaned.
"Ron Knights" <ronk...@msn.com> wrote in message news:OdtPrlQRBHA.1732@tkmsftngp04...

Ron Knights

unread,
Sep 25, 2001, 10:37:17 AM9/25/01
to
The drive showed up when I ran Norton Ghost. How else would it do the job?!
 
 
 
"John Wolf" <jcw...@awod.com> wrote in message news:eVAzCEVRBHA.1548@tkmsftngp05...
0 new messages