Disgruntled Ghost Owner - looking at TI

First post. I have a single-drive system, and I need to take what's on my 40GB Western Digital and put it on a new 160GB Maxtor. I tried Ghost, and to make a lonnnnnnnnng story short, I'm giving up on Ghost (flashing cursor on boot-up after copying, and what tech support?) and looking at True Image. Has anyone else made this switch? What are your thoughts?

I don't know if this has been addressed anywhere else in this forum, but I don't have a stand-alone XP intallation; I upgraded from Win98 to XP. Will this cause a problem in making an image of a disk with TI? (I have a theory that this might have caused my problems with Ghost, since Ghost 9.0 will work with XP, but is incompatible with Win98.)

Thanks

 

Hi Win84me

Ghost 9 is Powerquest Drive Image. Previously, I was a keen advocate of the Powerquest product. Since Symantec has taken over PQ it would appear there are a number of complaints beginning to build. However, as I am now with TI I would prefer not to make comment about Ghost.

As for True Image 8 (latest build), I have nothing but praise. You will, however, read other negative viewpoints. Without any doubt, the complaints are very, very valid to the individuals concerned. Having said that, there are a lot of people out there who would argue differently. Forums of all flavours will reflect a somewhat negative viewpoint. The very nature of a Forum will reflect threads containing complaints, and queries. This is the bread and butter of any Forum.

If you are about to abandon Ghost, I feel that True Image 8 will fulfill your expectations providing that you read the very extensive help file provided by Acronis (I cannot stress the importance of this too much!). Furthermore, I would remain with Wilders Security Forums as there are a number of very intelligent and informed contributors to help the novice with TI. Importantly, use and learn from the contributors who have had problems. Finally, if you need support then adhere to what the Acronis Support people advise..... and enjoy the product.

marse.robert

 

True Image works very well for those who have compatible systems...for those who don't (me) it's been a very frustrating experience.

Tech support - this forum. That's it. And some forum members have been very, very helpful. Which is nice, but there is no good way to contact the company. I still haven't been able to speak to anyone there. (And I bought the $700 Image Server program!) So, if you think Symantec was bad, well, your experience with Acronis won't be any worse. It won't be any better either.

Good luck.

 

Below is a small account of my experience with both TRUE IMAGE 8 and Norton Ghost

Ive recently filled my 60Gb primary Partition, so like most people ive bought a new, larger hardrive. The worst thing is starting from the beginning with a fresh install again so I asked around and my Brother lent me his copy of Norton Ghost 2003. In all I tried 5 times to Clone/Image my old hardrive to the new hardrive and in all cases it failed to boot, with either of the following messages : NON-SYSTEM DISK – Blah blah blah, or hanging on Verifying DMI Pool Data………….

I then spoke to a friend who said TI8 had worked for him perfectly. So I have now tried this and again I have similar problems. In 2 attempts ive had the following….. NTLDR missing, and again the Verifying DMI Pool Data message.

Using both programs basically yields the same problem. I can’t boot from the new hardrive. Both programs however do ensure the data is on the new drive, as I have checked this by slaving them in along side my old hardrive, and all files etc I can open without a problem, so although the data is not corrupt it appears there is serious issues elating to the boot side of things……. (Ive also tried to remedy these problems by using the XP recovery console – which didn’t work)

Having used both programs in the last 2 days, I can say that IT8 is by far the more appealing, visually, and logically. Its very intuitive and easy to get on with, keeping you informed of what’s going to happen, why and when.

Trouble is I cant get round my current problem. So for me it’s the technical support team and trawling through this forum for help :!!!

 

Pihrana,

Did you run TI from Windows, or the boot CD? (If the latter, safe or normal mode?) If you tried only one way, I'd try another because different drivers will be used. If you did it from Windows, then you may have an issue after cloning anyway because your Windows controller driver may not like the new disk. I couldn't even get Windows XP to install (the usual way) without corruption on this machine until my motherboard maker released an updated disk controller driver that had a bug fix for two disk models - one of which I had of course.

 

Hi there,

I did all mine from Windows (In both Ghost and IT). Because i have a Shuttle XPC, ive had to do alot of Hardrive shuffling around, which in the end meant i disconnected my Optical drive to allow me to plug in an additional hardrive.....

The shuttle XPC uses a MOBO sporting the NForce 2 Ultra 400 chipset.... Ive recently updated to the latest Forceware drivers, so i cant really do anything else for those. I suppose i could boot from a Disk and try it that way. TBH i will try anything cos at the minute im stuck with little hardrive space

 

Another thought: If the new disk is over 137GB, make sure you have 48 bit LBA enabled in Windows before you clone.

 

Hmm its over 137Gb, After formatting its 153Gb. Is that likely to cause the boot issues tho? As all the other data is on the drive it just wont boot

 

I don't know what happens if you boot Windows from a drive larger than it knows how to access. (Assuming 48 bit LBA is not already enabled.)

Then again, if it wrote it from Windows TI perhaps that tells us that 48 Bit LBA is already running - I don't know. There's a Microsoft Knowledge Base page you may want to visit: 303013

 

I think I've come across this problem, but the cause is a theory. If you have a hard drive with two partitions, say partition 1 (boot) and partition 2(data). Say you want to reinstall windows on partition 1, and you delete partition 1 and recreate it, before reinstalling windows (partition 2 is not touched). Windows will install NTLDR on partition 2, because it was the first partition created on the hard drive. Any image of partition 1 will be missing NTLDR and maybe other stuff too. Check the root folder of your second partition for the file NTLDR.

 

Hi Spog,

I do believe that i might add to your theory. Some time ago, shortly after graduating from Win98 SE to XP Pro, I began to experiment with Powerquest Partition Magic.

On two occasions I ended up with bad installs that involved NTLDR. On previous occasions I followed the principles of a clean install (and not taking shortcuts) for a succesful install. On the two other bad installs, I had taken the procedure that you have outlined.

I think it might be worth doing a dummy run with this method. I will get back and report.

marse.robert

 

Looks like this got away from me, but it's all information I'll file away for later...

But back to a question that I had when I first posted this thread: has anyone seen anything out there about copying the contents of a drive - that was originally Windows 98 and upgraded to XP Home - to a new drive? Has anyone had an issue with TI8 over this?

 

I see no reason why TI8 cant clone a drive that started off with 98SE and ended up as XP. At the end of the day you will have a FAT32 or NTFS file system, and the rest is just TI8 doing its thing. (or not in my case)

So your still having problems then i take it? What error messages are you having?

As for me, well ive tried using a smaller 80Gb disk and (this now being the 3rd attempt at cloning) got the following message :-

Verifiying DMI Pool Data......
Unable to start operating system

Now this is like the 4th new message ive had since trying to clone my drive with Ghost and TI8. ALthough in theory it does rule out the 48LBA theory of a hardrive larger than 137Gb was it? To be honest, it looks like this try got the furthest to actually booting from all my attempts....... There may be hope yet.........

 

Have you looked into the BIOS at all? Sometimes a BIOS will get confused if you swap a disk (uses the old auto-detected parameters on the new disk.) Sometimes, its good to start the computer with no disk at all, then shut down add the new disk and explicitly go in and tell the BIOS to auto-detect it. (In case the old parameters may have been cached even when it was removed.)

W84me - I agree that whatever OS you had on there to begin with, you either have a FAT32 volume with some files or an NTFS volume with some files. That shouldn't get in your way.

 

If the disk you are attempting to clone to a large disk contains XP, you may need to perform a "repair" install of XP. XP is much more sensitive about hardware than was 98, and often installs hardware-specific drivers when it is first installed (or when 98 was upgraded to XP). Some drivers can be changed (i.e., updated) from within XP, like modem, video, sound, but not the hard drive.

This theory is more likely to be applicable to your PC is the new drive is a different type than the original (e.g., ATA/33 vs ATA/100, or ATA vs SATA, or ATA vs SCSI). However, it could also be applicable if the brand changed, or if you crossed one of those magic size barriers, like 32Gig, or 127 Gig.

Anyway, here are souple of links about repairing XP. Note that you will need a retail version XP CDROM, either full version of upgrade will do:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341

http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm

http://www.extremetech.com/print_article/0,3998,a=23979,00.asp

One other thought: Did you make the new disk "bootable", or "active". Also, If a common ATA type drive, did you set the jumpers to "master"?

Finally, does the BIOS see this disk and agree that it is poperly configured?

In fact, how about booting form the TI8 restore CDROM you made, and do the first few steps of a backup, just to view the disk and partition structure of all attached hard drives? Does it show anything unusual? Note: Cancel out before you actually write anything.