Ghosting HD to a completely different machine

[heyjim]

Hello there!
I hope this is in the right place, but I have come across a problem with ghosting. I have this one hard drive designated as the ghost drive as it has the necessary programs installed on it and nothing else. I would like to clone this drive onto other drives which will then be used in different machines, different hardware that is.

Now when I tried to do this with this old ghost version I have (it's on a floppy), it clones it but does not boot, it will only work on the same machine. Now with that, is there any way I can fix this so once cloning the drive it will be able to work on different machines?

Any information on this subject is much appreciated!
Thanks in advanced,
Jim

 

[KSoD]

CAnt do it. Since the machines have different hardware it wont ever work. The Ghosting even takes the info from the drivers which are specific for that machines. When you tey to apply it ot the other machine you will get nothing but errors.

Only way is to install XP on the other machine then Install Ghost on it. There will be no way to get the other Ghost image to boot on your other machine.

 

[TheMajor]

What errors are you getting?

 

[Win2kpatcher]

I agree this will not work not now not ever ;-) I can tell you what errors you are getting without you saying it. 1) The computer will boot to the XP screen then reboot then it is in an endless reboot cycle 2) The computer will boot to the XP screen then you get a BSOD with a Unmountable_Boot_Device error

Now what I have found in my experience is if you run a repair on the OS after you ghost it will boot fine after, but you still have to install drivers/updates. Is this in a corporate env or just your home? If its in a corp env I an make reccomendations and tell you how I do it at my work if you would like.

 

[TheMajor]

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. You can mostly fix it by doing a repair install.

 

[Win2kpatcher]

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. You can mostly fix it by doing a repair install.

Major, what percantage rate have you had success on doing this? I'm not asking that all cocky/snobby like I really am curious..lol. It is always good to compare my work with that of others..My success rate has been so low that I always simply say it will not work. I say maybe 1 out of every 50 computers has worked for me. I just gave up on even trying and simply made ghost images for each differnt model computer we have at our site. In the end I have found it to save more time by deploying the image and having the machine up and running in about 20 minutes.

 

[TheMajor]

Major, what percantage rate have you had success on doing this? I'm not asking that all cocky/snobby like I really am curious..lol. It is always good to compare my work with that of others..My success rate has been so low that I always simply say it will not work. I say maybe 1 out of every 50 computers has worked for me. I just gave up on even trying and simply made ghost images for each differnt model computer we have at our site. In the end I have found it to save more time by deploying the image and having the machine up and running in about 20 minutes.

I only restored an image to another computer once, and I cannot remember if it worked or not.

But it is pretty much the same as moving a disk with XP installed to another computer. I did this a couple of times.
I moved my XP disk from my MMX (sig) to an IBM PII 400MHz, and it worked.
I moved my XP disk from the IBM PII 400MHz to my current machine (Athlon XP 1600+) without too many issues.

But sometimes it didn't work. Sometimes you get a blue screen, but mostly it boots fine in safe mode. Wait for it to detect all hardware and reboot in normal mode.
If you are getting blue screens, always try safe mode. If you get boot errors, try safe mode. If you get boot errors and cannot enter safe mode, try performing a scandisk or do a repair install.
It is always best to remove graphics drivers and other drivers before moving. Only boot with teh following connected to your machine: HDD+mobo+CPU+RAM+graphics, that's all you need). Take out any unneccesary cards (sound card, firewire, raid controllers, etc..).

 

[Yeormom]

It totally depends on the situation. I've had few problems migrating hard drives with data intact but then again, I typically sysprep before I move which might be a little difficult given your circumstance.

 

[black_ws6]

Symantec has a product called Live State Recovery that lets you do a bare metal restore to different hardware. We tested it and it seemed to work fine, we just had to reload drivers for the new hardware.

 

[TheMajor]

Symantec has a product called Live State Recovery that lets you do a bare metal restore to different hardware. We tested it and it seemed to work fine, we just had to reload drivers for the new hardware.

Symantec Live State Recovery = PowerQuest V2i Protector Enterprise Edition