Disk-to-disk copying problem. Help needed.

[Picard]

I want to copy/clone the entire disk to another disk and then repeat this 50 times. The program I'm using is Norton 2003. An image copying app. I boot from an external CD into this program and from there I do the copying. I used this program many times before without any problem. But then I only worked with 1 NTFS partition. Never a dual-boot hard drive.

The problem is it doesn't seem to work. After the copy, when I start up it boots till it gets to the word "Grub" (the boot-loader of Edubuntu) and that's it. No further.

Is there another utility I should use or should I check something else?

All the computers are identical (HDD model, BIOS version, everything).

Should I try and download the latest trail version of Norton Ghost or maybe Acronis (which version?) I want to have certainty because the are at least 90MB downloads and I don't have that much of my cap left.

 

[w1z4rd]

Have you tried acronis? The full version or try the migrate version.

 

[LCBXX]

Good 'ol Hiren's Boot-CD has all the stuff you could ever need for disk cloning

 

[BiteMe]

this happens because ghost doesnt understand the file structure of the other partition (i'm guessing it is ext2 or ext3..)

anyway, you have to tell ghost to do a "raw" copy...in raw copy mode it doesnt try figure out what files there are and move them around, it just copies ones and zeroes without asking questions.
this has two disadvantages...
1) it'll copy blank space too...so cloning an 80gb will take some time...cloning a 500gb will take a heck of a lot of time
2) it is very difficult to clone one size to another in raw mode.

the way to start it is "ghost -ir" on the commandline

 

[The_Unbeliever]

Yea, you'll have to use ghost with raw copy mode enabled - but this will take a long time.

 

[Picard]

this happens because ghost doesnt understand the file structure of the other partition (i'm guessing it is ext2 or ext3..)

anyway, you have to tell ghost to do a "raw" copy...in raw copy mode it doesnt try figure out what files there are and move them around, it just copies ones and zeroes without asking questions.
this has two disadvantages...
1) it'll copy blank space too...so cloning an 80gb will take some time...cloning a 500gb will take a heck of a lot of time
2) it is very difficult to clone one size to another in raw mode.

the way to start it is "ghost -ir" on the commandline

I. LOVE. YOU!!!

It worked!!!

You don't know how much effort this has saved me.

It takes about 35min to copy instead of just 15min, but that's fine.

 

[BiteMe]

I. LOVE. YOU!!!

It worked!!!

You don't know how much effort this has saved me.

It takes about 35min to copy instead of just 15min, but that's fine.

happy to hear it worked.^5

p.s....about the "i love you" bit...please tell me i dont have to fit cow bells to your nipples in case you try take me from behind by surprise...

/joke