Second hard drive for 9150 backups

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@Steve21A wrote:

Forgive the simple questions, but I'm a computer "novice". I've just taken delivery of a 9150 and am very pleased with it. Having spent 2 days getting all my applications and data installed, and Windows configured to my liking, I'd like to install a second hard drive to be able to back up the 160Gb drive it came with.

 

Things I'm not sure of:

 

1) Will a SATA 300 drive work OK on the 9150's SATA150 interface? I realize I'll only get SATA150 transfer speeds but many of the local stockists only do SATA300 drives!  YES. 

 

2) It looks like there is a spare power cable in the 9150 close to the second drive bay, but presumably I have to buy an extra data cable?  YES.

 

3) Having plugged the power and data cables in, do I need to do anything in the BIOS to get the drive recognised?  TURN DRIVE TO AUTO.

 

4) Presumably I then have to format it using XP?  USING DISK MANAGEMENT IN XP, YES. 

 

5) I used Norton Ghost 2002 (DOS based) on my old computer to do backups. Will it work OK on the 9150?  IF YOU CAN CONFIGURE THE SATA DRIVERS FOR IT.

 

6) If I partion the new drive to match the existing drive, will GHOST 2002 copy the DSR and Dell Utility partitions to? Or should I not bother with DSR now that I will have a complete replica on the current system on my new drive?  GHOST CAN BE SETUP TO IMAGE AN ENTIRE DRIVE, YOU DON'T SETUP PARTITIONS... 

 

Sorry about the long post. Grateful for any advice.

 

Steve

Rick - thanks for the helpful advice.

I purchased a new 160Gb SATA drive this morning, installed it and turned on the port in the BIOS. Just one word of advice for anyone doing the same thing on a 9150 - be sure to get a SATA data cable with a "right angle" cable-entry header for the drive end; otherwise, because the edge of the drive is so close, the case side wont close - I learned the hard way!

I partitioned the drive from XP into a 60Gb and a 100Gb partition. Then I ran Ghost 2002 from DOS to copy the system partition from the old drive across to the 60Gb partition on the new drive - it seemed to go OK! At least I can see all the expected files on it!

One further question - if I now swop the data cable from the old drive across to the new one (and leave the other data cable off) should I expect to be able Boot succesfully into Windows? I've tried this but first I get a warning saying it can't find the second drive (which I can understand), but if I then continue it says it can't find a bootable device. Do I need to do something more to the new drive in addition to the partition copy. I'd like to get to the position where I know I can just swop the drives over if the original one ever breaks.

Thanks again for your help.

Steve (in the sunny UK :)

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@Steve21A wrote:

Rick - thanks for the helpful advice.

I purchased a new 160Gb SATA drive this morning, installed it and turned on the port in the BIOS. Just one word of advice for anyone doing the same thing on a 9150 - be sure to get a SATA data cable with a "right angle" cable-entry header for the drive end; otherwise, because the edge of the drive is so close, the case side wont close - I learned the hard way!

I partitioned the drive from XP into a 60Gb and a 100Gb partition. Then I ran Ghost 2002 from DOS to copy the system partition from the old drive across to the 60Gb partition on the new drive - it seemed to go OK! At least I can see all the expected files on it!

One further question - if I now swop the data cable from the old drive across to the new one (and leave the other data cable off) should I expect to be able Boot succesfully into Windows? I've tried this but first I get a warning saying it can't find the second drive (which I can understand), but if I then continue it says it can't find a bootable device. Do I need to do something more to the new drive in addition to the partition copy. I'd like to get to the position where I know I can just swop the drives over if the original one ever breaks.

Thanks again for your help.

Steve (in the sunny UK :)

I assume you mean swap... :smileyvery-happy:

What you're trying to do is not the proper usage of Ghost, but it's not working for a different reason.  As documented many times in the forum, your drive has THREE partitions (Dell utility, C, and Dell PC Restore by Symantec).  You copied the middle one.  There are many posts about how the system boots to a MBR, you didn't set it up that way.  Read some of the Dell PC Restore posts or go to Dan Goodell's site. 

The PROPER way to do what you want is to setup Ghost to make compact IMAGES of the system so you can restore them and go.  Copying the entire partition takes a lot more space.  And, in doing it, if the main drive fails in the process you have nothing, no backup either.  Using images and keeping versions always lets you pick the last one to restore to.

Rick - thanks for the further helpful information. I've experimented with Ghost this afternoon:

1) Did a complete Disk to Disk copy. Then Booted succesfully from the new Disc. I didn't check it, by I assume this will have backed up the Dell DSR partition and the Diagnostics partition in addition to the main System partition?

2) As another experiment I tried to do produce an Image file of my old drive on the new drive. Finally I realised that the image has to go on a FAT32 partition, so I formatted one on the new drive and then all was well - the only hassle was being prompted to "insert new media" every 2Gb or so as Ghost spans the image over several files. Didn't dare to do a re-install from the image to the old drive!!!

I think my backup strategy is going to be an occasional (say motnhly) Disk to Disk copy, and weekly (or more often) dumps of "MyDocs" to DVD. I usually put my Outlook Express folders and Address Book on the DVD as well.

Thanks for your help - no more questions, I promise!

Steve

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@Steve21A wrote:

Rick - thanks for the further helpful information. I've experimented with Ghost this afternoon:

1) Did a complete Disk to Disk copy. Then Booted succesfully from the new Disc. I didn't check it, by I assume this will have backed up the Dell DSR partition and the Diagnostics partition in addition to the main System partition?

Check it, but it should all be there, yes. 

2) As another experiment I tried to do produce an Image file of my old drive on the new drive. Finally I realised that the image has to go on a FAT32 partition, so I formatted one on the new drive and then all was well - the only hassle was being prompted to "insert new media" every 2Gb or so as Ghost spans the image over several files. Didn't dare to do a re-install from the image to the old drive!!!

I use Ghost 9.0.  No limit to the file size, can't comment on your version though.  Uses NTFS well.  You might want to do a little research to verify your findings. 

I think my backup strategy is going to be an occasional (say motnhly) Disk to Disk copy, and weekly (or more often) dumps of "MyDocs" to DVD. I usually put my Outlook Express folders and Address Book on the DVD as well.

Here's my strategy, for what it's worth.  Each computer has two partitions.  C and M.  M contains My Documents and other data files.  Each Sunday during the night I image both C and M to another drive over my network.  I maintain 4 versions of C (a month) and 8 versions of M.  Every day I do a full image of M (takes mere minutes) to a 2nd hard drive in the same computer, then hourly I do incremental images.  Next morning, another full image and incrementals during the day.  I keep 14 of these (two weeks).  That way if my computer dies I can restore C from Sunday, then get current data from the 2nd drive, or worse case get Sunday's data.  With backups in two different places I'm protected from failure (except the house burning down).  The network backup from Sunday is unplugged on Monday from the network and AC power to isolate it.

A big tip for you.  Do NOT be fooled into not trying to recover your backup BEFORE YOU NEED IT.  When it doesn't work you will be really mad at yourself.  :smileywink:

Thanks for your help - no more questions, I promise!

Steve