Norton Ghost (2001) and grub
 

I used Norton Ghost 2001 to clone my hard disk yesterday: local drive to local drive.

This disk is set up with Windows 98 2nd ed., Windows 2000 Pro, and Linux (Red Hat 9), with grub as the primary bootloader.

Ghost handled the job ALMOST perfectly; I've been using the cloned disk now for a full day and as far as I can tell, everything on it, all 3 OS's, are working fine.

EXCEPT - initially, the cloned disk couldn't boot itself. I had to use a boot floppy to get into linux, and use /sbin/grub-install /dev/hda to reinstall the bootloader. I had read about this problem in advance so it came as no surprise & was easy enough to fix. And after this simple adjustment, as I said, all 3 systems seem to have been transferred perfectly.

So, my question is, how come Ghost can make a duplicate of a 40 gb disk, copying everything perfectly except that tiny, 512 byte (or less) stage1 grub bootloader? What's so unique about that particular file?

Just curious. VERY curious.

well i do not know why ghost was unable to copy the MBR, perhaps it is because you use an old version that doesn't entirely has linux support??

By the way were the two disks you used the same?? same model, same brand??
I had to migrate from an older drive to a newer one recently, and I couldn't find any good tools that will help me with my windows partitions. I had to reinstall XP with all the applications (actually i found a software by acronis, but it requires the new drive to be completely empty, whereas i had already filled the end of the drive)

Still, it did copy the entire linux installation perfectly. The only error was in the grub mbr. But I don't understand that. It's just copying a sequence of bytes from one disk to the other, right? So what's so special about that mbr?


As to your question:
Similar, but not identical. They're both Maxtor "40 gb" ATA 100 drives, but different models, one's about 1-1/2 years newer than the other and they have different head/sector configurations.

I've been using Ghost for a few years now - the 2000, 2001 and 2002 versions - and never had any problems cloning Windows 98 and 2000 partitions. Only occasional problems with Linux.

The 2002 version handles XP Home version without difficulty. I haven't tried it with XP Pro.

In general, Ghost is very reliable and versatile. The hardest part (if you want to use it with a cd writer or over a network) is setting up a boot floppy with the right drivers. And even that got pretty easy with the 2002 version. If you're just cloning disk to disk you don't even have to bother with that -- just need a dos boot diskette with ghost on it.

you can try for clone http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/ it copy mbr, fat, etc

I think the different drives are causing the problem. There is a tool called dd in linux that copies drives just like ghosts. Yet it doesn't work if you are not using two identical drives.
Here check this thread:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...&postid=697495

You can also try this one, called Ghost for Linux posted at these times in the above mentioned thread:
http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/

Oh, about the MBR. If you forget everything, just remember this:
The MBR is special.