Iam using windows98.To make a clone of C Drive i use Norton Ghost 2002 & make a ghost of c drive. The question which i want to ask is if unfortunately my windows98 distrub or craches then is it good practice to first delete windows from C Drive & then use norton ghost to put the file in C drive which will show my windows frish as i install it now ? Waht is your kind opinion about it. Thanks for an early reply. sea

If you are making an image of C: using Ghost and your C: partition goes belly up on you then you will need to use the Ghost boot disk to reimage your C: partition. It will overwrite the entire partition so no other action is required. I used to make the image and store it on a separate partition (which is required). Since I have two hard drives and ample space I now use Ghost's option to Partition to Partition instead of partition to Image. I Partition to Partition from C: to the first partition of the second hard drive. If in the event of my C: partition going belly up I can simply swap the cables and jumpers on the drives and I can be up and running in less than ten minutes this way. I actually used it as I described above to start using my second hard drive as my primary since it was a 7200 RPM drive versus the old one being 5400 RPM. I have since gotten yet another 7200 RPM drive and removed the 5400 RPM drive. I use the second new drive as backup to the two partitions on the first drive using Ghost. I keep all of my installers and personal data on the second partition of the first drive which is also copied to the second partition of the second drive. So, my second hard drive is a mirror of the first (two partitions each hard drive). I mirror the partitions quarterly. It takes less than 30 minutes to do it all on my 800Mhz PIII PC. Regards, Bryan

I create an image on CDR or DVDR. Norton Ghost, at least the version I have, part of systemworks pro 2003, allows backups anywhere, including a network location. The software will automatically span multiple disks if necessary. I typically get about 1GB of compressed data on a 700MB CDR. With Ghost you can only backup an entire partition but you can restore individual folders or files.

Well Bryco thanks a lot for your detail reply. I use the following options durning making a clone of C drive ny Norton Ghost 2002 (Dos base). Partion-----> To image and if i want to retrive that image then i use Partion ----> From Image I also keep all of the softwares as u mentioned.I.e Operating system in C drive and remaining software like Office,Photoshop,Kazaa etc etc in a folder of D Drive. Now guide me that if i use an other hard disk then it will replace my primary master H.D D Drive as E Drive and the Second HD (Slave) C Drive will be D drive. In simple that my 1st HD D drive will be E drive if i attach an other hard disk as slave. In this situation how can i take the image (Clone) of my 1st Hard disk i.e C ,D. This is only in windows 98 but windowsXp is so intelligent and also show slave Hard dive as i or J. Now tell me which option will i use to take for my Primary Hard disk Data i.e C,D in my Slave Hrd disk From this There is opetion Disk----> To Disk To Image __________ From Image or Partion--->To Partion To Image _________ From Image Plz guide me it is confusing for me. My next question is again .is it good to delete windows if it is distrub or ghost will automatically over write on it ?

Well OtheHill u r using for Windows based.But if the windows crashes then what will u do ? Can u load Ghost 2004 in dos mode by pressing F8 or using a Bootable Floppy to enter in the prompt. I use Ghost 2002 because it is easy load in dos mode if my windows does't load. There is another utility I.e Goback 3 .Waht do u also say about it .

If you create an image on optical media Ghost automatically makes the disk bootable using PCDos. When you boot to the disk you end up in Ghost.exe and can restore from there. If you have issues that can be resolved while in Windows you can do a folder or file restore from within windows.

On the main forum board there are people having problems with GoBack. Otherwise I am not familiar with the program. Sea, You lost me on E:\ drive being your Windows partition. If you have a single hard drive with two partitions on it then the partition containing Windows 98 has to be the C:\ partition or C: drive. The second partition would automatically be labeled as the D:\ drive or D:\ partition. If you add another (second) hard drive as Slave and is partitioned to two partitions and it is formatted with one of the partitions to be used for an operating system then the hard drives partition's will automatically be relabeled as follows: 1st HDD: (was C:\ and D:\) C:\ E:\ 2nd HDD: D:\ F:\ Your CDROM would had been E: before installing the second hard drive and it will automatically be relabled as G:\ drive now. Before installing the second hard drive you would have imaged C:\ and stored the image file on the D:\ (at the time) drive. After installing the second hard drive D:\ became E:\. I prefer to use DOS when using Ghost but for this task it is not necessary. Neither is it necessary to use the Norton Emergency bootdisk. But, you use Ghost to Image to Partition from E:\ to D:\. Then, after swapping the cables and hard drive's jumpers the second hard drive will be the master and the old will be the slave. Now, the new hard drive will boot up just fine and it's partitions will be: C:\ and E:\ drives or partitions and the old hard drive will be: D:\ and E:\ Your image file of the original C:\ will still be on the second partition of the old hard drive which will now be the F:\ drive or partition. Now, with that being said do note that when you purchase a new hard drive they come with software to perform the task of copying the operating system and to make the new hard drive the primary containing the operating system. (I tried it one time and didn't like it so I have used Ghost each time since.) My new D:\ partition that contains the original Windows of the old C:\ drive has plenty of room left over (4Gb to be precise) that I can, at my desire, use to store things temporarily. Just create a folder on the root of D:\. The next time I perform my quarterly backup that new data will be overwritten. If the data is worth keeping I can easily move it to E:\ or F:\ first by moving that folder I created. The above results is what caused me to change from Partition to Image to Partition to Partition. Because now you have a copy of your original C:\ drive or partition that contained the operating system on three partitions C:\, D:\ along with the image copy on F:\. Me, I chose to delete the image copy on F:\. With the above setup I store my personal stuff on E:\ and also Partition to Partition E:\ to F:\ when performing my quarterly backup. My new hard drive was much larger than my older installed hard drive (which is now the secondary hard drive). The old drive's partitions are big enough to accomodate my back ups. My new hard drive has ample room for all of my current and near future needs so I don't really need to have available storage space on D:\ or the F:\ partitions of my old hard drive. If by some fluke my new hard drive dies I get another new one. Pull out the dead one, swap the jumpers and cables, install the new one, power it up and I am off to cloning again with the two installed hard drives. I use Partition Magic to partition my drives so after removing the dead drive and installing the new one I can start up to Windows first and have at it on my new hard drive. When done I just restart and start up in "Command prompt" from the Windows Startup menu. (Not "Restart in DOS mode") Type at the Command prompt: C:>\PROGRA~1\SYMANTEC\NORTON~1\GHOSTPE.exe I hit Enter and Ghost opens. When I used the boot disk I couldn't get it to see my E:\ and F:\ partitions. I am using Norton Ghost 2001. If you only have one CDROM device then you could leave the dead drive hooked up and just swap out the appropriate cables and jumpers to see if you could fix the dead one. (I think I covered all the bases?) Regards, Bryan