New HDD + Norton Ghost - help needed.

[barnettgs]

I have got Norton Ghost and Hitachi 160GB HDD for a friend's computer HP Compaq - P4 2.0Ghz & Windows 2000 Pro with SP4. My friend said it is 5 years old. It has a 20GB drive divided in two partitions:

C: 4 GB FAT32
D: 16GB NTFS

There is no room for 2nd harddrive so I got Norton Ghost to do the job to replace old harddrive with new one.

There was a couple of problem I came across:

It showed 127GB both in bios and 2000 Pro and I think it is motherboard/bios limitation. Accepting that limitation, is there anything I should do about it? Is it safe to use 127GB?

Using Disk Management, I divided the partitions - 20GB for Windows and the rest for files etc. Then formatted them. After that, they are visible in My Computer.

I haven't tried Norton Ghost before but it seemed simple to use so I did the copy to both parition in new harddrive. New harddrive is connected in place of cd-rom drive for copying purpose. I have selected MBR option for C drive copy. After that, I checked them in My Computers, all files/folders are there ok.

I swapped the drive with cd-rom drive back in place, it does not boot up. I'm bit puzzled, am I missing something? I thought Ghost would do the job.

There is one hint that might help - Disk Management states that new harddrive is 'dynamic' while old harddrive is 'primary'. I'm not sure but I think I should have done partition & formatting using boot disc instead?

Any help is appreciated

Thanks

Gary

 

[ChrisLX200]

A couple of points...

You may well find an updated mobbo BIOS to handle 48-bit LBA to see the larger drive - most manufacturers have provided at least this update. If not, check if there is a jumper on the drive to limit capacity. Last time I tried to do what you did (with an old PC) the BIOS simply would not see the large drive at all - so you got further than me

You needed to set the c: drive as 'Active for Booting' within Ghost, and it has to be a primary partition (not logical).

 

[Phemo]

If a BIOS update doesn't fix it or if you can't find a limit capacity jumper, I would personally make a partition slightly less than it will allow - if it lets you set 127GB, make it 126.5GB, just to be on the safe side.

Another way around the BIOS limitation is to obtain a fairly recent PCI IDE card. Pretty much all of these made in the last 2 or 3 years (at least) will support 48-bit LBA and will allow drive support for over 127GB, even with motherboards that don't support it themselves. They're cheap, too.

 

[barnettgs]

A couple of points...

You may well find an updated mobbo BIOS to handle 48-bit LBA to see the larger drive - most manufacturers have provided at least this update. If not, check if there is a jumper on the drive to limit capacity. Last time I tried to do what you did (with an old PC) the BIOS simply would not see the large drive at all - so you got further than me

You needed to set the c: drive as 'Active for Booting' within Ghost, and it has to be a primary partition (not logical).

Thanks, I don't remember seeing Active for Booting option but I will look into it later. Also how to make it a primary parition - only by using boot cd?

To limit capacity using jumpers, I thought it is only for 32GB limit only?

Hmmm, it is quite old computer, I don't think it would support 48 bit even with bios. It is model Evo-d310.dt, I have looked at hp support site, it is pretty useless.

Thanks

 

[basmic]

You're only bet is the get a loader for the drive. What this does is load a program which tells the BIOS the real size - from then on, it operates as a normal drive.

I'm not sure if Feature Tool does the above, but it's worth a go.