Hard drive failing --- need help...

[Yankee fan]

I have a Gateway G6 - 300 Pent II with 300 mgh, 256 memory, Windows 98, 2nd ed.,bought in 1997. It's an old friend.
It came with a 3 gig hard drive that was partitioned into a 2 gig and a 1 gig.
In 1999, I added a 20 gig hard drive for more space, and used Partition Magic to remap programs, etc, as the drive letters had changed with the addition of the new drive. My old 3 gig drive used to be C & D drive. They were now C & E, and the new drive became the "D". CD-ROM became "F".
The old "C" drive is the home of WINDOWS 98 2nd ED., etc. The new 20 gig drive was set up as "slave".
In the last month, "bad sectors have started to develop on the older "C" drive, and a few times a week, when booting up, I get a message that scan disk needs to be run, as there are errors, etc. I have NORTON SYSTEM WORKS 2003, and the map in DISK DOCTOR now shows 3 bad sectors on the "C" drive.
I am afraid that the older drive is about to fail. Isn't there an easy way (perhaps with Partition Magic 5.0or another program)that I could move or copy everything on the "C" drive over to my bigger, newer "D" drive (plenty of room), and make that the Master or Boot drive? If so, would it need to be in a separate partition with a new drive letter?
I am not that technical in all this stuff, so if anyone has an idea, please keep it simple for me.

Thanks for any ideas you may have...

[Smoke24]

The same company that makes Patition Magic also makes Drive Copy. I have used it to move everything from one drive to another. You might also do a fresh install of 98se on the new drive and do drag and drop for all your other stuff. I have had that work before but it could leave out some of the registry files that your programs need to work.

[mike breck]

As you have already enjoyed the luxury and data security of using two HDs (presumably your data is safe on the 20Gb?), I would just buy a new HD, partition using PM to suit yourself, and put a clean install of Windows on the C: partition of that HD.

You will still be able to access the data on the 20Gb thro Windows and continue to use it as your "backup" drive.

HDs are relatively inexpensive and I personally wouldn't risk relying on having everything on one HD.

HTH

[Yankee fan]

OK --- This might be a dumb question but, here goes:
If I use something like "Drive Copy", and put a copy of my current "C" drive on to the current "D", would I then have to do something to make the "D" drive the "boot drive", or the drive off of which WINDOWS 98 2nd ed runs, so that the old drive is no longer used if it is going bad??? See, I said I was confused...

Also --- there is another product from Norto called "Ghost". Which do you think would be better for my situation --- Drive Copy, Ghost, something else...

Thanks --- this forum is great!

[reboot]

Ghost is (almost) foolproof.
It will make an exact copy of everything on one drive, onto another, with little fuss or bother.
Once done, remove old drive, place new drive in primary master C position (check jumpers), and boot the computer.
I've used both DriveCopy and Ghost, and much prefer Ghost.

[Yankee fan]

Reboot --- Thanks so much for the info and the note about Ghost...
One more thing...When I copy the current "C" drive (where WINDOWS is currently residing) & the current "E" drive (which is a "logical partition' on the same harddrive as "C") to the current "D" drive, do I need to put the 2 copies in separate "partitions" of D (create 2 new partitions with Partition Magic 5.0, so there are still 3 harddrives showing on My Computer), or just copy it over to D...This is confusing...

[reboot]

Just ghost the drive to drive. Ghost will give you options to resize partitions if you want to. Don't make it complicated, and don't even fdisk the new drive first, just plug it in, boot to a disk and run ghost.

[Yankee fan]

Thanks, Reboot. Sounds like even I can handle it...

Two last questions and that is it ---- I am reading reviews on how GHOST is a dinosaur, hard to use, etc., and the other products (like Drive Copt, Drive Image, etc.) are better, simpler, etc. That being said, you are still a "Ghost" fan, right?

Also --- I just read part of the "GHOST" manual on the Symantec site. I assume I would be "Cloning" my drive. My newer, larger drive is 20 GB. It currently has 8 gig taken up and 12 gig of free space. It is all one partition, currently labeled "D" drive.
According to the manual, if you "clone" one drive to another, there is a warning that "The destination disk or partition is completely overwritten with no chance of recovering any data". Wouldn't that mean that, if I don't partiton my "destination disk", I will loose the 8 gigs of data that I have stored there? (It is where "Ghost" will be installed, by the way...).
I was working with Partion Magic 5.0, just running through the entries to add a partition to my "D" drive, and it wouldn't let me choose the option of creating a partition to put Windows 98. That choice was not active...so I answered "NO", and it wouldn't let me create a primary partition, only a logical one. Now if I chose I was going to install Windows NT or 2000 on the new partition, it would let me make the new partition a "primary" one. If I need to create new partitions, can I say I am going to install Windows NT or 2000, but then clone the disk with Windows 98 2nd ed.???
I am getting more confused here as I go. I will stop now...

[Yankee fan]

Anyone have any ideas on the questions in the previous reply just above? I don't want to CLONE my current "C" drive and loose all the data on my current "D" drive --- the drive on which I will put the cloned drive. (Does that make sense???)

Thanks...

[reboot]

Slow down. Back up.
Explain again how many drives, and how many partitions you have? Which partitions do you want to clone? Which ones do you want to keep, and which ones can you overwrite?
I'll see if I can figure this out.
You have 2 drives. Both have data you want to keep.
You have Parition Magic.
Make a second partition on the 20 gig drive.
You will now have C (old drive), D, and E on the new drive.
Move everything, using PM, from D to E, so it's safe.
Run Ghost from a bootable floppy, so drive letters don't get confused within the OS.
Open Ghost, and clone the old drive, partition to partition (not drive to drive), C to D.
Shutdown, and remove the old drive, insert the new in it's place, start the computer (detect drives in BIOS if needed), and boot.
You may have to run fdisk to make the primary partition active on the new drive, but that should be the only problem I can forsee.

[Yankee fan]

The way you describe it is correct, except my current "older, failing" hard drive, which is 3 gig, has 2 partitions, "C" drive (2 gigs with Windows), and "E" drive (1 gig). The "E" partition has basically nothing on it, so I won't be transferring, imaging, cloning it anywhere. Should I empty it now and MERGE it with "C" (using PM), so there is one less drive letter to deal with in all of this?


Now, I was working with Partition Magic 5.0 last night --- not actually creating partitions, just going through all the motions but not hitting FINISH. It will only let me create a "LOGICAL" partition on the big "D" drive, but since there is no "operating system" to go into the new partition, that should be OK, right. There are only programs stored on the drive now, but the current "D" is listed as a PRIMARY partition (and "active"). Since the current "C" will be cloned to the current "D", wich is a primary, active partition, all should be OK, if I am following this correctly.

When you say, "move everything from D to E so it is safe using PM", do you mean program by program using the Magic Mover, move the whole partition, or ?

I just got GHOST 2003, which says it can do all its magic through WINDOWS, but you say to run GHOST from a bootable floppy, which will be doing everything in DOS. Is that correct? Do you still feel that is the way to go, even though it is Ghost 2003?

Also --- what if I did all this --- that is, add the new partition to D, move D to E, resize the partitions, etc, but just leave the "D" partition EMPTY and use GHOST to "IMAGE" the "C" drive. Leave the current "C" drive where it is until it fails (if ever) and not take out the old drive? You know, just keep it there until it actually goes bad. Does that make any sense to you at all? Image the "C" drive weekly to keep the images current and wait it out?

Too many questions --- too little time. Thanks for listening to all of this. I just get really nervous about doing this stuff...

[Psychodic_Greak]

Yankee Fan,

Have you attempted to use Sys. Restore, or GoBack which is on Norton 2002/2003. Try going back 2 months and do not -please- dont dl anything. If the promblem consists, then maybe your hd needs to be replaced.

[reboot]

OK, you may, or may not merge the partitions, up to you. Making D logical, is the only way you can do it.
Dont' image anything.
Clone the current C to the new disk.
Swap disks, and boot.
You will still have your original C to boot from if anything goes wrong.

[Yankee fan]

Reboot --- Will do (this weekend)! Thanks for all the advice.

I hate to ask something else but I have to. I'll try not to be so wordy ----

1) Partition Magic --- I have version 5.0. It says to run it with no other programs running (I lock up if I do).
I tried doing "Alt-Control-Delete" and closing everything but Explorere and Systray. It works fine then, and I can do what I need to do. To be really "safe", should I do my "partioning and moving" files from D to E when it is in "SAFE MODE". The reason I ask is, the "max" size of the new partition I can make is "bigger" in Safe Mode than the other (10 gigs as opposed to 8), and the info function finds some conditions on the partitions (like cross-linked files" with A-C-D, but in Safe Mode, there are no errors found.

2) Would I use the "MagicMover" functions in PM to move everything from D to E? That would be each program one by one. Is that what you meant by move everything D to E using PM? Or can I just "move" the 2 partitions, using the move function in PM.

3) Cloning with Ghost 2003 ---- use bootable floppy and do it in DOS, or do through windows now available in Ghost 2003?

If you are sick of these questions by now, just tell me to figure it out myself!

Thanks much.

[reboot]

Hey, we don't mind the questions at all. Everyone learns, not just the poster.
Here goes:
Moving stuff from D to wherever.
1.) First, you've got it right. Shutdown everything except Explorer and systray, then run PM. Dont' do it in safe mode, because you may have trouble later when NOT in safe mode.
2.) Just use the "Magic Mover" to move it from D to E, not actually moving the partitions, just the data. You should NOT need to make any new partitions, you've already got them made.
3.) Once everything is safe on E, format D so it's blank.
Ghost can be run through Windows, but will restart in DOS anyhow, so put Ghost on a bootable floppy, and do it that way (safer). Just choose "Partition to partition", and copy C to D.
Once done, you should be able to remove your old C drive, put the new drive in it's place and boot the computer.
Remember that if anything goes wrong, you still have your old C drive to boot with, and you still have all your data on E as well.
There's only one possible problem, once the drives are swapped, your computer may not boot, because the drive is labelled D, and it needs to be C to boot. There's a fairly easy fix for that, which I'll get to IF you have any troubles.
Go ahead and give it a try. It won't take long, and you'll know right away if it won't boot properly.

[Yankee fan]

YES!!! I think I am ready to give it a try over the weekend when I will have the time. I'll keep some tranquilizers handy...

On the possible problem you mention at the end....When the old hard drive is removed, leaving only the "current" D & E drives, won't the system automatically rename them "C" & "D", and the CD ROM will go from "F" to "E"??? Then I would use Drive Mapper in Partition Magic to fix all the changes in the registry, etc???

Thank you, thank you thank you....

[reboot]

See, that can be a problem. The drive may appear in BIOS to be C, but Windows still thinks it's D and E.
You talk about drive mapper. That's fine, but how do you run it if the computer won't boot?
Basically, the fix is to mount the new drive, run fdisk on it, without making any changes, then exit fdisk.
At the A:\prompt again, you type: fdisk /mbr to rebuild the basic boot record. This usually solves the problem, but I've only had that problem with XP Pro, and only one time.

[Yankee fan]

Jim/Reboot....I did't get too far and ran into a problem...

I installed GHOST 2003, and all went well, I thought, but when I restarted my system, the window for the folder that I installed Ghost into (I put it in D:\Program Files\Norton\Ghost) was open on my desktop. The title of the window is Norton, and the only thing in it is the Ghost folder.
Now, everytime I boot or restart, I end up with this window open on my desktop. There must be some kind of command in the startup to open that window now.
On the DOS screen that shows during boot up, there is a long command after a C prompt that has NORTON GHOST in it that was never there before. Do I have a problem here? Can I get that out somehow?

The followinf: SET PATH =%PATH%;"D\PROGRAM FILES\NORTON\GHOST\" is now in my Autoexec.bat of my system configuration utility. It was never there before. There is a box in front of it and it is "checked". I took the check out, but the window still opens at startup.

I don't want to proceed if I have a problem with Ghost now...

What do you think---something easy here to fix or uninstall/reinstall time????

Thanks...

[reboot]

Wow...not sure where to start with this.
I would uninstall it, then choose a custom install, and somewhere there's got to be an option to make a ghost diskette.
You could manually remove the bits from desktop and startup, but I would just uninstall, or see if you can make the ghost startup diskette, THEN uninstall the whole thing.
Please, email me before you do any more: reboot@pcmech.com

Symantec seems to have thoroughly screwed up an otherwise excellent program yet again!!!