R+R Failure and HDD cloning with Ghost 12 Failure

[boac69]

I have given up all hope of getting my T43P rescue and recovery disc set to run, as something in the machines config is switching R+R to only use the set up disc, I first thought it was old data in the HDD HPA but they have been subjected to the Hitachi disc and feature tools and have been, Fitness tested, resized, repartitioned, hi level formatted, low level formatted and finally firmware updated, and still R+R won’t go past disc one, where it should ask is there another set up disc, you answer No and it then asks for disc 1 of 6, it wants the disc removed and rebooted. Then I get recovery 5.8 which gives up win XP sp1 with a set of drivers that just get the machine running, with more yellow ? marks in hardware devices than you want to count. The remaining 6 discs are never asked for.
Any ideas are more than welcome, Help is definitely required please

So being retired and having only time to waste I thought no problem, all these T43P are the same model just clone the drive from the good one onto the HDD’s that won’t run R+R.(4 off all ex T40 Hitachi Travel stars IC25N040ATCS05-0 FRU 92P6342)
I have a copy of Norton Ghost 12. I now know it is not this forums preferred option but it’s the one I have to hand and it’s paid for, the other thing about retirement is that money is not as easy to come by any more! So I don’t want to buy another programme unless I really have to.

Has ANY one managed to get Ghost 12 to clone a ThinkPad drive to boot, I have played with all the combinations in the wizard and tried all the options on the MBR reset tool from Lenovo and still no luck. Please don’t ref to the –Ib switch as Ghost 12 does not give you access to dos, it uses a fancy interface wizard instead.

If you have had a success cloning with Ghost 12 Please share the secret with me.

[muffd]

I'm not sure about the version you're using of Ghost but I've successfully used 8.0 and 8.3. I've replaced 2 hard drives now with my T42p.

[rbena]

I've used Ghost 2003 to clone an XP system, as it does not operate from within Windows as does Ghost 12.

The -ib switch allows disk cloning to successfully include the hidden recovery partition.

I've also used earlier versions of Ghost, again from outside of Windows, to image the C-partition after deleting the hidden recovery partition. This method allows extra Hdd space, and also captures an image after all configurations and software installations are complete. I find this saves hours of time when doing a system restore in the future.

Another option is to use a trial version of Acronis True Image to clone the Hdd including the hidden partition.

[AmarT43]

I have given up all hope of getting my T43P

If you have had a success cloning with Ghost 12 Please share the secret with me.

I have succesfully used ghost from Hirens boot cd to clone from t43 to lenovo 3000 series and vice versa, the trick here is to get the IBM MBR in place with a handy tool that ibm offers, this needs to be run off a USB floppy drive.

Let me know if you need this tool and i can send it over, all you need to do is run it and it will replace the MBR to the origina one after running ghost and your system shoudl boot normally along with the recovery buttons working.

[boac69]

Thank you AmarT43 for your kind offer but I did solve my problem by using a free cloning prog off the web, it worked, ghost did not!

I now have four happy friends as I passed these repaired computers on at cost of purchase and rebuild, which in real terms was very little considering that 2 out of the 4 are still in warranty and I have kept the 5th for myself, it just happens to be the best with the longest warranty and the 6th will be useful parts if required.
I have learnt so much from this project that I am searching for another crock of broken machines to keep me out of the pub and life intresting.

[rbena]

I did solve my problem by using a free cloning prog off the web, it worked.

Which cloning program did you use?