Hi Anna,

Thanks for your response. My responses are appropriately included beneath
each of your queries.


"Anna" <myname@myisp.net> wrote in message
news:ufG6ezg6FHA.2384@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
>
> "Manu" <manu@invalid.address> wrote in message
> news:OTHsxxf6FHA.3636@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
>> Recently, I replaced a Western Digital 160GB drive on one PC with a
>> Hitachi
>> 250GB one. This is the master on the primary IDE channel on a Promise TX2
>> Ultra-133 PCI Controller. The drive was partitioned (NTFS) and formatted
>> in
>> Disk Management and works perfectly in Windows (XP Pro).
>>
>> However, Ghost 2003 cannot see this drive when it reboots to write an
>> image.
>> Sees it fine within Windows though. I tried to use Ghost off a floppy and
>> it
>> too cannot see the drive. The drive does have the required "Ghost ID". I
>> borrowed an Acronis TrueImage utility floppy and it cannot see the drive
>> either!
>>
>> On a whim, I tested NTFS4DOS off a floppy and it does not see the drive
>> also. Carrying the whim further, I temporarily restored this PC with a
>> older
>> Windows 98SE image which had large-drive support as well as NTFS4Win
>> installed. That too does not see the drive! But it does see the 300GB
>> drive
>> that is also on the controller. Incidentally, Device Manager in that
>> Windows
>> 98SE does show the Hitachi drive, but without a drive letter assigned and
>> reporting it as an "unknown partition". I surmised that this is not a
>> Ghost-related problem.
>>
>> I tried a partition delete + recreate + format using the Hitachi/IBM
>> drive
>> set-up utility but it did not help. Physicals - jumpers, changing over to
>> the secondary IDE controller, drive fitness test, chkdsk etc. - all were
>> tried. When I put the old drive back, everything works fine again, at
>> least
>> as far as Ghost is concerned.
>>
>> I do regular Ghost image back ups and need this drive functional within
>> its
>> operations - hence this post.
>>
>> I would really appreciate any insights on what to look for in addressing
>> this issue. Please excuse my verbosity here!
>>
>> Regards and have a nice day.
>>
>> Manu
>
>
> Manu:
> Just so I clearly understand your problem, let me ask you a few
> questions...
>
> 1. I'm not entirely clear on your HD configuration. You've indicated the
> Hitachi 250 GB drive is connected to the Promise controller and you
> apparently have a 300 GB drive also connected to that controller.


The Hitachi 250GB and a Maxtor 300GB are connected to the
primary channel of the Promise controller. The secondary channel is vacant.
I have tried various combinations in connecting the drives to the two
channels - one on each, swap channels, swap slave/master positions, swap
jumper settings - master/slave/cable-select, also changed IDE cables (all
are UltraIDE compatible 80-conductor). To no effect.

>
> 2. Do you boot to the 250 GB HD? Are any drives connected to your
> motherboard's Primary/Secondary IDE controllers? (I assume your drives are
> PATA, right?)

The boot drive (IBM 120GB) and a DVD-RW are on the primary
channel of the motherboard controller. The secondary controller is not used
right now. It was earlier populated with two optical drives.

>
> 3. Is the reason your 250 GB HD is connected to the Promise controller
> rather than your motherboard's IDE channel because the BIOS does not
> support large-capacity disks?


Yes, that is the way it was set up about 3 years back.

>
> 4. I assume you're able to boot to the Hitachi drive (if indeed it *is*
> your booting drive) without any problem and it's perfectly functional,
> yes? Is then your basic problem that you want to clone the contents of
> that drive to another drive on your machine (the 300 GB one?) but Ghost
> 2003 doesn't recognize the existence of your source drive? What is the
> specific error message you get when you boot to the Ghost 2003 bootable
> floppy? Why do you say Ghost "cannot see this drive when it reboots"? Is
> rebooting an issue here?
> Anna

Rebooting into Windows is not an issue here. But when a Ghost 2003 imaging
job is run, even from within Windows, Ghost will shut down the computer and
restart in DOS mode to do the task. It is on this DOS reboot part that Ghost
cannot see the drive. My version of Ghost does not do an imaging task within
Windows as Acronis TrueImage or Ghost 9 does.

The Ghost process aborts and returns the machine to Windows (as it should)
and delivers an error report indicating the failure as target drive not
found. But works perfectly okay if a target is selected in a directory of
the 300GB drive. And I can do an image to blank optical media perfectly. And
been working with the original 160GB drive that was swapped out!

I do not want to clone the contents of my drive. I run the Ghost image
function as a regular drive back up for a couple of years not with no
problems except on this one particular drive. I also tried a Ghost cloning
operation to see if it made any difference - but not.

I have no poblems with any Ghost image creation task or operations so far
with any previous hardware configuration on this particular machine. It is
only this particular hard drive that exhibits this curious behavior.

Again, I also tried connecting the large drives to the secondary controller
of the motherboard. Weird enough, WindowsXP can work with them perfectly
even though the BIOS on this mobo apparently does not support large drives.
But the Ghost oddity persists in this configuration also.

There is actually nothing wrong with the hardware and storage device
configuration at all on this machine. Windows XP Pro now, as well as Windows
2000 Pro, Windows 98SE earlier - all work perfectly.

The only unexplained phenomenon is the invisibility of this particular hard
drive to Ghost or any other DOS-based environment suitable for reading large
NTFS drives. I do not have a problem with bigger hard drives in a similar
situation on this machine. Or on others. And, yes, I temporarily connected
this drive to another available machine and the issue cropped up there also.

As I said before, it does not seem to me to be a Ghost issue at all but a
hardware one. I am posting this to this newsgroup because I am running
Windows XP, and unfortunately I cannot retun the drive to the retail store
as the 30-day period passed and no additional warranty was purchased.
Hitachi/IBM will not take the drive back even though the warranty is valid
simply because of the fact that there is no "problem/defect" with it - DFT
gave it more than a clean bill of health! And it does work perfectly, except
for the Ghost part.

Seems like I truly got a Ghost in my machine!

Thanks very much for enduring my long-windedness.

Manu