I bought a external hard drive and would like to have an exact copy of my PC's hard drive on it.
I'm not sure if it's possible to copy the operating system and all programs from one drive to another. I was wondering if I could just drag and drop everything using explorer? I know there are tricks to ghosting a voicemail drive so I figure there must be something to know before I try to do this.
Mark

get yourself a copy of norton ghost, it will do exactly what you want it to do.

If your external drive is large enough, sector it! Then use ghost. The program will guide you. If your OS is pre XP the older dos version is included with ghost.

I'm XP SP2 and the PC is a 60 gig and the external is a 250 gig. Do you know where can I find instructions on how to divide it in half J ?
That's a great idea by the way.

I'll go shop for Norton Ghost. That's funny because one of the reasons I'm doing all this is to get that damn Norton Anti-Virus off my PC.
Mark

Use the disk manager snapin.

Go to run> cmd> diskmgmt.msc

This will allow you to do exactly what you need. You other option is to use VMWare and clone you physical machine into a virtual machine and build your PC from scratch. This will allow you to still use all of your old programs but have the speed of a new load, new registry, etc. VMWare has a physical to logical machine FREE for download. I have used it numerous times.

https://www.vmware.com/products/converter/

hey G thanks for responding, you know the Embassy Suites in Charleston has a free happy hour from 5:30 to 7:30 every night. I stayed there 4/11 & 12/08 nice town.

I went to the diskmgmt in xp but I couldn't figure out how to partition from there. I am a long stretch from a computer guy I'll google VMWare and see if I can figure that out. Gotta take the wife to dinner now, before she gets nasty.
Mark

Mark,
If you are not a computer guy, I would stay away from VMWare, it can be a bit of a pain. I would also look at Acronis True Image Home, it lets you create an exact image of your hard drive, to your external. If your hard drive crashes, you put in the new one, boot off the Acronis disk, and restore the image back to your hard drive. I think you can even schedule it, so you always have a recent backup.

In that case, you may want to look at this link:
Norton Removal Tool
It has worked for me. If you decide to run it, the following 2 steps will make it easier:
1. Update Windows XP with all the Critical Updates foe your PC from Microsoft Update.
2. Quit any other programs running.
Depending on the version of Norton you have, it can be a lengthy process, but far better and briefer than doing the whole disk.

your right I've already used it as a test on my kids PC, it was a long process, I also did some searches for Norton and symantec files and folders, found a few and deleted them. Then still had to clean the registry a little. I used safety.live.com an MS on line program to clean things up when I was done, seemed to work well.
My office PC is the heartbeat of my business so I needed to make sure I could get rid of it nicely before I do it here. I think I'm about ready. I've tried a trial version of ESET anti virus on the kids PC and I think I like it, Probably going to install it on my office system as soon as I get this back up drive worked out.

To give a bit of a background, consumer/home antivirus programs can be notoriously difficult to uninstall. One of the reasons is the fact that many viruses/malware, once arriving at your machine, will first try to disable the security programs, or alternately just delete certain settings so they can attack while seemingly the antivirus is still running.
Corporate/business versions are lighter on the touch, on the assumption that knowledgeable specialists are in charge of the computer resources.

Mark,

what issues are you having with Norton? Which version are you using? Did you get your drive copied? Its a pretty easy setup, and I can give you some phone help if you need.

Z-man

Hey Z,
Norton is just a memory hog, it starts to take over my resources doing who knows what. I think it's designed to protect idiots who would accept any download offered to them so it has to be extra extremely thorogh. It was Norton Antivirus 2007 but now it's history.

I have the external drive hooked up and doing daily back ups. I still need to partition it and ghost my HD to it. I have to buy a ghosting program and find an easy to use partitioning program, so it's currently on my round tuit list. I have a much lighter antivirus now and things are all cleaned up and running much better.
Mark

Running Norton Corporate 7.6 here without noting any slow down. Kinda old but works and it doesn't have all the extras. Does one thing well instead of twenty things poorly.

Enought about bloatware, I also use ghost 2003 as that's the last good version IMHO.

Also would recommend Hirens boot disc, best thing to have for such things.

John

The Norton protection products run well on a server for a network but poorly on a personal PC which is how mine is used. The corporate product is able to assume some knowledgeable IT person is administering it while the personal product assumes a moron is in charge. Perhaps accurately pretty often.

XP will partion it for you. Were you running just Norton AV? or Systems Works or Internet Security? I find the AV to be fine, but the Systems Works is a hog. Any version of Ghost should work fine. You can also try Acronis True Image, but get version 11 or higher.

just the AV - some file called CCApp I think was the problem.

I don't think the xp home version can do the partitioning, if it can I don't see where it is to use it.

When you put the XP cd in and boot from it, once it goes through setup, it gives you the option to partition the drive before you install the OS.

grab a copy of Hiren's Boot CD... it's got a lot of good disc partitioning utilities, among other handy stuff.

CCApp (CC=CommonClient) has had problems that Symantec has been fixing for years (I know this doesn't make sense, but that's how it is).

May I recommend that you upgrade to XP Pro, especially if this computer means anything business-wise. If you feel like experimenting, Microsoft offers several free installation/cloning tools that can work with XP Pro, including a so-called "Pre-Installation Environment" that gathers all the pertinent software. If you had Vista you could also use an included very advanced tool called DiskPart that does most of what special 3rd party partitioning software does, and is probably better optimized and safer.

Acronis is the way to go...

AVG is a good free antivirus program...

my .02 NORTON / Symantec are junk

i agree with KevinG. Acronis very easy i image vm drives all the time with it.

I've been playing with linux a bit lately. I have a 1GB thumb drive that I can run Ubuntu 8.04 on my laptop, take the thumb drive out and I'm back to XP Pro. Ubuntu has a nice partitioning utility that's pretty easy to use, you can resize, delete and create partitions - Partition Magik does the same thing.
I'm sure there are some nice Imaging programs available for Linux as well.

AVG isn't only a good free program, but a good pay one as well. For the $35 a year you get automatic scanning that you can schedule when you want it, and better support access as well.

I've lost faith in Norton Security products. There are just to many problems with them. I really miss Norton Disk Editor, but I still have a copy if I want to mangle a disk with it. The AV product seems to miss more viruses than it catches and it is not unusual for me to find several co-existing with it to the degradation of the system.

AVG is okay but i like Avast! better.. cheaper too, if you decide to buy.

Norton is complete garbage anymore and i insist my customers use something else if i am to be responsible for their computers.

as much as i miss the old Norton suite of disk utilities, i would not recommend using antiquated software on a modern OS or file system. the chances of creating far bigger problems than the one you were trying to fix are too high.

Make sure you get the latest version of Acronis if your going to use it. The earlier versions only let you copy physical drives, not logical drives.

As far as Ghost and NAV, I have used them for years with no issues. Keep in mind, Norton Anti-virus and Norton System Works and Norton Internet Security are all different animals. I would not run NSW or NIS anymore.