I just got an old HP nx5000 laptop and the HD failed.

There is no restore disk, but I'd be happy to buy one from HP if I could figure out how to order one. Of the 3 HP PCs I already have (desktops), none of them have a restore disk and they did not come with one AFAIK.

If I buy new HDs, how can I get XP loaded again?

For the nx5000, SMART said HDD failure is immenent, but I can ignore this and start to boot XP Pro. It comes up to an activation screen.


I've thought of trying to activate this and then figure out how to image the disc, but I presume I'd have to buy the same size disk and figure out how to write the data to it. I've never been able to do this, usually because there just does not seem to be a way either because there is no way to physically connect the two drives to the same PC or I cannot figure out how to work the software.


Also, I do have have one OEM disk from a PC I built several years ago and I wonder if the code on the bottom of the nx5000 can be used with that disk? I don't want to transfer the license though since I still use that other computer...

What would be the recommended solution, beside buy a new PC?

You've got an external enclosure and at least as much space as the occupied space on the failing drive on another hard drive?

You hook the failing drive up in the enclosure, then image it to the other hard drive...then you hook up the new drive (doesn't have to be the same size...) and have the image restored to that drive. A good disk imager will restore to a larger drive as well as the same size. Then just pop the new drive into the laptop, boot and then activate.

I have an external USB drive (bigger than the laptop HDD).

I have Ghost2003 and I can also boot the nx5000 with PuppyLinux.

I might try to boot from the Ghost disc and see if I can write an image to the external USB.

I've tried that before on a very old laptop and it would not work though.

If it does work, then I guess I can install a new HDD and image back from the USB drive?

Oh, will it matter if the USB drive is FAT32 and the HDD is NTFS?

Umm...only if the image file is going to be larger than 4 GB.

Ghost 2003 may not be new enough to boot and see all the USB devices. From within Windows, it should.

I'm sure the HDD is larger than 4GB; I think it is 40GB.

Is there a better solution to fixing a dead HDD?

I don't care at all about the data, I just need an OS.

I guess I could spring for XP Pro at Amazon for $264, plus a new HDD...it hardly seems worth it though, but it is also just a shame to throw this PC out since it would fit my needs exactly.

If you have two enclosures you could image directly from the bad drive to the new drive.

I'd have to buy two enclosures.

I plugged my Iomega USB drive into the nx5000 and fired it up with the Ghost2003 CD.

It did not boot up with USB2.0 support, so I tried USB1.1 and it worked. I had to enter "English C:" as the language and drive where Ghost was located. Funny because Ghost is not installed and and the CD drive would be D:...?

So now I compute 12Mbps = 1.5MBps into 40,000MB = ~8 hours?

I did not understand the question about marking the disks and the stuff about forensics, but I selected to go ahead and mark it up...

I think I selected the right thing to do:

Local > Disk > To Image

Then I selected disk 1 to disk 3 and gave it a name.gho

It's been sitting for about an hour and there has been no progress indicated yet. It finished analyzing the NTFS partition and is now still writing MFT table...

Update,

I got a message box:

File Name ? (546)

Output error file to the following location A:\GHOSTERR.TXT

I guess it had an error and wants to write an error log to the A drive.

Now what? OK, Cancel? I don't have an A drive.

I selected Cancel and got another message box:

Internal Error 8027

internal inconsistency has been detected. if the problem persists, contact symantec...

and the interface is locked up...

I did some searching:

Here Folks is the solution:

These messages appear to be due to problem with how Ghost performs caching. To resolve the problem, use the -WS- and -WD- switches to turn off Ghost caching:

Ghost.exe -ws- -wd- OR better try using all these switches

Ghost.exe -FNI -FFX -NOIDE -NOUSB -ws- -wd-

It has worked with me.

This solution was posted in :

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/sunset-c2002kb.nsf/4bfcbd4eda243a6c85256ee600554cb2/4690e1aeab1bae4b85256ee500610c96?OpenDocument

Good Luck and enjoy ghosting.


Don't know how that would be done for me since I'm booting from the Ghost CD

That's why the error...you are booting to the CD and it is preset to write the cache to A:.

There may a way to do it with drive utilities for the new drive...check the manufacturer's web site for the utilities.

I guess there would be no need to worry about writing a log file if there were no problems...

I've tried it a couple of times changing Ghost options, such as ignore CRC errors and few others.

i also found I can save the file as .gho or .img, or a few others. Not sure which one to use or what the difference is.

I tried one last time last night with a different USB hard drive (formatted NTFS). I think the one I was using is failing too as I can hear clicks.

Anyway, Ghost ran all night (~14 hours) and it said it still had a few hours to go. The Ghost also reports bad blocks from the laptop HDD, so I told it to ignore all of those.

I'll have a remote helper check it shortly to see how it went, then try to restore the image to a new HDD...I'm not very optimistic, however; guessing I'll have problems with the data due to the bad blocks or then that the OS that is there will not be activated by MS...