Restore when GHOST won't clone

[horqua]

BACKGROUND: I have a Fujitsu 40 gb HD that's been having problems for a few months. It's runnning Win2K and formatted NTFS. It crashes/BSOD whenever I try to run Chkdsk /f. I found a drive utility to check the status of the drive. The utility reports a SMART error on the drive and recommends moving the contents onto another drive and contacting the manufacturer.

I've tried to cloning the bad drive onto a good drive using Ghost and Copy Commander. Each program reports errors on the bad drive, stops the clone process without completion, and recommends running chkdsk /f (which I know will fail).

So I tried the next thing. I used Windows Back-Up to back up the contents of the bad drive (it still works but I no longer trust it with my critical data). I installed my OS on the good drive. I launched the good drive and successfully restored the contents of the bad drive.

My basic question is: how can I re-activate the programs and re-create, on the good drive, the look and feel of my old desktop on the bad drive (without the errors)? I was hoping that Restore would set up the good drive to look and act like the bad drive, but no. So, I've reinstalled the Service Packs and Win2K updates. I've started to reinstall the hardware configurations (video card, audio, etc. (I quit at midnight last night)). Can anyone tell me how do I get the software to work again? As an example, the MS Office package is reporting that it wants to be re-installed even though everything is still there in the correct folders. The Adobe package is telling me that it can't find the User Information so it won't load. I'm currently accessing the good system as the Administrator but how do I import or install my regular user profile that I backed up in a different location before I started this restoration process?

Any advice or suggestions are appreciated.


Knock and the door will be opened to you; Seek and you will find; Ask and it will be given to you! Our God is an awesome God!

 

[Moonspell]

Did your backup and restore include the windows registry? if not then this is your 1st problem. also did you copy your user profiles from the other drive? copying the files from the old hdd to the new one does not install them (as i am sure you are aware)

 

[horqua]

Moon,
I did not specifically BU the registry because I thought it would be included when I BU the entire contents of the bad drive. I can still launch the bad drive, so tonight I'm going to specifically BU the Registry and Restore it on the good drive and see what happens. In my research I read that both drives need to be named exactly the same. Do you know if this is the case?

Regarding the profile, I used the System>System Properties>Copy To function to copy my specific profile into a folder on my file server. The problem I'm facing is I can't figure out how to restore the profile copy onto the good drive. When I Launch the bad drive to copy the registry, should I also use the System>System Properties>Copy to copy my profile from the bad drive to the good drive and where would I copy it to?

Thanks for your input. I appreciate it!

Knock and the door will be opened to you; Seek and you will find; Ask and it will be given to you!

 

[horqua]

I SOLVED IT!

Thanks to Moonspell's suggestion, I researched Backing UP and Restoring the Registry and learned that I needed to BU the System State on the bad HD (which still works but is no longer trustworthy) and Restore the System State on the good HD. Once that was completed, the user profile on the good HD acted just like the one on the bad HD. Everthing's back to where it was and my system works fine! WHEW!!!

Knock and the door will be opened to you; Seek and you will find; Ask and it will be given to you!