Cloning OS Partition Using Ghost 2003

Overlooking all the naysayers on the Internet who claim this can’t be done, I will provide the directions to accomplish this task. Surprisingly, it is very easy. I am reluctant to provide this information, as it will probably just challenge Microsoft to find a way to prevent this from being possible, but I believe that people should be allowed to quickly replace a crashed operating system or hard drive, without having to spend days reinstalling the OS and downloading all the upgrades. I also appreciate all the help I have been given at Windows BBS since I got my first computer less than 3 years ago and feel I owe all the people who helped me this knowledge.
I choose to have two identical hard drives on my computer, so that I won’t have to deal with crashed computers again. I figure that it is much more likely for the operating system or hard drive to get corrupted than the mobo or CPU. It is a cheap, easy way to have a back-up computer. Since prices keep dropping, when I added the 2nd hard drive, I was able to get a larger one for less money than the original. Therefore, I needed to be able to copy partitions without necessarily duplicating the whole hard drive. I have divided up my hard drives into 8 partitions. I did this using the Windows XP CD set up, though it can be done using Partition Magic also. I have adjusted partitions easily with Partition Magic. My first partition is FAT32 (4GB) (in case I want to load some DOS disk utilities) while the others are NTFS. I install the OS on the 2nd partition (10GB).
To clone the OS partition from one drive to another, here are the steps:
1st, format the new partitions you will transfer to.
In the Ghost Advanced window, click Clone, and then click Next.
In the Clone Wizard window, in the left pane, click a partition to select it as the source for the clone operation.
In the right pane, click a partition to select it as the destination for the clone operation.
Click Next.
Follow the dialog boxes and answer as appropriate to your situation and then click Run Now to start the clone operation.
Your computer will restart and the clone process will be accomplished.

Chances are, this will not give you a usable OS, even though everything is cloned (make sure you clone both the 1st partition that has the master boot record and the 2nd partition that has your OS). Two more steps may be needed.

1st Step:
Insert your Windows XP CD into the computer.
Reboot the computer with the CD, and press any key when prompted to boot from the CD.
When allowed, press R to open the recovery console.
Select the operating system you wish to use. (I disconnected the operable drive, to make sure I made no errors, so there was only one OS to choose.)
When prompted, enter the Admin password and press enter.
At the command prompt, type "bootcfg /rebuild" (ignore " " whenever I say type -- just type what is between them) to rebuild your boot.ini file.
At the prompt, press Y if the bootcfg command properly identified each of the Windows operating systems installed on the computer.
Prompt to enter the load identifier. This is the name of your operating system for the boot.ini. I use Microsoft Windows XP Home 120 (the # is the size of the HD or other identifier).
Prompt to Enter OS load options. With this prompt type "/fastdetect "
Once you have completed all the available options in the rebuild and are back at the command prompt, type exit to reboot the computer. (Make sure you remove the XP CD and then see if it will boot properly.)

If it doesn’t load up properly, do the following step:
Go to the BIOS and make sure you are starting using HDD 0, not HDD 1.
The next step is to check the validity of the MBR (Master Boot Record)
on your new HD. The fastest way to do this uses a Windows 98 boot
disk with a few essential files on it. (In particular, the Win98
version of fdisk)
Restart the computer with this Win98 boot floppy.
At the a:\ prompt type "fdisk /mbr "
Restart the computer, after removing the boot floppy, and everything should work fine. (At least that was my experience.)
By the way, reactivating Windows XP isn't needed when done this way.
If you want help on how to be able to choose which HD to use on start up or to adjust the name on your boot.ini, check out this thread:
http://windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?t=39543
Good luck.