New To Norton Ghost/Questions

[craigiz1]

I just re-formatted and added an identical 40GB h/d for back up using Norton Ghost from Norton System Works 2003 Pro Edition.
I seem to be doing fine making a Ghost image to the back up h/d. (D) And I created an emergency boot disk from Ghost too, just in case.

My question is...am I ok making Ghost images or should I be making a direct "clone" of my main h/d?

I back up at night before I go to bed, knowing that my system is in a good state. I also make sure the main h/d is defragmented and I clear all cookies and other b/s that I can, trying to make sure everything is as good as I can get it.

Any other info is appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[craigiz1]

Bump

 

[craigiz1]

1 more bump.

 

[shadowdr]

you are doing the right thing,if you make a clone it will have a bootable mbr and will most likely confuse windows as to what it should use for a boot drive.I am still using Ghost 7 so it is most likely a little different as it only runs in DOS,but a partition to partition is what you want.If you need more storage space it will compress to at least half of the drive size.I backup 20 gig partitions to 10 gig's and it works fine.Actually i beleive that it only writes actual files so that it only needs as much room as the actual used space on the given drive it is ghosting and may even compress beyond that,but i have never tried.
I have gone beyond ghosting as well and have partitions for windows,programs and one for anything i want to keep for sure and use nero 6 to backup to a bootable dvd.There is no such thing as to much backup!

 

[oc_newbee]

you are doing the right thing,if you make a clone it will have a bootable mbr and will most likely confuse windows as to what it should use for a boot drive.I am still using Ghost 7 so it is most likely a little different as it only runs in DOS,but a partition to partition is what you want.If you need more storage space it will compress to at least half of the drive size.I backup 20 gig partitions to 10 gig's and it works fine.Actually i beleive that it only writes actual files so that it only needs as much room as the actual used space on the given drive it is ghosting and may even compress beyond that,but i have never tried.
I have gone beyond ghosting as well and have partitions for windows,programs and one for anything i want to keep for sure and use nero 6 to backup to a bootable dvd.There is no such thing as to much backup!

Shadowdr, I have a ghost 7 software that came with my motherboard. I understand that it only work in dos and the maual stated that for installation of ghost, all I need to do is copy the ghost.exe file to my harddrive. Is that how you install the app. I kinda understand this whole backup thing, but when I got to the part where I need to make a recovery floppy or CD, I'm puzzle. I don't understand where or how to create those bootable files(such as autoexe.bat, command.com, Io.sys and msdos.sys etc. etc.).

I'm trying to learn how to ghost the image and then either make a recovery cd or store it in my D: drive and used it when ever I need it. I need help in doing so, cause I never used that program before. What I want to do is to ghost the image of one drive and store it into another drive, then when the system fail to boot(OS hosted) or something due to overclocking. I can then boot directly into the recovery program and restore my windows and application again.

HP machine have this neat thing where you don't have to used any recovery cd to do so. They just have you press F10 at booting to enter the whole recovery thingy. It would be nice if I can used this ghost 7 software that came with the 4PCA3+ CD to do that instead of making a CD. That way it would eliminate the possibility of loosing the cd or getting the cd damage when you need it. If that not the case, making a recovery cd would also be ok I guess.

So, if anyone could help me get started on this, or direct me to a place where I can learn this process would be highly appreciated.

Thanks,
OC_Newbee

 

[shadowdr]

I had a lot of trouble myself with making the floppy disk.Saving the Ghost.exe will not work except that from there you can add it to a bootable floppy.You will havre to make a bootable ms dos floppy in order to run ghost.Samantic is no help because it is an oem version.Epox is also no help as they have no support that i know of.You could go to bootdisk.com and do alot of reading and experimenting with bootdisks or if you have an email address i could mail you the image that took several days for me to make.You must have another drive for this to work as it cannot write to the drive it is reading,or you can write the image to cd's.

Edited to add this link.you should be able to use the one here.

 

[oc_newbee]

shadowdr, If you don't mine please email it to [email protected]. That's halfman underscore N underscore [email protected].

I try over the weekend to play around with it but still doesn't fully understand the whole process. Question, I have 3 hard drive in my system. Two are which in raid 0(C: drive) and one is for my backup(D: drive). Which cloning option should I use. Should I go with disk to disk, disk to image, partition to partition, or partition to image, etc.

Since I want to ghost everything on my C: drive and store it my D: drive, I'd try disk to image, but it would let me saved it to my D: drive, but only could save onto my A: drive(which is the Floppy drive).

Very puzzle in this ghost 7 stuff. So, anymore help will be much appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[shadowdr]

O.K.,for each partition you want to backup you will need another of meybe half that size or at least 1 gig more than the amount of space used on that drive.For instance i have 2 40 gigs in raid 0 and another 20 gig wd that is on ide.On my 80. gig array i have 4 partitions,C: i have at 10. gigs wich is plenty for windows,D:10 more gigs is programs and games or any other app i might need so it doesn't interfere with windows(in case of crashes).then i have 10 for downloads,everything i download i keep there so if any app needs reinstalling or a driver reinstall i have it handy and finnally the rest is for storage that gets erased alot.
On the 20 i have only two partitions oneG: is where i ghost windows to and the other h: i ghost the programs partition.
I could get away with 5 gig partitions for backup but i don't have any need for the extra space.
When you use ghost you will need to do a partiton to partion image unless you want to remove the backup drive when your done because ghost copys everything including the mbr.If you try to copy from drive to drive it will want to use an entire drive for each and you will have two bootable instances of windows.
I have found that by splitting up my page file(i put 500 mb on C; and 500 on Gthat it does not detract from the write speeds on the raid array.This should be done in the control panel before the ghost image is done.It could be just my system but my write speeds drop to less than 50 mbs.

Ghost 7 and below works only in dos so you will only need the floppy.Just format a floppy and copy all the files to it and add the ghst 7 app to it.all the files i got from bootdisk.com and a few others but they are all freeware except the ghost which i cannot send so "m sure we are not violating any laws or rules..

At a; prompt type ghost.exe and the program will load.Chose partition to partion and it will bring up the hard drives,each on a seperate line.mine is very easy to tell wich is which because the raid array shows as one drive (80 gigs) and the other as a 20.From there you chose the drive you want the partition copied from.It will then show the partitions which are available on that disk,just chose the partition.Click next and again you will see the available drives,from here chose the destination drive and click nex.There you will see the available partitions on that drive,so just highlight it and click next.I beleive that that is where it asks if you want to compress.click ok and it does its thing.It copys and gives this partition the same name as the windows drive(or whatever the originals name was)so i normally remame it by adding a 2 to the end so it wont confuse norton or windows by thinking all the shortcuts are incorrect.

Seems like alot of rambling but i noticed another thread pointing here as well so disregard anything that doesn't pertain to your situation.I also found a site which explains better than i could.this

 

[oc_newbee]

Thank you again for all your help and the great link you provide here. I will go home tonight and try it out one more time.

One more question, when I try the partition to partition cloning, it say when continue all data on that disk will be deleted. I got scare and stop it right there. Is that right, if so I don't want that to happen, then I'm going to have to reformat everything again.

 

[shadowdr]

yes all data on the destination disk will be overwritten.just make sure you have them right before letting it write.I guess you made the floppy ok,I tried to send the files but it was returned undeliverable.

 

[oc_newbee]

Shadowdr,

After reading the document about ghost through radified in the link above. It stating that with the older version of ghost beside the 2003, you cannot save the image to NTFS, but only to Fat32.

I have both of my harddrive format as NTFS. My first drive(C: drive) which I have all my window, data, and app. My second which I suppose to used for saving all my image ghost file. So my second drive is empty, my question is how can I reformat my second drive to be Fat32?

I try and mess around with the setting in administration tools in the control panel under disk management, but I can only format them as NTFS. There's no way to change it to Fat32, This is where I need you help again.

I cannot thank you enough for all the help you have gave me, so Thank you.

 

[shadowdr]

Ghost 7 will write to formatted ntfs partitions,the guide is appearently an older one as both versions i have will write nrfs.

 

[oc_newbee]

Ghost 7 will write to formatted ntfs partitions,the guide is appearently an older one as both versions i have will write nrfs.

So is ghost 7 pretty new? I won't have problem writing them to NTFS drive right. Alright I'm giving it a try again when I get home tonight.

Thank you.

 

[shadowdr]

Yes the former newest i know of was Ghostpe,possible standing for private edition but would not operate without adding a few switches because of the latest window sp's,somthing to do with memory.It would write to ntfs partitions as well.

 

[oc_newbee]

try it last night still wouldn't let me save it onto anything but the A: drive and my CD writer. I don't think I can save it to my D: drive since Dos can only write to FAT32. Oh well I just have to wait until I reformat everything again and format at least one of my drive to FAT32.

Thank you so much for all your help and have a great new year!

 

[shadowdr]

Duh,now i get it.It is the version of dos that cant write to the ntfs partition.Check you pm's.

 

[oc_newbee]

Duh,now i get it.It is the version of dos that cant write to the ntfs partition.Check you pm's.

Thanks in a million and email has been sent.