I obtained recently Ghost 9.0 and it got shipped with a Ghost 2003 cd inside. And thanks god! I almost lost my data by relying on an image created with Ghost 9.0. I got the error “internal PQI file invalid or format not supported” I found no reference about. Thanks god I played safe and made a parallel image with ghost 2003.
I think ghost 9.0 does too many things. True, the image file, the increment option, the possibility to mount, all this is marvelous. But the risk to have all the images lost because of an esoteric PQI problem is really a price too high. ;D

Nico, your post is quite frightening.  Some questions:

[1] How did you make the images (e.g., compression settings, etc.)?
[2] Did you verify the integrity of the images?
[3] Where were the images stored (e.g., an external drive, DVD discs)?
[4] How did you attempt to restore the images (e.g., within Windows or booting with the Symantec Recovery Environment CD)?
[5] What does Symantec have to say about this?  Did you initiate an inquiry?

The technology used by Ghost 9.0 has a long-standing reputation and history, and so your experience appears to be unique.  Nonetheless, understanding what a user of Ghost 9.0 might do differently (or should be cautious about) would clearly be of interest.

Thank you for your contribution.

Dear Pleonasm,
[1] i made the image staring the installed ghost 9.0 on Windows 2000, using compression=normal and CHECKING the box verify image after ... on the first attempt i got the message, on the second it went o.k. but got the message on restore.
[2] verify is included in the creation as explained in [1]
[3] the image was stored on a second hard drive
[4] Restore by booting from the SRE CD
[5] tried to find something on their site, didn't find anything, but then tried Ghost 2003 and was so inspired that forgot about 9.0. nontheless, after having something solid at hand i discovered this forum and decided to share my experience.
[..] i'm afraid there is something unique in my case. probably because the pc is rather old, it is pentium III computer with 700mhz. it matches the minimum requirement, but ways of computers as those of God are beyond understanding, right?  :P

Pleonasm wrote on Apr 6^th, 2005 at 1:55pm:

The technology used by Ghost 9.0 has a long-standing reputation and history, and so your experience appears to be unique.

I'm not sure there's widespread agreement on that point.  "Hot-imaging" technology is very new, and totally unlike the old imaging methods.  Ghost 9 bears no resemblance to Ghost 2003 other than the name on the box.  Ghost 2003 has an outstanding reputation well-earned under the "Norton" banner, but Norton had nothing to do with Ghost 9.  Buying a buggy, troubled product (DriveImage 7) from one company (PowerQuest) and repackaging it under a name (Ghost) bought from another company (Norton) doesn't make it reliable.  The reliability of v9 and hot-imaging technology has yet to be proven, IMHO.

Nico's “internal PQI file invalid or format not supported” error is revealing here.  PQI ("PowerQuest Image") is a file format that was used by DriveImage.  In essence, you're seeing Ghost 9's underwear here, showing it's really the DriveImage product underneath.

bumpage for good measure. ^

I have just upgraded to Ghost 9.0. So far, I have not got one successful image from it. I keep getting the ubiquitous "EA39070A: The internal structure of the PQI file is invalid or unsupported" when I try to verify it. So after three days on the Symantec Help line, have had me do more upgrades and suggestion than you could poke a stick at. The reason I image a disk is because I want to do an upgrade and want to be able to absolutely and totally roll it back if it doesn;t work. Software that itself needs upgrades to things like the .NET framework, and require defragment of the Disk and the NTFS MFT, and disabling, antivirus, firewall, tape back up software does not sit happily with me. My downtime and exposure to a upgrade event risk has been very sad.

Why this thing about having the Imaging software run "online" from within Windows itself. Sheesh, Nortons has a Recovery Disk which boots into Win/2000/XP or something, to allow you to recover from an Image, and it nicely gives access to various drive types, USB, SCSI, IDE, with FAT or NTFS files systems or CD or DVD, so why wouldn't you use the same methodology to create the image file in the first place. Or at least have "offline" an option for those who have problems with "inline"

It seems to me that having your disk imaged away from the vagueries of the itneraction of other programs, and the potential of having data sitting in memory not flushed to disk, make "online" or "hot" imaging a risk business.

The reason I upgraded from Ghost2003 is that large drives were very slow to image, and they occasionally crashed. Also I like to be able to Clone a machine from a USB drive, and although I can generally find DOS USB drivers, they are difficult to set up, Never once I have I had the Symantec's USB drivers work for me, I have always had to look elsewhere. Where you have USB keyboards and mice, so far I have not yet been able to get it to work.  Plus of course Ghost 2003 does not work with NTFS destinations so you have FAT 32's size limitations.

The really neat thing about Ghost 2003, is that if something goes wrong you get an error during the imaging, rather than it resulting in a dodgy image that Ghost 9.0 seems to have.

Does anyone know an alternative to Symantec, that will image offline, and boot so that USB devices, and NTFS backup media can be used, and is reliable?

Regards
Brian

Quote:

"... Plus of course Ghost 2003 does not work with NTFS destinations so you have FAT 32's size limitations..." brileigh

That is not the case at all - Ghost 2003 works just fine with NTFS destinations, albeit you need to be able to decipher the drive "labels".  I succeeded in putting that issue to rest well over a year ago in the thread below (if you have the stamina to examine the entire content carefully, that is):

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1073414983;start=0#0

For some revealing facts along the same line, visit:

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1104008738;start=0#0

[glb]El Pescador[/glb]

Can somebody tell me if Ghost 9 requires activation?

Rad

From the Ghost 9.x user manual:


Quote:

Activation protects you Product activation is a technology that protects users from pirated or counterfeit software by limiting use of a product to those users who have acquired the product legitimately. Product activation requires a unique serial number for each installation of a product. You must activate the product within 30 days of installing it. Product activation is completely separate from registration. When to activate your product When you first run the software, you are asked to read and accept the license agreement and enter a serial number to activate the product. If you choose not to activate at that time, you will receive alerts that will remind you to activate the product each time you start the software. If you do not activate the product within 30 days of installing it, the product will stop working. You can activate it after the 30 days have elapsed. To activate Norton Ghost, you must have a serial number. You can find the serial number on the Norton Ghost CD sleeve, DVD case, or in the download instructions, or in the email you received from Symantec.

And you need Microsofts .Net Framework as well.

Thanks.

Will update the guide to reflect.

Brileigh, I have never experienced the EA39070A error myself with Ghost 9.0.  But in looking around the web, I learned that one user encounter this problem because of a conflict with Norton GoBack.  Otherwise, the general advice seems to be:

1. Delete Windows temporary files
2. Defragment both source and destination hard drives
3. Close background applications
4. Check hard drive for errors

That's not bad advice, since it is mostly routine PC maintenance that should be done anyway.

If you have not already done so, it might be beneficial to upgrade to Ghost 9.0.2 via LiveUpdate.

From an exchange of emails with Symantec, I did learn that it is possible for Ghost 9.0 to have problems if the disk is "highly fragmented."  I don't know what "highly" means, however.  Nonetheless, I typically run Norton Speed Disk before creating an image.

It is advisable to also not disable “SmartSector” copying, since it is intended to be used only for special cases “such as high security environments, it may be desirable to copy all clusters and sectors in their original layout, whether or not they contain data.”

Please let us all know what you discover.

P.S.:  I too am disappointed that Symantec does not allow you to create an image by using the Recovery Environment CD.  However, I guess that would make it far too easy to violate the license agreement.

Re: "I too am disappointed that Symantec does not allow you to create an image by using the Recovery Environment CD.  However, I guess that would make it far too easy to violate the license agreement."

Interesting. I never thought of that.

Originally I had my machine run Ghost 9 backups (Baseline and Incrementals) for 7 - 9 runs (different drives) over 3 months, then I too got the PQI errors (EA39070A).

What it actually means is that when the not-so-backed-up backups are read they fail checksum and are deemed invalid.

If you do an automatic verification on completion of backup the backups get deleted as they are not useable !!!!!!!

I followed all Symantecs instructions, even reformatted my drive from FAT32 to NTFS, defragged everything, ran multiple CHKDSKs with no errors. Then reinstalled Ghost 9.

It worked for another 3 baselines then fell flat on it's face again with PQI errors.  I have raised it with Symantec once more.  Wonder what they will say this time.  :P

I'm itching to say "told ya so", but Dan suggested we withhold judjment until we we have more data:

http://ghost.radified.com/hot_imaging.htm

wow... wish i had seen this forum before!!!  

can anyone tell me what i can do if i've already formatted the original drive and all i have left now is the backed up images which results in the error ea39070a when i try to restore the image?

Yaby, even if you are having difficulty restoring the Ghost 9.0 image files, you may be able to mount the image as a virtual volume and then simply copy your critical data files.  To do so, open Windows Explorer, right-click on the .v2i image file, and select "Mount".  The remainder of the procedure will be self-evident.

Please post back, and let us know the results of your efforts.

dear pleonasm,

thanks for the suggestion!  i tried mounting the v2i as a virtual drive but it gave the same error: EA39070A: The internal structure of the PQI file is invalid or unsupported.

though i have to say that this attempt did give me a glimps of hope!  i'm willing to try anything.

Yaby, some suggestions:

(1) Invoke the Recovery Environment (see Ghost 9.0 User’s Guide, pages 57+), and start the Backup Image Browser.  This tool will allow you to select those folders/files that you wish to restore.  I also recommend that you run the “verify backup image” option from within the Backup Image Browser, to check that your .v2i files are not corrupt.

(2) If you have not already attempted to do so, see pages 72+ in the Ghost 9.0 User’s Guide for instructions on how to restore a drive from within the Recovery Environment.

Please let us know what happens.

Best wishes,
Pleonasm

error message “internal PQI file invalid or format not supported” even in recovery environment.

Yaby, did you run the “verify backup image” option from within the Backup Image Browser, to check that your .v2i files are not corrupt?  What was the result?

the error message appears when i try to load the image file, so the "verify backup image" was a greyed out option.

Yaby, I admit that it is not likely, but here's one additional option to explore.  Do you have a friend or neighbor (or know an associate in a retail computer store) who is running Ghost 9.0?  If so, you could copy your .v2i file(s) to a DVD disc, transport them to that second PC with Ghost 9.0, and invoke the Backup Image Browser.  If you still get the same error, then - unfortunately - I would assume that the .v2i file(s) are corrupted.  This test would eliminate the possibility that the source of the difficulty is somehow related to your specific installation of Ghost 9.0.

Finally, I do not know if such a tool exists, but you could query Symantec to see if they have a (or could recommend a third-party) low-level utility to scan and recover files from within a .v2i image.

By the way, did you perform an integrity check on the .v2i image after you created it?

Yaby, I had another thought that you could explore as way to retrieve some of your files:  the use of a file recovery utility.  Some of the better known tools in this category include EasyRecovery (by OnTrack) and Undelete 5 (by Executive Software).

Let me tell you a true story.  Several years ago – believe it or not – I crushed my company-owned PC laptop by literally driving over it with my car in the parking lot (don’t even ask how this happened).  I returned the damaged PC to our internal information technology department, and requested that they recover as many files as possible.  And then a bad situation became even worse.  They removed the hard drive, and instead of attempting to retrieve files, they reformatted the drive!  For good measure, they then installed the operating system (Windows) and all standard company applications (e.g., Microsoft Word, etc.).

Even after all of these disasters – running over the PC with a car, reformatting the drive, and reinstalling the operating system and applications – the use of a file recovery utility (OnTrack) was able to retrieve the majority of files that were more recent than my last backup.  You might be equally lucky.

It’s common knowledge that deleting a file does not remove it from the drive.  But as my story illustrates, it’s not easy to truly erase a file.  For this purpose, I use CyberScrub Privacy Suite 4.0 (www.cyberscrub.com).

Symantec has an interesting Knowledge Base article posted on the Ghost 9.0 subject "The internal structure of the PQI file is invalid or not supported.”

To avoid this error, the article recommends:

• Storing image files on an NTFS partition is preferred
  

• If writing the image directly to a CD/DVD disc, verify the image after (not during) creation
  

• The Sonic DLA tool may interfere with a restore operation
  

• If restoring from a CD/DVD drive, a read-only drive may be preferable

I have Ghost 9.0, and when I try to restore a drive by booting from the cd, I get the PQI error. Here is what I got going on.
Disk 0: Drive C - OS, Drive D - Pagefile, Drive E - Misc Files
Disk 1: Drive E - Old OS, Drive F - Old PageFile, Drive H - Ghost Backup Images

I had a pretty bad HD crash on C while installing new hardware. Everytime Windows tried booting, whether safe mode or normal, blue screen. I put in the XP cd to try to do a repair, and it didn't detect any previous installation of Windows. I went into recovery console, and the directory structure was still intact. I figured I wouldjust restore the image from my H drive. Booted from the Ghost cd, and did the following things:
1. Check disk for errors
2. From image browser, verified backup image (said it was OK)
3. Attempted to restore c drive
Halfway through the restore, I got the PQI error. I tried going back into image broswer, and it no longer sees the C drive. I restarted, booted from CD, went back into image browser, and it sees the C drive again. So I just copied files from image browser to C and restarted. Blue screen every which way you twist it. I know I can just wipe the C drive clean and re-install xp. I called symantec support, and the english I could understand from the guy wasn't very helpful.

Remer, I found some discussion on the web that the occurrence of the error ("The internal structure of the PQI file is invalid or not supported") may be hardware related – specifically, it may occur on PCs with the Intel D865 motherboard.  What does your PC have installed?

On the same theme, a Symantec Knowledge Base article says:  “The image file may be fine, but there may be a conflict with spyware detection software (such as Pest Control or Spybot), which may be either causing the image file to appear to be corrupted or causing the corruption.”  I do not believe this is the situation in your case; but I’m adding the comment to this thread since it may benefit others.

P.S.:  Did Symantec make you pay a fee for their unhelpful telephone support?

pleo,
All I was charged for the phone support was the airtime on my cell phone, and since I have free nights, it was a free call. However, for most, it would be on the phone bill as a long distance call. My hardware is as follows:
ECS A939 mobo
Athlon 64 3000+
1GB Kingmax pc3200
ATA 100 160GB western digital hd
SATA 160 GB Maxtor hd
Chaintech 6600GT PCI-E
Audigy 2 ZS sound card

When I get this error it's while i'm booted in the Symantec recovery nonsense, so there is no other software running at the time.

Some Ghost 9.0 users have reported the PQI problem when using SATA disk hardware.

Could you split the image file into segments, copy these to DVD discs, and then try restoring from the discs (see pages 48-51 in the Norton Ghost 9.0 User’s Guide)?  If the SATA 160 GB Maxtor disk drive is the problem, then this approach might circumvent the root cause.

The SATA drive is the drive I'm trying to restore to. I installed a fresh copy of XP last night, and I went through the whole routine of reinstalling drivers and software.

remer, I realize this is past history but did you attempt more than one restore and if so did you get the same error message each time?

with easy recovery i was able to retrieve about 60% of the file.. but because i backed them up to an sata drive .. windows did something to those files at startup and practically all of the files are not accessible... i have 2 ata drive and a new WD 250G and i think that's where the problem began...

thanks Pleonasm for all your patient help and all your suggestions.

yaby, nico, remer

Question--are these problems happening when booting to the recovery environment Ghost 9.x recovery CD, and is there a SATA HDD involved?

I think you have to load SATA drivers using F6 during the boot process to the recovery environment because the 'WinXP lite' interface (? WinXP PE?), which I think is similar to the WinXP install interface, does not support all the various SATA controllers, and you have to add those during boot.

I'd be curious to know if this has anything to do with this error!

You only need to load SATA drivers first if your drive is over 130GB. Mine is, but the partition I was trying to restore was only 14GB, so the drivers are not needed. Besides, I tried restoring the image to an ATA133 drive and it still crapped out a PQI error. Nuts.

Same Problem when creating an image  with verify, looks like it is related to the back up device having the worng format. Ghost can only write images large than 2/4 GB on NTFS file systems, otherwise you must break it into pieces.

From:
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/powerquest.nsf/643c9edb8e8f93b788256ee00056a108/0ebf775c7784e18a88256e75007cd062?OpenDocument&prod=Norton%20Ghost&ver=9.0&src=sg&pcode=ghost&svy=&csm=no

The text:
Error: "The internal structure of the PQI file is invalid or not supported" when creating, restoring, or browsing an image

Situation:
When you attempt to create, restore, or browse the contents of an image, you see the error message "The internal structure of the PQI file is invalid or not supported."

Solution:
There are three situations which can cause this message to appear, each of which has a different cause. Read the section that relates to the situation in which you see the error message.

The error appears when creating an image or when verifying it with Backup Image Browser
If the error appears while creating an image, there are two possibilities:

WARNING: Unless you can successfully verify an image, do not assume it is valid. Be sure that the image file is valid before performing any operations on the original drive.

     The image is being written directly to CD or DVD, and the option to verify the image is selected
     In this case, the process of creating the CD or DVD may be interfering with the verification process. When creating an image directly to CD or DVD, deselect the option to verify the image during the creation process, then verify the image after it is created by using the Backup Image Browser.

     For additional information, "Check the integrity of a backup image using the Backup Image Browser" in the Technical Information section near the end of this document.

     The image is corrupted
     There are numerous other factors that can cause problems during the imaging process, which can lead to a corrupted image. If you continue to see the error message when creating an image, try the following:
         o Do one of the following on the source and destination partitions:
               + In Windows 9x/Me, run ScanDisk.
                 For instructions on running ScanDisk, read the document Checking for disk errors using ScanDisk.
               + In Windows NT/2000/XP, run CHKDSK /F
                 For instructions on running CHKDSK, read the document How to run Microsoft CHKDSK from the command line.
         o Use a defragmentation utility to defragment both the source and destination drives.
           See "Run Disk Defragmenter" in the Technical Information section near the end of this document.
         o Split images are slightly more likely to become corrupted. If you are creating the image on a FAT or FAT32 partition, or any other location that may require that the image be split into multiple segments, try creating the image on an NTFS partition.
           See "FAT and NTFS file system limitations" in the References section near the end of this document.
         o Another application running in the background is interfering with the imaging process. Close any unnecessary applications before performing an imaging task.



The error appears when the image is restored
Other than the possibility of an image actually being corrupted, there are a couple of other situations that may cause this problem:

     Restoring from CD or DVD writer
     If you see this error message when restoring an image from a CD or DVD writer, try using a read-only CD or DVD drive to read the backup image instead. Another possibility is to copy the contents of multiple CD or DVD sets to a single location before restoring the image.

     Note: Keep in mind the size limit of different file systems when copying image files from DVD. An image that fills an entire DVD cannot be copied to a FAT16 or FAT32 partition.
     Sonic DLA is installed on your computer
     It has been reported that Sonic DLA can prevent CD images from being read properly. To resolve the problem, disable or uninstall Sonic DLA.



Technical Information:
Check the integrity of a backup image using the Backup Image Browser
You can use Verify Backup Image anytime after a backup is created to determine whether a backup image file is valid or corrupted. Backup Image Browser checks to see that all of the files in the backup image are available for you to open, the internal data structures in the backup image file match the data that is available, and the backup image file can be uncompressed and create the expected amount of data.

     To check the integrity of a backup image
        1. In the tree pane of the Backup Image Browser, select the backup image file.
        2. On the menu bar, click File > Verify Backup Image.
        3. When the check is complete, click OK.



Run Disk Defragmenter
Disk Defragmenter is a Windows utility that organizes the way files are stored on the hard drive. Defragmenting your hard drive on a regular basis can lead to better overall system performance. For more information, see the Technical Information section below.

Note: If you have Norton System Works or Norton Utilities on your computer, you can run Norton Speed Disk, which will optimize the file system. You can access Speed Disk from the Start Menu or from the Norton SystemWorks/Norton Utilities program.

     To run Disk Defragmenter
        1. Click Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter.
        2. Select the drives that you want to scan. You can select either a single drive or all hard drives.
        3. Click OK (Windows 98/Me) or Defragment (Windows 2000/XP) to begin the defragmentation process.

Depending on the size of the hard drive, the amount of fragmentation, and the speed of the computer, this process may take several hours. In some cases, you may want to run Disk Defragmenter overnight.



References:
FAT and NTFS file system limitations
The size of any image file you create is limited by the file system you are saving the image file to, regardless of the size of the partition being imaged. The following limitations apply when creating image files. Any image files that exceed these limits will be split into multiple segments.

     File System      File size limit
     FAT16      2 GB
     FAT32      4 GB
     NTFS      Limited by size of volume only.

Hi,

I just purchased Norton Ghost and am getting the same error.  I have two machines and they both backed up fine.  Then, I used Partition Magic on the newer machine, Sony Vaio 1 month old, and tried saving to the new drive.  That's when the problem started.  I'll see if I can back up to the old partition.

biggles.

I found this. Most of the points have been discussed.



EA39070A
If you are using Veritas DLA you may encounter this error indicating that the
internal structure of the v2i file is invalid or unsupported.

Despite this error, the backup image on the disk is still valid. To correct this
issue, you can use a regular CD or DVD drive to read the backup image or you
can remove Veritas DLA from the computer so the CD can be read properly.

This error can also occur for one of the following reasons:

* If the image file is damaged or corrupted.
Damage can occur when you create a backup image over a network and
there is significant packet loss during the creation of the backup image file.
Symantec recommends that you verify images after they are created to
ensure their integrity.
Create a new backup image file to a different location, or create a new image
with a different file name to the same location.

* The image file is fine, but there may be a conflict with spyware detection
software (such as Pest Control or Spybot) causing the backup image file to
become corrupt or appear to be corrupted.
While using the product or Backup Image Browser, disable all spyware
detection software.

* If you copy a backup image file from one FireWire drive to another FireWire
drive while connected to a FireWire expansion card that uses a Via chipset
(such as the Kouwell card).
To work around this issue, replace your Via-based FireWire expansion card
with a card that uses a non-Via chipset (such as the Adaptec 4300
Fireconnect, which uses a TI chipset).

ran into the same error.
my hard disk is now neither formatted nor unformatted.
In my notebook, I cannot format it, nor can I boot from it.

Are you suggesting I change hardware?

Alfred, could you outline what led to this strange situation?

I also upgraded from 2003 to 9.0 and experienced the same problem.  Symantec was worthless and gave nothing but generic suggestions that I had already tried.  

It turns out that the problem was related to a new SATARaid HDD that I had installed in my computer.  (info- on hard drive)

http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/marketing/detail/0,1081,646,00.html

Please note that this HDD was not my primary drive and the problem occurred even when I was saving to another IDE HDD.  This discovery occurred when I finally decided to start with a fresh install of Windows on my computer, due to some other unrelated issues.  I deleted the entire partition and re-installed Windows XP SP2.  I then installed Ghost 9.0 and tried to copy an image to a second IDE HDD.  The same error occurred, so I systematically started unplugging devices to determine if there was an incompatibility.  

Removing the SataRaid device solved the problem.  Again, let me emphasize that the error occurred even when this drive was not involved in the backup.  My suggestion to others would be to unplug your SATA drive and see if it works.  

Chris, note that Ghost 9.0 only supports "hardware RAID levels 0 (stripe sets) and 5 (stripe sets with parity)" (see the Symantec Knowledge Base Document ID 2004024963607262).

As a point of clarification, are you using one of these two RAID levels?

I have to admit that you've gone beyond my expertise in hardware.  Is this dependent on the MB (I have GA-7n400 Pro2) or is it set in the software?

Chris

-------------------------

Pleonasm
Guest
 Re: Ghost 9.0 gives an error for undocumented PQI
« Reply #43 on: Today at 12:07 »  Quote  Modify  Remove  

Chris, note that Ghost 9.0 only supports "hardware RAID levels 0 (stripe sets) and 5 (stripe sets with parity)" (see the Symantec Knowledge Base Document ID 2004024963607262).

As a point of clarification, are you using one of these two RAID levels?  

wrote on Aug 26^th, 2005 at 7:49am:

"... ALSO IM READING MY FILE IMAGE FROM AN EXTERNAL USB 2.0 EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE NOT FROM DVD I HAVE DVD BACK UPS BUT HOW CAN I RUN MY DVD BACK UP THROUGH 9.0 IF THERE IS NO DOS VERSION..."

"Do not despair, Grasshopper..."[glb]THERE EXISTS A DOS-BASED VERSION --- NORTON GHOST 2003 !!![/glb]Just kidding.  For a while there I was convinced that with a set of Norton Ghost 2003 boot disks, I could perform "disk-to-disk" Clones and "disk-to-image"/"image-to-disk" Backup/Restore procedures even with Ghost 9.0 embedded and active on the Source/Destination HDD.  Although I never did try it, I have been baptized with CRC errors while horsing around with two different Ghost 2003 sources - and wound up having to zero-fill and reformat the HDD in order to restore its Ghost 2003 capability.  I fear that using Ghost 2003 boot disks on a HDD hosting Ghost 9.0 would run the risk of doing the same.

[glb]El Pescador[/glb]

EvilMrSuage,

Userguides are wonderful. See page 104.

Quote:

Removing the SataRaid device solved the problem.  Again, let me emphasize that the error occurred even when this drive was not involved in the backup.  My suggestion to others would be to unplug your SATA drive and see if it works.

Chris, I gather you created an image while the SATA drive was disconnected and the image verified OK. Now that the SATA drive has been reconnected, does the image still verify?

Pleonasm made me realize how little I understand my new SATA drive with his question on the RAID level.  I therefore read up on the documentation for my MD and realized that I do not have the bios set up properly.  The MB is capable of using two SATA drives with RAID.  However, I only have one drive installed (not the primary) and there is a bios setting that toggles between Base (I should have used this) and RAID.  I'll do it correctly and see if it solves the problem.

Brian, I believe the image was still corrupted after reconnecting the SATA drive, but it could be my imagination that I actually tested this.  Thanks everyone for the help.  

Well people i have recovered my laptop i used the 9.0 disk and used its system restore feature which is like copy and paste my entire file tree structure on to my formatted ntfs HD and it worked people use the system restore feature as a last resort.

PROBLEM SOLVED !!  ;D

My ignorance about the definition of RAID caused the problem with Ghost.  My bios was set up to use the SATA port in RAID format.  Since I’m only using one HDD, it should have been set to base format.  The HDD seemed to be communicating without problems, so I didn’t realize there was anything wrong.  Changing the bios to the proper format now allows Ghost to function without errors.  Thanks again.  

The Ghost 9.0 error which refers to a bad "PQI" file has NOTHING to do with SATA or RAID. I have a very vanilla system with none of this new-fangled hardware, just IDE drives. When I try to make a Ghost image using Ghost 9, specifying the second IDE drive as the destination, I get the "PQI" error when I verify the image (or, if I create the image without verification, when I try to restore the image using the Symantec recovery disk). Forget about Ghost 9.0. Use Ghost 2003!

I had the same problem and restored anyway!
2 procedures

1
put the drive to be s´restored in another running machine, install ghost,copy the image file(s) to the active drive, run ghost and restore to the second disk.Tick make disk actove boot device.

2
reinstall your OS on the drive, create 2 partitions, install ghost, copy image files to second partition, run ghost restore and hope it woks for you as it did for me.

I fixed mine after many attempts and can duplicate the problem.

I removed one of my memory sticks!!!!  I was running two 512mb in dual channel for 1G.  Memtest 86 ran fine.

Now it works fine.
It went all the way to the end of making the image and then gave that error, or looking at a previously made image (2 different ones) gave that error message also with both sticks in  !!!

Need to stick another in just to experiment.

My 40gb laptop drive was getting full, so I wanted to backup/restore to a larger drive.  Here is what I did and what happened:

- installed Norton Ghost 9
- created a backup image of my laptop drive onto a USB external drive. that worked fine
- replaced my 40gb laptop drive with a new larger drive
- booted using the Norton Ghost 9 CD
- tried to restore the backup image to the new drive but got the PQI error that everyone else has reported
- put back my original 40gb laptop drive and rebooted
- created another backup image onto the USB external drive
- tried to verify the image, but got the PQI error
- downloaded and installed updates to Norton Ghost 9
- created yet another backup image onto the USB external drive
- verified the image. this time no error
- installed the larger laptop drive
- booted using the Norton Ghost 9 CD
- tried to restore the backup image, but got the PQI error. I then realized that this would never work because the Norton Ghost software on the boot CD did not have the needed updates

So, my solution was the following:
- installed my larger laptop drive into a USB external enclosure
- booted my laptop using my original 40gb laptop drive
- connected my USB external laptop drive
- using the updated Norton Ghost 9, I did a drive copy instead of a backup. THIS WORKED!

I don't know if my experience helps anyone with their problems, but I thought I would share it.

However, the bottom line is that Norton Ghost 9 has a broken backup/restore architecture. You are in a Catch-22. You need a boot CD with the updated Norton Ghost software but there is no way to get one that I could find other than to buy a new version of Ghost 9.  I could not create one either.

cc8772850,

That's an interesting observation and good thinking in your work-around.

Have a look at Reatogo BartPE/Ghost 9. It may help next time. It's built from files on your HD and differs from the Symantec Recovery CD.

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1119240262

My experience:

I was switching from Win2k to WinXP and wanted a clean install. I formated my C drive in NTFS and did a clean install of Win XP.  I then installed Ghost 9 immediately thinking that I'd do a number of images as I added patches/fixes/software etc.  

With a clean install of WinXP I took an image using Ghost 9 with the "Verify after" box checked.  I got the exact same message everyone else is getting (ie. PQI file structure was invalid).  This eliminated the requirement for the recommended defrag, delete temporary files, etc.

I immediately reformatted, re-installed Win XP and installed Ghost 2003 and I've been happily imaging ever since.

I'm running an ASUS TUV4x with 1GH CPU, 512k Ram and my C: drive is a 10GB partition on an 80GB drive.

Dave

I solve exactly the same problem. My first version of ghost 9.0 has been DL with emule. It's called "Symantec.Norton.Ghost.v9.0.Incl.Keygen-SSG.zip" (about 20 Mo, it contains 5 files .rar). With this version the image backup with checked option works correctly but I didn't have the possibility to create a boot cd. So I uninstall this version and I DL an ISO version of ghost 9.0 and this time I had the problem "...PQI file is invalid..." : and same thing with 9.0.2. So I used again the first version of ghost and I used the CD created with the second version to restore my image.

Frank,

Ghost 9 computer problems seem to appear in clusters. Or that is how it seems. You have had problems on a variety of machines, Darwin had BSOD's on five of his computers (a proven hardware incompatibility) and others have mentioned problems with more than one computer. Does this suggest hardware incompatibility with Ghost 9? Maybe. We've never seen a problem with Ghost 9 in my town. We have a high proportion of Dell computers and very few home builts.

Don't misunderstand my thoughts. I'm not blaming hardware and excusing Ghost 9. It's the combination.

You asked for software with a little more reliability and a lot less hassle. Acronis TI 9 would be one to avoid as it definitely has problems with certain hardware but works well with others. There is a big list of imaging apps to choose from, but their reliability is unknown as few have forums where these problems are discussed.

Tried Ghost 2003?

misty had experienced the following:

Re: Ghost 9.0 gives an error for undocumented PQI
« Reply #49 on: 05. Sep 2005 at 21:36 »

I fixed mine after many attempts and can duplicate the problem.

I removed one of my memory sticks!!!!  I was running two 512mb in dual channel for 1G.  Memtest 86 ran fine.

Now it works fine.

------------------------------------------------------------
I have experienced the same, after having installed a second memory stick - after removing it again, the  error had disappeared. By the way, with 1G memory I was not able to create a new image as well - after 6 minutes or so, a "memory access violation" interrupted the process

What kind of memory?

Interesting threads. Not sure what to think...

I used Drive Image 4.0 for years in a WIN98SE environment. And just like all of you GHOST adherents, I performed dozens of images and restores without a hitch. It is also worth noting that DriveImage is/was also employed in corporate settings over networks, maintained pace with other cutting edge imaging programs, and was written by the same guys that wrote Partition Magic: two programs I would do never do without!

Needless to say when I was ready to upgrade my version of Drive Image 4.0, I was dismayed to find that Norton bought them out and it is no surprise the integrity of the software has suffered as a result. I was wondering why I got a two copies of GHOST when I bought it; now I think I know.

OK, here is my thought on what MIGHT be happening although it is difficult for me to think that this problem still exists. Drive Image 4.0 had a serious problem with drive overlay software (typically installed to overcome the 8.4 GB BIOS limitation). Powerquest claimed there was a workaround, but my efforts to carefully follow their instructions never worked. Although it has been awhile, the error reported in these threads is vaguely reminiscent of the error I got when trying to install an image to a new drive with the DDO software installed. My typical workaround was to partition the drive down into small enough chunks that I could uninstall the overlay and I was back up and running. I am wondering how many individuals have a DDO installed and if upgrading to BIOS and removing the DDO would remove the problem.

I recently purchased Ghost 10.0 but haven't installed it yet. Does anyone know if this version works any better than 9.0?

Same Problem with version 10,  :-[

I recently installed Ghost 9, too, and every time I try to create an image file (full or incremental), I get the PQI error.  I have no clue how to fix it, but reading this thread makes me wonder if I should even try.  Can I easily uninstall 9.0 and use the 2003 disk included in the box?

lemick,

As you have seen from this thread a solution is unlikely. Before you uninstall Ghost 9 I suggest that you create a Reatogo/Bart PE/ Ghost 9 CD.

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1119240262

I don't know if it will allow you to create images but please let us know if it does.

Yes.

Brian said "Before you uninstall Ghost 9 I suggest that you create a Reatogo/Bart PE/ Ghost 9 CD. "  Pardon my ignorance, but I have no idea what that means.

See  
http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1119240262

It's a different way to run Ghost 9. You can create images and do Copy Drive outside of the Windows environment, from the CD. You can also restore images and it has better network and SATA drive support than the Ghost 9 CD. I have no idea whether it will bypass your PQI error but it's worth trying. Let us know if it beats the PQI error on your computer.

To make the CD you need Ghost 9 installed and a Win XP SP2 CD. Just follow Reatogo's instructions. They are cryptic but there are really only a few steps. It looks harder than it is.

Hey all,

I have just had a month of horror trying to get Ghost 9 to work on my computer. I was getting the error: EA39070A - corrupted image file on 95% of all backups I attempted.

After trying all the usual fixes (to no avail) I went out and 'borrowed' 512MB of Corsair RAM. I remember reading that buggy RAM can possibly cause this error.

I had no other computer problems with the old RAM but when I put in the Corsair all my EA39070A errors went away!!
Now Ghost appears to be working as expected.

It appears that Ghost (and the old Drive Image Pro 7 which Ghost is based on) are extremely touchy about the quality of RAM in your system. It is possible that Ghost's compression algorythms heat up the RAM and a single error is enough to cause the whole image to fail.

So if you can't get past error: EA39070A then try another stick of quality RAM. Worked for me   ::)

TuT,

Nice observation. Have you done any tests on your original RAM?

eg http://www.memtest.org/   is a popular one.

TuT

Another possibility--maybe your BIOS setting for your old RAM was too aggressive and was causing a timing issue--and the Corsair RAM is able to operate with that setting, and is more forgiving--just a thought.

This has got to be one of the longest threads on Radified. A little disappointing it hasn't been resolved yet.

The RAM issue is an interesting point that I think needs emphasis. If you read my earlier post, I ran DriveImage 4.0 for years in WIN98SE without a problem. However, I ALWAYS ran CORSAIR ECC (non-registered) RAM. Given that the purpose of images is to build integrity in a system, the act of investing the time and money to image a drive only to turn around and run the cheapest RAM on the market or mix and match is a little schizo in my mind. That also applies to cheap HDD, mobos, RAID 0, etc. However, if GHOST 9.0 was built off of a professional version of DriveImage as mentioned in a previous post, it could have been optimized to run on servers which use mostly registered RAM.

With all that said, many thanks to this forum for steering me towards GHOST 2003 before I made a ghastly mistake (sorry for the pun) with GHOST 9.0. I am a happy miser!

Re: "However, if GHOST 9.0 was built off of a professional version of DriveImage as mentioned in a previous post, it could have been optimized to run on servers which use mostly registered RAM."

Interesting idea. Thoughts?

Thanks for this forum: I've been trying to Use Ghost 9.0 and having problems. I'm a novice with backing up hard drives, so I really appreciate this info. about Ghost being buggy. I'm getting the EA39070A error as well, and now Symantec doesn't support Ghost 9.0 as of 31 May 2006. I can't believe their not support this product any longer. I'm going to try and use Ghost 2003. Again, I appreciate being able to do a Google Search and finding the exact info. I need -- all because you guys to the time to build and maintain this forum.

Thanks
Jimmy Kamuf
jimkamuf@yahoo.com

yaby wrote on Apr 29^th, 2005 at 4:00am:

wow... wish i had seen this forum before!!!   can anyone tell me what i can do if i've already formatted the original drive and all i have left now is the backed up images which results in the error ea39070a when i try to restore the image?

This error message can occur if you have selected the option to verify the image during its creation. To avoid this error when creating an image to CD, uncheck the option to verify the image during the creation process.

Also, if you are using a CD or DVD burner to restore the image, instead use the CD or DVD drive to restore the image and check whether the issue is resolved.

Also this error can occur if you have Veritas DLA installed on your system. Before restoring an image please uninstall Veritas DLA so that the CD or DVD can be read properly. This also apply if you are using Sonic CD or DVD writer which also uses DLA.

Note: Drive Letter Access (DLA) allows you to drag and drop from your hard drive to your CD-RW drive, copying the file to the CD-RW media

Regards,

Assi

“internal PQI file invalid or format not supported"

Hey guys...just found this thread today.

I've been using Ghost 9 for almost two years on six different pcs.  Aside from some early driver issues, backups and restores have always worked great whether I'm using secondary drives or external usb dvd burners and several other animals.

I started getting the PqI message on a pc yesterday.  Couldn't back up... couldn't restore old Ghost 9 images. The process would start for a few minutes and then the error would appear.  I found this forum and tried a bunch of the things noted...all the while not being able to fathom how Ghost could suddenly just not work anymore.  I hadn't made major changes in the one system where the error occurred.

After a few hours and one of the points mentioned elsewhere on this thread, I pulled some of the ram out.  Voila...Ghost worked fine again on some test backups and test restores from old images.

I put the ram back in and ran  microsoft memory checker.  At least one stick failed...meaning I have ram going bad but just didn't quite see it happening yet with other apps.  Obviously Ghost was being affected.

So here's another tip that bad ram can certainly bring on the condition... so be sure to test that when you're trying to narrow the problem down.

wrote on Sep 29^th, 2005 at 5:45pm:

I solve exactly the same problem. My first version of ghost 9.0 has been DL with emule. It's called "Symantec.Norton.Ghost.v9.0.Incl.Keygen-SSG.zip" (about 20 Mo, it contains 5 files .rar). With this version the image backup with checked option works correctly but I didn't have the possibility to create a boot cd. So I uninstall this version and I DL an ISO version of ghost 9.0 and this time I had the problem "...PQI file is invalid..." : and same thing with 9.0.2. So I used again the first version of ghost and I used the CD created with the second version to restore my image.

First, I've read this pentire thread twice since I got my first PQI error over a month ago (feel like I'm qualifying at a 12 step meeting  8) )... NOTHING worked... until I found and use this particular version, which appears to be a download only version (retail from symantec's site?).  It worked like a charm, like it had for years prior to the sudden and persistent PQI errors.  I'm not entirely sure if I'll be able to restore with the boot ghost 9 disc, but I'm probably going to use one of the Bart PE discs we have at work that has ghost 8.

Does anyone have experience using ghost 8 to restore images made with ghost 9?  Isn't v8 just 2003 (which people say works for them)?  I just need to be sure if I'm going to depend on these backups (which are very important to me) that they'll work when, heaven forbid, I actually need them.

stoopid,

Out of luck with Ghost 8, I’m afraid. Ghost 8 doesn’t restore .v2i files. I suggest booting to the Ghost 9 RE and verifying a .v2i file as a test. Better still, image a “disposable” partition and restore it from the RE.

I'll try the verification test, but my image averages 100-120GB of the 160GB drive, so no spare space to test with.  If it verifies with the recovery disk I will consider that success.  Thanks for the suggestion.  :)

I'm also looking to get a v10 recovery disc, assuming the 9 doesn't work.

Does this 'solution' mean there's a corrupt file on the original ghost 9 disc or a version of one of the core components that got updated later on?

I suggest you study this site re backups. Your backup technique is inefficient and you would benefit from an OS and a data partition.

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/notes.htm#13

I got my hands on a Ghost 10 bootable disc and I was able to verify the image, so it appears everything is magically fine now...

This system of doing a weekly backup is the easiest, most effective means for me to have my data and apps backed up for a possible hard drive failure.  I find incrementals leaves more room for software error.  I simple have a second hard drive with twice the capacity and always have one image (last weeks) saved until the new image is completed and verified by ghost.  It's hardly "inefficient".  it's actually quite effective since the only time I would be using the image I create is if the primary/backed-up drive fails.  This is for my home setup, not for a client.  Most of the business clients use veritas, which comes with its own issues as you're probably well aware.  :p

I didn't mean to be so brief. I should have said, "See if this suits you." Separation of the OS from data files is what I was suggesting as you can back them up differently. This concept is outlined in Dan's tutorial.


Quote:

I got my hands on a Ghost 10 bootable disc and I was able to verify the image, so it appears everything is magically fine now...

Good news. I'm a little confused. Couldn't you verify from the Ghost 9 CD?

No problem Brian.

I didn't even try the 9 disc because I ended up getting the v10 disc and didn't want to waste time trying 9 just to find out it didn't work.  I'll keep the v10 disc for restores and the retail v9 30MB package for installs.  All symantec cares is that you have a valid key.

The bottom line is that no matter what I tried I couldn't get my copy of v9 to work.  It wasn't until I tried the smaller, non-bootable version that this started to work again.  I find that highly suspect, and if I had to guess their release of the bootable CD was premature and fixed their mistake later on in the downloadable/non-boot package.  We'll see if more people use this as a solution.   That will be all the 'proof' we need of the cause...

Brian wrote on Nov 3^rd, 2006 at 5:42pm:

I suggest you study this site re backups. Your backup technique is inefficient and you would benefit from an OS and a data partition. http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/notes.htm#13

Great link BTW, and accurate to boot!    ;)  I never actually gave much thought to the differences between cloning and imaging.  Thank god for imaging...

stoopid wrote on Nov 4^th, 2006 at 12:24am:

I'll keep the v10 disc for restores and the retail v9 30MB package for installs.

I've found that Ghost 10 will restore a ver 9 image but Ghost 9 will only occasionally restore a ver 10 image. It usually gives an error.

Same issues again.  Got the first backup to work, verified with ghost 10 bootcd, but this week's backup failed.

I'm officially at a loss.  There's obviously a bigger issue going on here based on the response here and on other sites.  I'm going to have to add ghost to a long list of software I cannot get to work.

Hi, it's me again.  lol

Tried True Image, and during the verification it failed.  So I determined that I would change around drives on the ide cable.  Loaded ghost again, got through the first backup... now to see if it works next week.  I haven't given up, but the fact True IMage also failed, and I don't believe it's the same PQI engine, indicated a problem in my configuration.  Why this suddenly became a problem beats me.  Perhaps I've always been riding the edge of stability or data integrity with transfers between the drives and something finally pushed my system over that edge.  Your guess is as good as mine, and I'll report back later next week to report if it's still a ghost issue or a problem resulting from a flakey ide setup.

stoopid,

It does sound like a problem with your computer. Two different imaging apps with similar errors. Could you check your RAM with Memtest86+  Run it overnight.

http://www.memtest.org/

In the Acronis TI forum there are frequent discussions about faulty RAM causing image problems.

Ghost works now.  Appears I was getting data corruption between ide drives.

Now for a partial admission of fault - I originally had both hard drives on the same cable (see username ;) ).  It really has to do with placement of storage devices in my crowded mini tower (HTPC).  I surrendered to having to attach mounts so the second hard drive could go into the 5.25" slot under the dvdrw drive, and thus be a slave on that ide cable/channel rather than be a slave with the main hard drive on the same channel.

My original thinking was that this was working for many many months and then stopped.  Seeing others with the same problem confirmed my fears, but it seems I was wrong in my initial conclusions.

The way IDE controllers work (been a while since my A+ class, but here goes) is that the devices on the same cable/channel cannot be performing tasks at the same time.  It's not that it refuses to copy data, but it puts a lot of stress on the controller to do its job, having to constantly start reading from one drive to stop for a millisecond to write that data to the other drive.  This will slow things down as well as increase the potential for errors. In all that extra work a one or zero gets lost and data verification will obviously fail.

I probably should have looked up the details of ide technology on wikipedia/about.com or something before posting this as I'm sure some of it is wrong, but it's really not important I understand why so long as I follow the rule to have storage devices on separate ide cables/channels whenever possible.

stoopid,

I'm really pleased you have a solution. I hope NightOwl reads your post because he did some testing on drive placement on IDE cables and has some interesting figures.

Did you try replacing the IDE cable?

It's been awhile since I have visited this thread, but the problem documented by stoopid seems to conform to my earlier thoughts. I am wondering if stoopid had ran ECC or registered RAM (OK, registered is overkill for a home system, but ECC?) if this problem would have manifested itself differently?

We all do stupid stuff when building our own rigs (otherwise I would be the next Michael Dell) which is why I like the added insurance of ECC (not that my laptop has any, so who am I to point fingers. Well, it is a Dell! But then again, I deleted all their hidden and not so hidden partitions, GHOST 2003 don't fail me now!)

MCDP wrote on Dec 19^th, 2006 at 10:33pm:

It's been awhile since I have visited this thread, but the problem documented by stoopid seems to conform to my earlier thoughts. I am wondering if stoopid had ran ECC or registered RAM (OK, registered is overkill for a home system, but ECC?) if this problem would have manifested itself differently? We all do stupid stuff when building our own rigs (otherwise I would be the next Michael Dell) which is why I like the added insurance of ECC (not that my laptop has any, so who am I to point fingers. Well, it is a Dell! But then again, I deleted all their hidden and not so hidden partitions, GHOST 2003 don't fail me now!)

No ECC in the computer.  Because it turned out to be directly related to over-tasking the ide controller with 2 drives on the same channel, I'm not sure a change in memory type would have mattered.

Based on the research I have done in order to solve my problem, I didn't see any pattern in causes.  Even Symantec's suggestions are rather generic.  I think the error is a general error for any time the image is corrupt or compromised in some manner.

My point was that ECC RAM may have trapped the bad calls the IDE controller was sending and either corrected the problem or halted the process? More generally, I much rather have an image write fail than succeed only to discover months later that the image is corrupted because a solar flare occurred during the write process.

A 100 GB image is a lot of 1's and 0's that have to be exactly right with no mistakes whereas I may never discover the one file that was corrupted in a back up process of 100 GB of data files.

MCDP wrote on Dec 20^th, 2006 at 9:02am:

My point was that ECC RAM may have trapped the bad calls the IDE controller was sending and either corrected the problem or halted the process? More generally, I much rather have an image write fail than succeed only to discover months later that the image is corrupted because a solar flare occurred during the write process. A 100 GB image is a lot of 1's and 0's that have to be exactly right with no mistakes whereas I may never discover the one file that was corrupted in a back up process of 100 GB of data files.

I'm definitely in agreement that ECC would be the most ideal way to go.  The problem is that since there aren't many desktop motherboards or chipsets that play well with ECC ram, I guess it's a nice idea in theory only... this is obviously not as much of an issue for business class servers, unless of course you can't afford one like me.  If there was a requirement to have a business class server it would prohibit me from doing this type of backup, and I'd probably work harder to find another solution.

So in the final analysis: if integrity of the data is crucial (and it should be), use image verification.  It adds maybe 40% more time to the backup.  But that's what scheduling is for, it runs in the early AM and I give it enough room to finish and verify before I would ever wake to use anything on the server.  My currently 120GB backup takes about 3 hours to create and verify.   

If the image verification fails, it's likely a software conflict or over-tasked hardware.

Ironically, my last backup failed image verification (same PQI error as before) because of too much activity overnight when the backup ran.  I'm waiting to finish the work I was doing on my server and need to try it again.  Having had so much success lately I'm guessing it was just asking too much from my relatively low-end HTPC to multitask while performing a major backup process.

Stoopid,

Very valid points. Most high-end mobos handle ECC fine, at least I have never had a problem. But like you state, that requires added expense that many can't afford. Never having built a server or rackable system, I don't even want to think about the add'l $$$ ECC requires. Thus, verifying the image seems to be a nice workaround. With that said, I have NEVER imaged an OS without verifying (unless I was working a temp sol'n). In fact, I have only just begun to enable compression b/c I was scared of that failing as well. But I am also the kind of person who splurges for RAID 5, so add'l $$$ and time to a point feels like a wise investment for me.

Interestingly, GHOST seems to make for a nice stress test on your system! I am about to post another problem that I ran into that is rather annoying.

Who can explain this test/trial & error?
i.e. I had the same error message on those HDs within the same IDE controller. However, the image created in firewire external harddrive was verified perfect. Also the image created in another add on IDE controller HD was perfect too.

Now, those perfect images copied into those "bad" HDs next to OS HD did not pass the verification process in Ghost image browser.

I just don't see how generic RAM is culprit! I don't believe either that my HDs within OS controller side sour!?
???

Hi Simon,

Sadly, I couldn't get ghost to work (verify) anymore after it started giving me grief again.  And this was after it had started working again for over a month.

I did some more homework, testing, etc.  I determined my RAM was fine via memtest, that all the necessary processes required by ghost were set to automatically start, that the hard drives I was using were physically fine (able to pass diagnostic tests by their respective manufacturers (seagate and maxtor)), my SiS chipset drivers were manually updated from their website, and that my .Net framework installations were valid/working and properly patched.  Symantec had earned this one last try for coming back to life, and I used this as an excuse to perform my annual maintenance on this computer.

So bottom line - everything checked out.  This is not an issue with my computer, and I couldn't find any pattern in other complaints on this very forum or elsewhere on the internet.  Aparently Symantec has admitted some degree of defeat regarding this issue, linking it to something in windows XP Service Pack 2 that they cannot figure out.

So we're all out a bunch of research and troubleshooting time.  Symantec will refund your money, but only after you either work with them for 8 hours on the phone or write them a lengthy diatribe about your struggles.  Either way, it doesn't pay to use Ghost anymore.

Acronis Trueimage looks like the only viable option for home users.  I did give it a try, and didn't find the interface to be very intuitive, which is why I went back to Ghost for another try at fixing it.  When it worked Ghost worked very well, and having no prior experience with Acronis software I don't know if I could hold the same faith in their product.  It's important to note that it appears only a small percentage of Ghost users are experiencing issues, but if this were a car manufacture defect that caused some major safety component of the vehicle to stop working I guarantee there would have been a recall.  Software isn't managed the same way, so sadly we're all SOL.  You'll also see this a lot with various computer games (EA sports is notorious for releasing garbage/buggy games and making the buyer do their prerelease product development testing/troubleshooting AFTER the game's release   ::) ).  Maybe someday we can hold these drooling midrange managers accountable.

Stoopid,

I am impressed with the amount of testing you have done. I just can't believe that GHOST is somehow conflicting with WinXP because it should be agnostic when it comes to OS's. All it is doing is copying the drive sector by sector. I use it image to my Linux machines without a hitch.

I am beginning to believe that the problem may be rooted in NTFS. M$ has refused to open-source NTFS. While the hacking community has successfully figured out how to read from NTFS volumes, they still haven't completely reversed engineered how to write to NTFS volumes (q.v. Linux LiveCDs like Knoppix). In which case blame Gates not Symantec (which bought GHOST 9.0 from PowerQuest, so don't be surprised if they now own something they don't completely understand, and don't receive enough revenue from to fully support. I paid for my copy, and I am sure you did too, but it would be interesting to take a poll of the percentage of readers on this site who didn't). Open sourcing NTFS would solve a whole lot more than failed GHOST restores.

However, as this thread makes plainly clear, GHOST 9.0 is based on the Drive Image source code from PowerQuest (I used Drive Image for years until I finally upgraded to WinXP to learn that Drive Image 4.0 didn't recognize NTFS volumes and that it had been bought out by Symantec) while GHOST 2003 is based on the older DOS program from Symantec. Hopefully when you purchased your copy of GHOST 9.0 you got the GHOST 2003 CD inside as well (I had no idea what the difference was until I read this thread b/c Norton didn't provide any documentation with the GHOST 2003 CD). After reading this thread, I ditched my copy of GHOST 9.0 without even trying it and have been using GHOST 2003 without a problem. So I recommend popping that CD into your machine before spending any more $ on third party imagers like Acronis.

AFWIW, I long ago learned the virtue of minimizing my Windows OS partition (currently WinXP Home, it's the only copy that I have that is legal, is on a 4GB partition with Office 2003, also legal, and device drivers, nothing else, but that takes up half the drive). This is the only partition I image. All my data is on a D:\ partition, and I push every third party app installer to an E:\ partition. I have a 1GB F:\ partition that my pagefile.sys sits on (M$ actually took a page from the Unix community and recommends this). And my G:\ partition is FAT32 where all the GHOST images are saved along with DOS versions of various utilities that are useful when booting up in DOS. The nice thing about this setup is severalfold:

1. The images are small especially when compressed. Many of my early incremental images fit on a single CD.
2. This speeds up image restore because the process I follow whenever I restore an image is to reformat the C:\ using the WinXP Install CD. Reformatting 100GB+ hdd can take hours, 4GB only takes a few minutes. This add'l step I believe is better than any disk doctoring program and may also potentially solve image restore problems.
3. I don't image my D:\ volume but instead use incremental backups
4. I can run my system with no anti-virus, I deplore the overhead cost.
5. Since reformatting and reloading the latest C:\ is so quick I spend little if any time troubleshooting any problems (WinXP instability, buggy install routines, viruses, my own stupid mistakes, etc).
6. With what I have heard about Vista, people will be VERY wise to learn how to separate the OS from all their files.

MCDP, good points about possible root causes.

I ended up moving all my personal data to my secondary D: drive and will be doing manual copies of that data to an external drive (or using windows's backup tool).  My original issue could very well have been with my hardware configuration, but in light of the recent recurrence of the issue and other problems I've seen with symantec's products (backup exec, NIS), and the fact this problem is showing up on a lot of support forums like this one, I have to point the finger where it's due - at symantec.

I've had good/bad experiences with symantec's support.  If I end up in India it's horrible, but if I can get an executive level support from someone in an engrish speaking country the problem is usually fixed quickly.  This isn't good ole fashion racism, this is my experience over the course of several years using, supporting, and implementing symantec products.  Their market share and name recognition are the only reason I am forced to continue my relationship with this company, it certainly isn't because they make a superior product.  This is/was actually one of the final straws.

The reason I liked using Ghost 9 (and 10) was having the backups done without ever having to take windows offline/rebooting.  If I recall correctly the 2003 version requires running ghost from dos.  In an attempt to automate my home setup I was hoping to avoid this.

You are correct in that I don't want to also spend money on Acronis (think it's $50).  I've finally been forced into a work around (for $0).  Not as ideal as I would like but sufficient.  I have other things to spend my time on now.   8)

MCDP wrote on Dec 30^th, 2006 at 11:00am:

4. I can run my system with no anti-virus, I deplore the overhead cost.

Try avg free.  Low resource use and, well, it's free.   ;D  Better than nothing, and it has an email filter/scanner too.

Thanks for the AV tip. I have tried various free AV programs (F-Prot one of the last ones), but if the out of pocket expense was the only problem, I would probably run one (I have a purchased copy of Norton AV sitting in my CD collection). However, it's the endless virus updates, the endless system scans, the endless teasers to upgrade to the pay-for version or subscription renewals, etc., that drive me bonkers (I just want to compute in peace!), and I still don't feel completely protected (the last virus I got, before I got around to repartitioning my Dell laptop, took more time to remove than simply wiping the drive and installing a new image, and how can you be sure you are fully disinfected?). Plus the ante has been upped because now you have spyware, adware, I just can't deal with it anymore.

Interestingly, M$ recently announced that they recommend complete system wipes in the event of an infection. Check out the following blog for some interesting discussion on this viewpoint:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=187

Of course, I can get away with my maverick attitude because it is just a personal system, not a server. Also, I run WinXP with most services shut down, including system restore (boy, does that conserve space!) and automatic updates (nothing worse than WinXP rebooting without asking, in my opinion, and who needs updates? Those are for the foolish who don't make images of their Windoze OS).

Oh, and there's few things I find more bothersome than e-mail scan. It slows e-mail down to a crawl and many times blocks your own!

AVG has not been a hassle in any way (concerning advertisements), and I have no reports of emails being undelivered.  It actually just puts them into an easily accessed quarantine folder in your folder list.

I am using PowerQuest Drive Image 7.  I, too, exprienced the error:  "The internal structure of the PQI file is invalid or not supported" when I tried to backup to a new external Western Digital My Book hard drive (on F:) and the solution eluded me for months.  I tried many of the suggestions here, but to no avail. But I found the solution and it was simple.

I noticed that my backup from my C: to D: using the same software worked fine, but backup from C: to the WD MyBook on F: failed.  I happened to notice that the WD MyBook came formatted as FAT32, but my C: and D: were both NTFS.  I had nothing to lose, so I reformatted F: to NTFS and that solved my problem!!!