I am trying to make an image of my 'C' drive which is too large to fit on one DVD, it needs 2. The first DVD goes fine. then it asks for the second media, put that in tray, close it and although the graphics suggest that the burning is continuing, in fact nothing happens.

I am on XP SP2, a PC that is less than a year old, with 1GB memory.

I have tried formating the disks, but that is useless. I've erased tyhe disks after formating and does not improve the situation. I have altered the drive letter of the DVD drive from its normal 'Z' to 'L' to no avail.

I just don't know what else to try. Perhaps this is normal!!??

I use Ghost 2003 to burn a 3-DVD image with no problems.

Just copy the ghost.exe executable from the CD to a floppy diskette containing bootable system files and run Ghost 2003 from DOS.

Hi Ancient_Learner,

Just a few questions. How large is your HD, how much data on your C: drive, any other partitions on the HD, how did you format the discs and are the discs + or - ?

I have 2 HDDs. Both 250GB but in anything to do with Raid.
Each HDD is divided into 4 partitions, and I use Ghost 9 to do incremental back ups to the 2nd HDD.

The data on 'C' drive is 9.82 GB.

I formatted the DVDs, and indeed erased them using InCD, (Nero - Ahead Programme). I cannot find any other way of doing it!

I just would like a back up of 'C' drive that I can keep away from the PC.

Sorry, the DVDs are +. DVD +R and DVD+RW makes noo difference to my problem. I've tried both.

Thanks. The smart way to have your images on DVD is the create the images to your HD, the same way you have been doing, but tick "Divide the backup image into smaller files to simplify archiving". You need to manually enter a figure of 4480, the Ghost figure of 4589 MB is too large. Then burn the images with Nero using the UDF/ISO setting. This is 10 times faster than burning the images to DVD directly from Ghost.

Ghost uses Gear packet writing as its burning prog and discs don't need to be formatted. I've written an image to a single DVD from Ghost but it was so slow that I have no intention of trying to do what you attempted. The Nero way is preferable.

I don't know if this is the answer but having a second packet writing app (InCD) installed may have caused your problem.

I echo Brian's recommendation.  Directly burning a Ghost 9.0 image to a DVD disc is - in my experience - painfully slow.  It is much more advantageous to store the image on a hard disk drive - splitting the image into DVD-sized files - and then burning those files to DVD discs.  Brian's estimate of a ten-fold difference in speed is not an exaggeration.

Hi.

As a side note, can somebody provide some realistic examples of how long it takes to burn a 4.7-GB DVD with Ghost vs Nero?

What speed burner are you using? Disc speed rating?

You have to consider that now you are performing two separate functions: creating the image & then burning it, which adds more time to the process.

And will he be able to use these DVDs to RESTORE the image? or will he get an error saying "Not a Ghost image"?

Or will he have to first transfer the images back to the hard disk before he can restore them?

Has anyone who has used this method actually restored images from the Nero-burned discs?

I've tried this Rad. A 3 GB partition with 1.5 GB data. Image size is 0.8 GB. It's a WinXP (barebone) partition.

Using Ghost 9, to image and verify, writing to the HD,  takes 1 minute. Writing to DVD takes 3 minutes and another 7 minutes to verify. ie 10 mins total. (Using a 4X DVD+RW)

I have restored the partition from that actual DVD.

Burning this 0.8 GB image from the HD to the same 4X DVD disc with Nero took 2:45 min. Just now I restored the partition from the image on the DVD put there by Nero. Verify process took 8 minutes, write took 1 minute. Total time 9 minutes.

It takes 1 minute to restore that partition from an image on the HD.

Interesting figures. DVD is slower.

Thx for the numbers.

0.8-GB .. that could almost fit on a 700-MB CD.

On most systems I've used, writing & verifying usually take similar times. If you are writing & verifying 800-MB in 1 minute, then you are most likely writing in about 30 secs, or 1.6-GB/min. That's pretty fast. Two spearate disks? IDE? SATA? Each on separate controllers/channels?

Similarly I wonder why your DVD took over twice as long to verify as it did to write. I've verified DVDs and they always took roughly as long to verify as they did to make. Any ideas? Shouldn't take longer to read the disc that write it, no?

Dell 8400 2 SATA HD's, non RAID

I can't answer your questions on verify/write. Out of my league.

Rad, I just imaged that partition to the HD again. 65 seconds to write, another 10 seconds to verify. Standard compression.

I appreciate the effort & the details.

Verify supposedly goes thru all the steps of restoring the image with the exception of actually writing data to disk. Maybe someone can confirm this.

10 seconds to verify 800-MB, let's see, that would be reading at around 4800-MB/minute (6X800). Or 4.8-gigs per minute.

Do you happen to know off-hand what read-speed your DVD is rated for?

I could probably crunch out the numbers, but it's late and my brain is tired.

I also wonder if anyone else is seeing verify speeds 1/6th that of write speeds. Like I said, they are usually similar.

Seems odd that here your verify speeds are 1/6th that of write speeds, but on the other they are over double the time. No consistency.

Rad, I thought the last image time was a little slow. After a restart I did it again. 42 seconds for the write, 11 seconds to verify, 53 secs total.

I have a "feature" in my DVD burner called Riplock which I understand reduces the read speed when reading from a VIDEO_TS folder. Using my burner with DVD Decrypter I get a maximum read speed of around 5X but the maximum read speed of my DVD reader under the same circumstances is 8X. The burner was used for the Ghost image so maybe it does have a slow read rate.

Thanks Brian and Rad. I can burn 1DVD with Ghost perfectly alright, and I do not have an issue with that. It is when my drive needs more than 1 DVD that I am thawted.

And Rad's query  - - And will he be able to use these DVDs to RESTORE the image? or will he get an error saying "Not a Ghost image"?  

Or will he have to first transfer the images back to the hard disk before he can restore them?

Has anyone who has used this method actually restored images from the Nero-burned discs? - -Seems very relevent to me. It is no use if it doesn't in fact work.

It seems to me, that I might be as well to do without the  incremental backups provided by Ghost 9 and revert back to the previous edition of Ghost (2003), and be certain I can use multiple DVDs. Or go out and buy Acrinis that I am told doesn't have all the quirks of Norton. Annoying when I've paid good money for System Works Premier 2005, and not only am I gfoing to have to ditch their AntiVirus, but now the Ghost as well. The GoBack is a bad joke, I couldn't ever get that to even work at all even from the 2003 edition or the 2005.

See my posts above. I thought I had answered Rad's questions. It works, and you could continue your incremental backups, burning them to DVD with Nero if needed (multisession DVD). You are far more likely to restore your C: drive due to a software problem than a HD failure so images on the same HD as your C: drive remain useful. Or do you have a second HD?

If you want to be frightened, browse the Acronis True Image forum.

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=65

Sorry, I forgot you have two large HD's.

Thanks Brian. That clears my head nicely.

I've had a look at the Acronis forum. From the pan into the fire comes to mind. Perhaps the devil I know is better etc etc !!

I admit that the times when I have needed Ghost because of egg shape that things have gone, less with XP than ME, it has been software based and the image on the 2nd HDD has been a blessing. It's just a peace of mind thing, and a knowledge and visious experience of how 'Sods Law' will get me if I give it a chance.

Thank you again. I'll give this Ghost to HDD then to Nero a go.  

I think the problem I was referencing about the error "Not a Ghost image" came from people trying to *boot* from discs created with 3rd party burning programs, such as Nero.

I've had a go at putting the image onto 2 DVDs as you suggested. However, things did not go quite as you said! I chose the 'UDF/ISO  DVD' option, but it said that that was only up to 2GB and therefore I should chose another method, so I chose the 'UDF DVDs' instead, and that seemed to work.

So now I have 2 DVDs with the 2 parts of my 'C' drive on them, and as they each burned as a separate item, I cannot see how they will be connected together, and if the worst to comes to the worst, how exactly do I use them do you think?  

I am guessing that after Ghost is donw with the first disc, it will ask you to insert new media, at which time you would eject the old and insert the new and click okay. Can anyone confirm?

Zack. That is the whole point of my problem. Ghost does ask for a second disk, but after being proved with one does nothing with it!

So now I am into using Ghost to the HD and thence via Nero to DVDs

Ancient_Learner, curiosity got the better of me and I imaged a large partition to DVD. I only have 2 RW discs so I aborted when I saw the "Insert media 3" message. Each disc took 14 mins to write and both contained a 4,207,616 KB v2i file. Mine works, yours doesn't, don't know why.

Using UDF in Nero is fine. There was some fine print with the UDF/ISO choice that you must have missed. It says files larger than 2 GB may not be readable in non WinXP systems. It will burn 4 GB files with UDF/ISO.

As far as using multiple DVD's for restoring, here is some info

"When you restore a backup from a CD or DVD from
within the recovery environment and you only have one
CD or DVD drive, you must leave the product CD in that
drive until after you have clicked Browse to locate the
backup. After the Open dialog box has displayed, you can
remove the Norton Ghost CD or the Symantec Recovery
Disk CD (available with Norton SystemWorks Premier)
and insert the media that contains the backup.
If you remove the product CD before clicking Browse,
the recovery environment will exit back to the recovery
environment main window."

"When you restore a backup from a CD or DVD from within the Ghost RE and
 you only have one CD or DVD drive, you must leave the RE CD in
 that drive until AFTER you have clicked the Browse button to locate
 the backup. After the Open dialog has displayed, you can remove the
RE CD and insert the media that contains the backup. If you remove
 the RE CD before clicking the browse button, the RE will exit
 back to the RE menu. If you have 5 CD's. Insert in this order 1 5 1 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 "

Now I'm definitely NOT trying that.


Storing occasional images on an external HD or shared folder on another computer would be a better choice than DVD storage. Backup and restore across a network is easy with Ghost 9.

Thank you Brian. I don't think that I fancy trying to use these DVDs of mine.

So your's worked OK. I have asked the same questions to Symantec direct. Perhaps they will be able to tell me how to do it on my PC. If they do, then I will post the results here. Mind you, if they are as good as they were trying to help get GOBack working a couple of years ago, I don't hold out much hope - they concluded that I had a faulty CD, that is that their CD was faulty, and because I had bought mine over 6 months before they would not replace it! Perhaps this time will be better.

The GoBack on the 2005 CD doesn't work either. I begin to believe that Norton is not compatable with me.

Acronis looks better and better.

I forgot to mention that My Nero just states that over 2Gb cannot be stored in an ISO file system, nothing more!

Another unsolved mystery. Let us know the outcome. I'm certainly interested.

Ancient_Learner wrote on Jun 3^rd, 2005 at 6:31pm:

I forgot to mention that My Nero just states that over 2Gb cannot be stored in an ISO file system, nothing more!

You are correct. I don't know where my statement came from.