Hello again,

A few weeks ago I posted here with a question about Ghost 2003, and received a prompt reply with an easy solution.  Now I have more questions, and I'm hoping answers will be as forthcoming as last time.  

I recently ordered a new laptop from Dell (still awaiting it's arrival-an Inspiron 700m)); unfortunately it doesn't have a floppy drive, so I took interest in NightOwl's Guide entitled "Creating Bootable CD/DVD's Without A:\ Floppy Drive".  

I faithfully followed his instructions, thinking I could produce a Boot CD on my desktop (a Dell Dimension 4300 running Xp Home, and be all ready for my new laptop when it arrives.   Everything went well, and I was rewarded with a Ghost Boot CD that booted right into Ghost the first time I tried it.  I began thinking this was going to be my ticket to imaging the new laptop's C drive.  To be sure all was working, I decided to make some copies of my C, D, and E partitions (FAT32) on the 4300 and save them to DVD's.

The burner (a Sony DRU720A) reads/burns CD's and DVD's.  I was able to burn the 3 partitions (C, D, and E) to DVD, and I verified the smallest one (E:1gb of data).  I also verifying the larger partitions (C: ~3gb of data, and E: ~8.5gb of data, but noticed several strange characteristics:

1.  None of the spanned image files were larger than 1,048,576K (I didn't invoke any switches to specify file size).  When I saved images from Ghost directly to my hard drive, they would span at the 2gb size limit.

2.  All of the image files on DVD have the .gho extension; previously, when I saved Ghost images to hard drive partitions, the first of a multi-part image would have the .gho extension, and the rest of the "parts" would have the .ghs extension.  

Here's a link to a .jpg showing a directory of Ghost image files on a DVD:  

http://kq7x.home.att.net/GhostFilesOnCD2.jpg

I've been able to restore these  DVD images back to a spare hard drive, and I've confirmed they all work fine.    however I'm curious if this is normal behavior, or that I'm doing something incorrect.  Why wouldn't Ghost continue to produce 2gb image files, and use the .ghs file extension on DVD as it does when saved on a hard drive?

I was beginning to think I was getting Ghost pretty well figured out, but now I'm not so sure.   I'm hopeful that someone here can confirm that this is normal or not.  

Thanks in advance,

Al
kq7x

See section here:

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

near bottom of page, beginning with "Update (April 2005):"

kq7x

1.  Basically, 'normal' behavior--I've seen Ghost 'choose' various image sizes depending on the burner and the source files--I have not seen a pattern that I can understand.  Seems to be either approx. 1024 MB or 2048 MB's.

My single layer DVD Plextor writer will receive the 2 GB max file size + whatever small amount is left over to fill the 4.7 GB capacity on the system that has that optical drive.

You have the option to force Ghost to the max file size with the command line 'ghost -split=2048' to start Ghost.

2.  Again, normal behavior--but you ask 'why'?--ask Symantec--I don't know what the difference is!

Glad to hear you had 'first time' success with the Guide!  As Rad oft times states--here's a <shameless plug>  ;) :

Creating Bootable CD/DVD's Without A:\Floppy Drive

Rad & NightOwl, thank you for your prompt responses.  This forum is like an ongoing course on hard drive imaging and related issues, and I try to check it out on an on-going basis... and the best part of all: no tests!

I had gone over the section on CD's/DVD's in Rad's Guide to Ghost, but at the time I was so impressed with the idea of burning 8+ gb images to dual layer DVD's that the rest of the info there kind of slipped by me.  Thanks for pointing it out.  After I gain a bit more confidence with Ghost, I might try burning a couple of my larger partitions on the dual layer disks.

And thanks NightOwl for confirming that I'm not observing something that hasn't been noted by others.  Since the images restored ok I wasn't losing sleep over the image size and file extensions differences, but it's comforting to know that I'm not seeing/experiencing anything unusual.  If I'd read the Rad Guide more carefully, I'd have caught on to the file extension difference.

I feel a lot better knowing that I can use a bootable CD to backup my (yet-to-arrive) laptop hard drive.  

Thanks to both of you for preparing your respective Guides; I doubt I'd still be a Ghost fan without them!

Al,
kq7x