hi there.. new to ghost image and had a question.. I have my image now created with ghost 2003. I was wondering do I have to have a partition created thats exactly same size as was when I took image.. lets say I reformat my HDD as one single partition instead of the two partitions I had when Imade the image. do I need to re establish the partitions as they were when I took the image or do I need a  partition established at all.. Or will the image take care of this for me when I apply it to the drive..just curious how this works when I reapply the image...thanks,....

nomak

It depends on what you started with, what you did to create the image, and what you do with it when you restore.

I assume you have the one HDD with two partitions that you created an image of the whole HDD, i.e. *Disk>to Image*.

If your HDD fails, or you simply wish to restore that image to the old HDD or a new HDD--you simply do a restore *Image>to Disk*.  Ghost will take care of the partitioning and formating, and if the new HDD is not the same size (smaller is okay if the data will fit), Ghost will offer to re-size the partitions to fill the HDD that you are transferring the image to.  At least in the DOS Ghost interface, Ghost gives you a step where you can manually re-size the partitions rather than accepting the Ghost recommendation.

If you're making individual partition images, i.e. *Partition>to Image*, then you have to be more specific on the restore and you may have to pre-partition the HDD to get the results you want.

thanks nightowl wasnt sure how that worked...I have been doing partition to image using ghost.. so if I had a small HDD would I be better off just doing a disk to image over a partition to image method ???  

nomak

Again, it all depends on what you want to accomplish--but, if you want Ghost to be a *disaster* recovery/backup solution should the HDD go bad--you need a copy of all the partitions if you want to be able to recover and restore with all the data in place.

If you have one or more partitions that are for storage, and change infrequently, then you would not have to *always* include those in a backup scheme.

But, if data does change on various partitions--then my recommendation is whole *Disk>to Image*--you can always select individual partitions from that image to restore.

If I'm doing a major program install, or using some new utilty program that I'm not sure of, I will create an image of the partition(s) that are involved--rather than a whole disk image so I can recover from just that particular event.

It's really a matter of *what are you willing to loose* risk management--and how your backup scheme effects your ability to restore.