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Message started by Arla on Aug 14th, 2006 at 10:17am

Title: Ghost restore works, but drive is left as garbage?
Post by Arla on Aug 14th, 2006 at 10:17am
I couldn't find anything about this, so I apologize if this is covered anywhere.

I ran into some software issues yesterday and decided to restore to a backup image of my drive, while I was at it figured I'd repartition my drive too :)

The original partition that was ghosted was 60GB (approx) with about 15GB of data on it, I wanted to put that data onto a smaller partition (about 30GB) so I fdisked the entire drive, created a 30GB partition, restored from my image file (which claimed to work just fine) and then checked the drive, garbage, reboot and check if, FDisk now reports it's a non-dos drive.....

I guess my next step is to set the partition to be larger than the original and try that, although I can't see why I wouldn't be able to put the image on a smaller drive.

Anyone have any other advice? Something I'm missing here (I hope so cause otherwise I've lost all the stuff I had)

Just an extra note, this was restoring to a FAT32 partition, from a FAT32 partition, using Ghost 2003

Title: Re: Ghost restore works, but drive is left as garb
Post by NightOwl on Aug 14th, 2006 at 11:15am
Arla


Quote:
Anyone have any other advice? Something I'm missing here (I hope so cause otherwise I've lost all the stuff I had)

Don't despair yet--most likely it's the re-partitioning that's getting in the way!


Quote:
The original partition that was ghosted was 60GB (approx) with about 15GB of data on it, I wanted to put that data onto a smaller partition (about 30GB) so I fdisked the entire drive, created a 30GB partition, restored from my image file (which claimed to work just fine)

So, your image was of the *whole drive--single partition*--how did you set up the restore--*Local > from Image > to Partition*?

Re-try the restore--but do not *fdisk*, and do not try to restore just a partition--restore the *whole disk image*--*Local >from Image > to Disk*.

Are you back up and running?

My best recommendation for re-partitioning is to use PartitionMagic to resize your existing partition smaller, and then create your second partition in the new unallocated space--Ghost is not designed to do this procedure.

Title: Re: Ghost restore works, but drive is left as garb
Post by Arla on Aug 14th, 2006 at 11:48am
Thanks for the response NightOwl,

Original config was,

120GB Drive
One 3GB hidden partition (OS Restore thing I think)
Two 57GB Partitions (give or take)

I had the system on Partition 1, and the data on Partition 2, so I'd done Partition -> Image on both, the first one (System partition) seems to be a failure (at this point) but I'm hoping if I get the data partition back then at least I can copy all that off.

I'm not despairing YET, I did try as you had suggested (that was my next "thing to try") unfortunately when I try restoring just image to drive (with a blank non-partitioned drive) I get some CRC32 error listing (just great!!!) which doesn't look hopeful, so despite having done a number of image verifications checking the image really was okay, apparently it isn't.

HOWEVER, the good news (yes there is good news) my data backup which I also took at the same time is restoring now, so while I may have lost all my programs (not hugely bothered) if I at least have my data back then it's not a total failure, the question is going to be whether or not I can get a OS back on my system, laptops without OS CD's are a pain, and of course I've never tested the backup CD's that the system makes as standard.

Title: Re: Ghost restore works, but drive is left as garb
Post by Arla on Aug 14th, 2006 at 12:11pm
Okay, just an update, the restore of the data worked  ;D so at least I've got that still... once I've copied that off (not in a ghost image) I'll play a bit more with the system image and see if I can restore that, however I'm not very hopeful, then I get to see if my backup system DVD (made when the Laptop was brand new) works, or if I need to pay ACER for a CD image.

Title: Re: Ghost restore works, but drive is left as garb
Post by NightOwl on Aug 14th, 2006 at 1:30pm
Arla

So, you never made a backup image of that *hidden partition*--that means you can not *restore* so the HDD *looks* like it was before you started changing things.

Was that *hidden partition* first on the HDD, followed by the other two?  Was the OS partition the second one?

Because you did not do a *whole HDD* backup, you have to create the partitions on your own using fdisk--re-create the layout to mimic your previous layout--change the sizes if you want--but have the order of the partitions the same.  If the *hidden partition* was first--just create a partition as a place holder.  Actually, the other two partitions will also be *placeholders* for Ghost to place the image of the original HDD partitions back to.

Make whichever partition was the OS partition *active*.

Now, restore the two backed up partitions to their respective partitions to match their original positions.

Does the system work now?

Title: Re: Ghost restore works, but drive is left as garb
Post by Arla on Aug 14th, 2006 at 1:54pm
No, I never made a backup of the hidden partition, it was part of the Acer recovery software stuff that I didn't really think I needed since I was using Ghost (maybe more fool me).

Anyway, right now I've got the data partition (the second one) restored as the entire drive, I'm going to leave it like that for now because I want to copy off all that data before I go anywhere else (which I can't do until I get home from work and can open the machine up, take the drive out, put it in an external enclosure and then copy the data off onto another machine).

Once I've done that I'll try restoring the system partition as the entire drive again, or creating three partitions and restoring to the second one from the image, however given that last attempt to do anything with this image seemed to report immediate CRC errors (not sure if these are real, or just because of what I was trying to do, or how I was doing it) I may be SoL here.

Title: Re: Ghost restore works, but drive is left as garb
Post by Arla on Aug 14th, 2006 at 2:05pm
Just as a note,

The Error I'm now getting with this image is

ABORT: 18230, BrReadCRC32Entry: Invalid Fbuff->type: 0

Title: Re: Ghost restore works, but drive is left as garb
Post by Arla on Aug 14th, 2006 at 3:13pm
Well further to that, I have now run CHKDSK on that first image file, and it is in fact corrupt, how on earth it was working fine last night (in regards to checking the image and attempting to restore (even though it was making a corrupt restore) is beyond me, but it was...

So anyway, that's basically trash, but at least I have my data restored.

Just as a note, no way (I assume) to get files out of .GHS files without the first .GHO file, or is there? I didn't use compression so everything should just "be" there, but I'm not sure if I can get to any of it.

Title: Re: Ghost restore works, but drive is left as garb
Post by NightOwl on Aug 14th, 2006 at 3:31pm
Arla


Quote:
I have now run CHKDSK on that first image file, and it is in fact corrupt

Not sure what various troubleshooting efforts you have done--so how it has become corrupt is hard to say--but, it is usually frowned upon to do any disk checking or defragmenting of a partition that holds Ghost images--unless all else is lost and it's time to *punt*.

The *best* way to check the image file is to re-run Ghost's integrity check of the image--I would still recommend that--but, if Chkdsk has done any *repairs*--no telling what the status of that image is now.


Quote:
Just as a note, no way (I assume) to get files out of .GHS files without the first .GHO file, or is there? I didn't use compression so everything should just "be" there, but I'm not sure if I can get to any of it.

Unless you can mount the image file, there's no way to get to data in the image files--here's a FAQ that tries to help mount an image file that's being reported as corrupt:  How to handle a corrupted image file

Quoting:


Quote:
Recovering important files


If there are files in the image that you must recover, try opening the image file with Ghost Explorer to extract the files needed.

If you cannot extract the files, run Ghost Explorer from the command line with the switches -IGNOREINDEX and -CORRUPT.
Using -IGNOREINDEX
Ghost includes an index file within each image file, and uses the index to find the other files that are in the image file. The -IGNOREINDEX switch opens Ghost Explorer and tells Ghost Explorer to find the files by reading directly from the image file, rather than from the index file.

To use the switch, run GhostExp.exe from a DOS command line:

"D:\Program Files\Symantec\Ghost\Ghostexp.exe" -ignoreindex

You may need to change the path to match the path on your computer.

Using -CORRUPT
When Ghost Explorer encounters file corruption in an image file, it normally reports an error and stops. When you use the -corrupt switch, Ghost Explorer ignores the corrupt area of the file and attempts to find the next file in the image.

To use the switch, run GhostExp.exe from a DOS command line:

"D:\Program Files\Symantec\Ghost\Ghostexp.exe" -corrupt


Title: Re: Ghost restore works, but drive is left as garb
Post by Arla on Aug 14th, 2006 at 4:35pm
Basically chkdsk was pretty much the last ditch "all is lost" effort.

Norton Ghost was recommending running Scandisk as the image seemed corrupt, when I tried to copy the first file (from DOS) it copied the 2GB file to a 32MB file on another drive, something that it shouldn't do, quite how it became corrupt at this point I've no idea, but oh well, at least it was only the program folders, not the data folders.

Thanks for the help, I'll try Ghost Explorer playing around some tonight and see what I can get out of it (if anything) fortunately pretty much everything I have the original disks for anyway, just would have been nice not to have to revert to reinstalls, just have to see how the load of the original backup goes... hopefully no problems *fingers crossed*

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