I just did a Ghost 10.0 restore from the boot CD. Everything went ok and I have a working C drive on a new HD. A small question for the next time, if there is a next time, about which file to restore.

Symantec tech support (chat) told me to restore my last good full disk copy image (ex: C_Drive007.v2i) as opposed to the last incremental copy (ex: C_Drive007_i020.iv2i). They said to restore the incremental afterwards. From the boot CD, my options of which file to restore were listed as: yesterday, 2 days ago, 3 days ago, etc. I knew which day was my full image and I used that.

My question is this: If I have to do this again to restore my C drive, would it save time and effort to use the last copy even though it was an incremental? Would the program know to use the incremental and the full image to create a good working bootable C drive with all info on it?

kdmphx wrote on Jan 23^rd, 2007 at 3:19pm:

Symantec tech support (chat) told me to restore my last good full disk copy image (ex: C_Drive007.v2i) as opposed to the last incremental copy (ex: C_Drive007_i020.iv2i). They said to restore the incremental afterwards.

kdmphx,

That's not the best way to do it. You only need to restore one image. I'd restore C_Drive007_i020.iv2i. Naturally the baseline recovery point and all preceding incrementals have to be in the same folder as C_Drive007_i020.iv2i.

From the Ghost 9 userguide


Quote:

You can restore a full image or a base image by selecting a .v2i file, or you can select an incremental backup (.iv2i file) that was taken at the point in time to which you want to restore the drive. If you select an incremental backup, the restore process will automatically detect any previous incrementals and the base image associated with that incremental.

Thanks, I got it. Symantec (India version) is not the best for information. I hope I don't need to use it again! ;D

My next project is to get a larger C drive for PC#2. That will be a cloning process. We'll see how that goes.

kdmphx wrote on Feb 1^st, 2007 at 4:05pm:

My next project is to get a larger C drive for PC#2. That will be a cloning process.

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1117581957;start=

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1148252120;start=

Thanks for those links. I've looked at both of them already. They do leave a little room for clarification though. I have a Dell with the small 31Mb FAT32 section for the Dell Utility. I understand it's not necessary. I have never used it and it's also on the Dell utility disk if I need it. When I restored my failed C drive on PC#1, I didn't copy the Dell partition over and everything is working fine without it.

So the question for the next "drive copy" is ... do I copy the FAT32 first and then the C drive? If so, what parameters do I use for the first copy and the second? Or do I do it the other way around? Or as I planned... not copy the FAT32 at all. I plan to use an unformatted new HD and I assume it will be recognized as the C drive when I put it at the end of the cable (cable select system) after the drive copy is complete without needing a fdisk /MBR to be run.

(This is adding a question to my original and I can repost it as as it's own question when I get ready to do the copy.)

It's worth having that Utility partition. Saves looking for the CD to run diagnostics.

From Ghost in Windows, copy the Utility partition first. I haven't done it for ages but the menu choices should be obvious. It is a primary partition, is not active and doesn't have a drive letter. Then copy the OS partition and any other partitions in the order they appear on your old HD. Alternatively you can do the whole operation with images. That's what I prefer.

If you don't copy the Utility partition it's possible that you will have a boot.ini problem. It didn't happen before so Ghost must have altered the boot.ini.

Quote:

When I restored my failed C drive on PC#1, I didn't copy the Dell partition over and everything is working fine without it.

Could you look at the boot.ini for me? Does it say partition(2)? Even though WinXP is the first partition.

Yes it does. I was going to say that but didn't know if it was necessary at this time.

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\Windows= "Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition"/fastdetect/NoExecute=OptOut

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\Windows

That happened to me too. It's normal. Even though WinXP is the first partition, it still occupies the second slot in the master partition table. If you had restored to a different HD, WinXP would be in the first slot and the boot.ini would need to be partition(1).

Let me clarify that. On the computer I did the restore on and didn't copy the Dell Utility over, it says partition (1). On the other PC that I plan to copy, that's where the partition (2) is.

kdmphx wrote on Feb 1^st, 2007 at 6:43pm:

Let me clarify that. On the computer I did the restore on and didn't copy the Dell Utility over, it says partition (1). On the other PC that I plan to copy, that's where the partition (2) is.

OK. My computer was different.

Were you restoring to the original HD?

No, the restore was to a new unformatted HD. I only restored the C drive image. I didn't even try to restore the Dell Utility partition. It's not in the image file anymore although I did image it when I first installed Ghost.

kdmphx wrote on Feb 1^st, 2007 at 6:50pm:

No, the restore was to a new unformatted HD. I only restored the C drive image. I didn't even try to restore the Dell Utility partition. It's not in the image file anymore although I did image it when I first installed Ghost.

Thanks. My Reply #9 applies if you restore to the same HD.