Ghost 2003 could image either an individual partition or an entire hard disk.

Ghost 9 /10 / 12 can only image individual partition.

Why is that?

You would think anvanced product would contain AT LEAST the features of its predecossors, no?

Thots?

Rad

This *issue* has frustrated a number of users who have posted here in the past--as I understand, you can tell Ghost 9/10/12 to included all the individual partitions at the same time, but you have to select each partition individually to be included--there's no single option to do a *whole disk* image backup!


Quote:

You would think anvanced product would contain AT LEAST the features of its predecossors, no?

Ah, but what version of *Ghost* is the predecessor to Ghost 9/10/12?--not Ghost 2003 or Ghost 8.xx, etc.  ;) !!!!!

The issue of backing up and restoring an entire hard disk drive in Norton Ghost 9/10/12 has arisen before.  True, there is not a single, specific option to do this ‘disk-to-image’ task as in Norton Ghost 2003 (and I wish there was!).  However, unless I am failing to understand some aspect of the situation, the goal is nonetheless quite easy to accomplish.

• You can include all partitions of the hard disk drive on a single backup job (see page 45+ in Norton Ghost 12.0 User’s Guide), and then run that one job to image the entire hard disk drive.  In effect, the backup job then becomes equivalent to a customized 'disk-to-image' option for the user.  Hey, you could even name the job "Dsk2Img", if you wish.
  
• By referencing the .SV2I file, you can restore a multi-partition hard disk drive in one step (see page 138 in Norton Ghost 12.0 User’s Guide).

So, what’s the problem?  ;)

Pleonasm wrote on Jun 27^th, 2007 at 1:26pm:

"... So, what’s the problem?  ;)..."

A key difference using Norton Ghost 2003 or Ver 8.2 in WIN PE is that a "(whole)disk-to-image" Backup captures all partitions whether or not the user is even aware that any hidden partitions are residing therein.

EP :'(

El_Pescador, you are correct, of course.  But, when defining a Norton Ghost 9/10/12 backup job, the wizard walks the user through the process and displays a screen listing all the partitions on the hard disk drive (optionally including those that are hidden, too - see page 46 in the Norton Ghost 12.0 User’s Guide), so in a practical sense it shouldn’t be an issue.

I do agree, though, that it would be preferable if Norton Ghost 9/10/12 had a single “check box” to “select all partitions” on the hard disk drive, rather than requiring the user to use Ctrl+Click to individually choose them.  It is a small inconvenience, however, and once the backup job is defined, then executing it is extremely easy.

I'm interested to hear from others (especially Brian and Ghost4me) if there are any other issues in using Norton Ghost 9/10/12 for a 'disk-to-image' backup in the manner described.

El_Pescador wrote on Jun 27^th, 2007 at 3:58pm:

A key difference using Norton Ghost 2003 or Ver 8.2 in WIN PE is that a "(whole)disk-to-image" Backup captures all partitions whether or not the user is even aware that any hidden partitions are residing therein. EP

Pleonasm, a copy-the-whole-disk is a feature I have oft lamented is absent from Ghost 9/10/12.

I think the reason it's there in Ghost 2003 (and other products) is that Ghost 2003/8.2 is an offline approach, which gives you exclusive control of a total hard drive.  Whereas, Ghost 12 etc is an online backup approach.  So the G12 emphasis is on backups, and not on replacing a total hard drive with a larger one.

I wish Symantec would make the process of replacing a hard drive with a larger one easier.  Nowadays, most of the Dell, HP, etc vendors put hidden partitions on their drives and make drive replacement almost impossible for the average consumer user.

On a related note, I recall reading that the Microsoft Visa backup program requires you to backup ALL partitions on a disk, so there are some obvious issues with that approach also.

Maybe Brian has a better theory or explanation.  I'm about stumped on this one.

Right, Ghost4me - we both view the situation the same way.  However, although slightly less than ideal, wouldn’t defining a Norton Ghost 9/10/12 backup job in the manner indicated in Reply #2 (including hidden partitions, if any) be functionally “the same” as a ‘disk-to-image’ in Norton Ghost 2003?

The “copy a drive” feature of Norton Ghost 9/10/12 is a bit of a different case than a backup of all partitions on a hard disk drive, although the latter could be used to move all partitions from one hard disk drive to another.  The disadvantage here is the intermediate step of creating and storing the recovery point (.V2I) files is required, but the same would also be true for Norton Ghost 2003 (with .GHO files) - right?

I've never had an interest in whole disk to image backups although I understand others would like this option. Pleonasm's Reply #2 is excellent and is "functionally “the same” as a ‘disk-to-image’ in Norton Ghost 2003". It just takes a few more mouse clicks. Hidden partitions don't pose a problem.

Ghost 12's "Copy my Hard Drive" could be functionally equivalent to Ghost 2003's Disk to Disk. However it's more like Partition to Partition.  Neither software uses images (recovery points) for this function. Ghost 12 does require each partition to be copied sequentially so there is a little more workload.

Ghost 12 sees a hard drive as a collection of partitions.

Thanks, Brian, for confirming that a single backup job in Norton Ghost 9/10/12 can function equivalently to the ‘disk-to-image’ capability of Norton Ghost 2003.  It is for this reason that I have been somewhat mystified about the concern of Norton Ghost 9/10/12 lacking a built-in menu selection for  ‘disk-to-image’.  From my perspective, it seems that the whole issue just boils down to user application interface preferences - i.e., it is a ‘debate’ about style, not about substance.

The same could be said about ‘disk-to-disk’ copying - it is probably a bit easier with Norton Ghost 2003, but at the end of the day, either that tool or Norton Ghost 9/10/12 will produce the same outcome.

Pleonasm wrote on Jun 28^th, 2007 at 9:30am:

Thanks, Brian, for confirming that a single backup job in Norton Ghost 9/10/12 can function equivalently to the ‘disk-to-image’ capability of Norton Ghost 2003.

No.  You took the sentence out of context and forgot "However it's more like Partition to Partition."

Ghost 9 Userguide  page 90:

Quote:

Copy one hard drive to another hard drive When you have your new hard drive installed, you are ready to copy your old hard drive to the new one. The new hard drive does not need to be formatted. If the hard drive you are copying contains more than one partition (for example, a C:\ drive, a D:\drive, an E:\ drive, and so forth), you must copy each partition, one at a time, to the new hard drive.

Pleonasm, Why don't you take a spare hard drive and try and copy everything and post your experiences and let us know if you think it is preferences?

Seems to me that we might be having two different conversations that are “crossing paths”:  one that is about ‘disk-to-image’ backup, and another that is about ‘disk-to-disk’ copying.  The thread was started to explore the former topic (“create images of entire hard disks”) only.


Quote:

You took the sentence out of context and forgot "However it's more like Partition to Partition."

The sentence “a single backup job in Norton Ghost 9/10/12 can function equivalently to the ‘disk-to-image’ capability of Norton Ghost 2003” is in reference to ‘disk-to-image’ backup, whereas the sentence “it's more like Partition to Partition” is in reference to ‘disk-to-disk’ copying.

Ghost4me, I don’t disagree that Norton Ghost 9/10/12 is partition oriented rather than hard disk drive oriented, and I don’t disagree that allowing the user to select a hard disk drive in its entirety for an operation would be nice.  I am only suggesting that the absence of such a feature wouldn’t hinder a user from accomplishing a ‘disk-to-image’ backup (or a ‘disk-to-disk’ copy which, admittedly, I haven’t had a reason to try yet).

Am I missing some subtle point in this 'disk-to-image' discussion?  I get the feeling that I am failing to understand why the absence of a single ‘disk-to-image’ menu selection in Norton Ghost 9/10/12 is significant.

Thanks!   :)

Mea culpa.  Yes, I think this thread has gotten cross pollinated by discussions of both whole-disk-copy methods as well as whole-disk-backup methods.

My long standing objection has been in the whole-disk-copy (lack of) feature.  I've had personal experience with Paragon and Acronis and both have a better whole-disk-copy feature than Symantec's.  

Even though a user may have whole-disk-backups, when it comes time to replace or upgrade a hard drive, most users don't think of their backup which might be days or a week old.  They just want to copy and expand everything that they have on the source hard drive onto the new larger target drive.  Others make it foolproof, but Ghost 9/10/12/S&R makes it error-prone.  

I wish someone from Symantec would explain how that design passed the review committee.  My own suspicion is that Symantec is concentrating on the dumbed-down save and restore and Norton 360 backup approach, not Ghost.  The capability I lament wasn't in Drive Image, and Symantec hasn't re-worked it since they bought out PowerQuest.  

In those days multi-partition issues weren't as evident.  Even if a user added another logical partition to the drive, they weren't dealing with the hidden Dell/Hp/other-OEM's practice of hiding critical components in hidden partitions.

Not a worry, Ghost4me - I understand the confusion.

I think one root cause problem with Norton Ghost 9/10/12 on the ‘disk-to-image’ and ‘disk-to-disk’ issues is simply its legacy use of the word “drive” to mean “partition.”  Long ago - when one drive almost always had one partition - the two terms were essentially equivalent, as you noted.  Now, however, that is often the exception rather than the rule.  So, for Symantec to treat an entire physical hard disk drive as one “drive,” they would need to rework all terminology in both the application and the documentation, possibly creating backward compatibility confusion with prior, existing versions of the application.

Maybe in Norton Ghost 13 the issue will be addressed?

John. wrote on Jun 28^th, 2007 at 11:19am:

They just want to copy and expand everything that they have on the source hard drive onto the new larger target drive.

I don't think you can do this with Ghost 12. Well, we can but a beginner couldn't.

Brian wrote on Jun 28^th, 2007 at 3:55pm:

I don't think you can do this with Ghost 12. Well, we can but a beginner couldn't.

That's precisely my point.  Both Paragon and Acronis will do that however:

Paragon
http://www.drive-backup.com/home/personal/hard_disk_cloning.htm
... Automatic proportional resizing of all partitions during the hard disk cloning; it may be very useful in upgrading the hard drive to larger (or smaller) one;

Acronis
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/faq/disk-clone-tool/
... the "Disk Clone" tool simply copies/moves the entire contents of one hard disk drive to another.

If Ghost xx had that feature, we'd have a lot less "my computer won't boot after ..." type questions.

John, I don't use Acronis TI except in test situations but I've found its cloning function to be very robust. I couldn't get it to fail and I really tried to make it fail. Others haven't been so fortunate.

Symantec's documentation on how to clone (copy a drive) with Ghost 9/10/12 is terrible and I'm not surprised we see so many failures. If done correctly it works but there is no easy way to resize partitions while cloning. I don't clone (copy a drive) in practice so I've tended to ignore Ghost 9/10/12's peculiarities.

My question was aimed more at wondering if this feature represented  a coding challenge.

But since Acronis & Paragon have it, you gotta wonder why not Ghost?

Personally I rarely used the disk-to-image feature of DOS-based Ghost. Actually, I can't recall *ever* using it. But if Symantec wants to market Ghost as the most developed and reliable cloning prgm out there (and there are so many now), I would expect them to incorporate features AT LEAST as comprehensive as their competitors.

Basically I image only my system partition. I don't need Ghost to back-up non-system-partition  files (nobody does).

For me, I have partitions OTHER THAN my system partition. But many may not.

That reminds me, I want to include a section in the new guide about how it's best to create a small partition at the beginning of the disk for Windows + programs .. how having a single 500-gig partition (or a single 1-TB partition) represents a big waste when it comes to backing up with Ghost.

Brian wrote on Jun 28^th, 2007 at 5:10pm:

Symantec's documentation on how to clone (copy a drive) with Ghost 9/10/12 is terrible and I'm not surprised we see so many failures. If done correctly it works but there is no easy way to resize partitions while cloning. I don't clone (copy a drive) in practice so I've tended to ignore Ghost 9/10/12's peculiarities.

Brian, I agree.  However, usually someone will purchase a new hard drive in two different cases:  they are running out of room on their old hard drive, or they hear noises and think their old hard drive is getting ready to fail.

That is a very common scenario.  They just want a proportionally (or manually) expanded new hard drive copy/clone/image of their existing disk drive.

Guess this will just be a feature that will continue to be on my "hope list" for the next release of Ghost.

John. wrote on Jun 28^th, 2007 at 5:23pm:

That is a very common scenario.  They just want a proportionally (or manually) expanded new hard drive copy/clone/image of their existing disk drive.

CopyWipe from TeraByte will do this (proportionally). It's free but the beginner won't know of its existence.

Rad wrote on Jun 28^th, 2007 at 5:19pm:

Basically I image only my system partition.

Same here. I'm not interested in a whole disk image as my data is backed up separately.


Quote:

how having a single 500-gig partition (or a single 1-TB partition) represents a big waste when it comes to backing up with Ghost.

Rad, I know you have read this. It discusses this issue.

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/notes.htm#13

Rad, concerning “I rarely used the disk-to-image feature of DOS-based Ghost” (Reply #16), I believe this is the only option in Norton Ghost 2003 that will backup the MBR.  A ‘partiton-to-image’ backup - even of the operating system partition - does not backup the MBR (if I recall the gist of this thread correctly).

In contrast, Norton Ghost 9/10/12 does automatically include the MBR in the recovery point for an operating system ‘drive’ (aka partition).