Is there cloning program (not sure if NG 2003 will be able to do this); that is capable of imaging Linux (Fedora Core 9) file system (specifically ext3) and saving that image to an NTFS partition (on a separate hard drive partition formatted as NTFS)?
And restoring from that image back to the Linux partition (ext3) without any error?

Using Windows XP prof, SP3.

zmdmw52,

Have you checked out TeraByte's Image for Linux?

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/image-for-linux.htm

Genuine Ghost in Ghost Solution Suite will do this too (albeit with some limitations in respect of complex LVM situations), and GSS2.5 includes native Linux-runnable versions of Ghost as well.

Nigel,
I'm just going back over some old threads and have a question about this one.

You sort of lost me with the references to certain versions of Ghost, with which I'm sure you're very familiar , , ,  But, I am not.

Are you referring to Ghost 2003, Build 793?

I'm pretty sure that an associate of mine uses that very version, from a boot floppy,  to back up his Linux drive.

Am I correct that Ghost backs up ones and zero's and doesn't really care what those ones and zero's do, when making a clone. ??? :-/

Happy Holidays Mate!

Shadow  8-)

Every version of Ghost beginning with 7.5 understands ext2 and ext3 filesystems natively (although every version accepts a wider range of variants; for instance, newer versions accept different inode sizes, handle LVM to various degrees and so forth). The biggest practical barrier to restoration with any particular version is, however, usually due the choice of boot manager, not the filesystem. When restoring, Ghost has always had to try and patch up the various Linux boot managers and since they tend to change their data formats to be incompatible regularly, this is hard to guarantee.


TheShadow wrote on Dec 10^th, 2008 at 7:09am:

Am I correct that Ghost backs up ones and zero's and doesn't really care what those ones and zero's do, when making a clone. ??? Undecided

No, you aren't correct. That's only true when using -ir, or when Ghost encounters a partition type which indicates the filesystem is of a type that the version in question doesn't understand (e.g., HPFS or HFS+ which aren't understood by any current version), or of the PowerQuest type of products which are essentially sector cloners (although they do still contain code that does understand the filesystems in some amount of detail in order to adjusts them after the restore to correct for partition size and geometry changes, just as any practical cloning product has to understand them to some extent).

If it understands the filesystem, the image format and cloning process is much more sophisticated. For FAT-type partitions (and ext-type partitions from 7.5 onwards), the image format contains all the original filesystem metadata but the usual restore process tends to be more like building a new filesystem from scratch and restoring the files into it, because that produces the best result. Ghost has basically always preferred archive-style operation; that's why since back to around version 3, restored FAT partitions are fully defragmented.

For NTFS, it's slightly different to that due to the complex structure of NTFS, although it's become more and more like that over time since it's now necessary to do such a large amount of post-restore adjustment (and of course since Ghost versions from 8ish onwards have supported non-destructive restores that can preserve parts of the existing filesystem and patch them back into the restore filesystem afterwards).

Nigel,
Thank you, as usual, for that great answer.
(even though I only understood about 10% of it.)  ;) ;D ;D ;D

Without fully understanding all the nuts and bolts of Ghost, I've been using it for years and still just love it.  It's saved my bacon, and my data more times than I can count.

Thank you again, for a most wonderful program. :-*

Happy Holidays!
Shadow  8-)

wrote on Dec 10^th, 2008 at 11:09pm:

Every version of Ghost beginning with 7.5 understands ext2 and ext3 filesystems natively ... (

Would that (ver 7.5) be a version before or after Norton Ghost 2003 ? How does one find the version numbers (as referred above) of Norton/Symantec Ghost ?

zmdmw52 wrote on Jan 21^st, 2009 at 5:10am:

Would that (ver 7.5) be a version before or after Norton Ghost 2003 ?

Before. Ghost 2003 was internally numbered 7.6 in terms of the format code written into the image, since the starting point for the cloning engine was forked out of source control from the 7.5 corporate product. However since the feature set of the consumer product was reduced compared to the corporate one (as it was only licensed for single-computer use) it was of course never presented as a successor; the corporate and consumer products were too different from each other for relative version numbers to be significant in that way.

The version numbering of Norton vs Symantec Ghost from that point on is meaningless.Totally different products, totally different capabilities, made by different teams, with no technology overlap whatsoever. The intention of the ex-PowerQuest management was that genuine Ghost was to cease to exist completely; hence their taking over of Ghost's version numbering, and selling their V2i consumer "Norton Ghost" as 9.0 to position it as the successor to corporate Ghost 8.

To find the version number of my Ghost.exe file, I boot up to a DOS prompt with my ghost boot disk and then run;

Ghost.exe /ver  (then press ENTER)

and the Ghost copyright message, with the Ghost version, will be printed on the screen.

I hope this answers that one question.

Shadow  8-)

wrote on Jan 21^st, 2009 at 9:36pm:

zmdmw52 wrote on Jan 21st, 2009 at 5:10am: Would that (ver 7.5) be a version before or after Norton Ghost 2003 ? The version numbering of Norton vs Symantec Ghost from that point on is meaningless.

Ah, got it. will take up trying new solutions.