I used Ghost 11.5 to image the C: partition on my Windows 2003 Server this morning before doing some experimenting.  Then I messed something up with Windows 2003 so I wanted to restore the C: partition.

When I tried to use the DOS-based Ghost to restore (using Local > Partition > From Image), the "Select Destination Partition" screen displayed my C partition grayed out.  The .GHO file is on a different disk so that's not the problem.  The reported size of the partition in the image file and the destination partition are the exact same size.  I haven't made *any* changes to the disk's partition table.

The only thing I can think of is that the C: drive is 99.99% full (thanks to this morming's mess up).  But does Ghost really care if its going to overwrite the whole partition?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

@ lunadesign

If your image is good (verifies OK) you could delete the OS partition and restore into the unallocated space or create a partition to restore into. I haven't played with DOS Ghost recently and I can't recall why you get that situation of not being able to restore into the source partition.

OK - a bit more info.  Today's image passes the verify check fine.  I have two older images of the same drive (same partition size but with significantly less data at the time of imaging) and Ghost does *not* gray out the destination partition for either of those two images.  It still grays out the destination partition for today's image.  All images were created with the same Ghost Boot Disk.

Brian wrote on Apr 16^th, 2011 at 5:28pm:

@ lunadesign If your image is good (verifies OK) you could delete the OS partition and restore into the unallocated space or create a partition to restore into. I haven't played with DOS Ghost recently and I can't recall why you get that situation of not being able to restore into the source partition.

Thanks for the info.  I'm also thinking that I might use Acronis to resize the destination partition larger....maybe Ghost is trying to hard to look at the size of the data in the image (about 4K away from being 100% full) with the size of the partition and missing the calculation by a bit?

lunadesign wrote on Apr 16^th, 2011 at 6:09pm:

I might use Acronis to resize the destination partition larger

That will be interesting.

Brian wrote on Apr 16^th, 2011 at 6:12pm:

lunadesign wrote on Apr 16th, 2011 at 6:09pm: I might use Acronis to resize the destination partition larger That will be interesting.

Interesting good or interesting bad?

I probably should have been more specific in saying that I'd be using Acronis Disk Director, not True Image or whatever its called nowadays.

Sorry. I meant interesting good. It can't do any harm.

have you found the solution?
i m also having exactly the same issue , i used norton ghost 11.5,
(i created account to ask it)

my c drive is greyed out ,, at the time of clonging it had 800mb free space,, and when cloning was done no compression was used, my c drive was cloned it had ntfs, and xp,, at the time of creation,, in the clong method,, default was used in settings,,
please help me out,thanks :(

@ haghdm

Can you post a screenshot of Disk Management? It will help us understand what could have gone wrong.

thanks for ur response,,
i think i got out of this mess with huge troubel,,

here is how it went by,,
i installed norton ghost 2003 in windws,then did a reboot into ghost dos baased interface,, tried to open the gho foile which was created by version 11.5 gave error that the file needs to be opened in later vesrions,,as my system was n yet s3xperimented ( as i wanted to make it certain that i would be able to restore it ,,i first chek but lukily found that error and didnt crappity smack3d the system ) so deleted earlier ghost ,,, made a new ghost image of c drive int a file with version 2003,, now in order to verify that i can restore trhe gost i again wnt from image to  partition option but still the c drive was greyed out in the final window,, exited ghost re run with the -OR  argument ,,now there was no greying out .. i was finally able to selkect any partion for the image file to be restored onto,, i selected c . restored it,,,after it reached 100 % iut said no primary partition,, i was shocked y i got this ?
rebooted it oly to find out the operating system missing,,
then i booted with hiren boot cd,, made drive c as active and then rebooted now there was no operating system missing error ,,but there xp said vgaoem.sys missing,,,,


now i again booted with hiren boot cd and started ghost 11.5 and tried to restore the gho image i created earlier with 2003 cersion,, it accepted it ,,there was no incomptibility,, but the c drive was still greyed out in the final window,, so again started ghgost with -OR option and this time drive c was there ,,and i finally re restored the image file on drive c,, and my system back in same order,

:-[ went through a lot of trouble,,:'(

a bit summary
created image file with 11.5, couldnt restore onto c as c was greyed out,

installed inside windows ghost 2003 created gho of c, couldnt restore as c greyed out,used the -or switch ghost file restored but got missing os prompt..

somehow i markjed drive c as active but windows files were missing,,,

then i restored the same file again but with ghost 11.5 with or switch as without this swtch c drive was greyed out,,, everything ok..

hope this will help someone

i forgot to mentipon that vetrsion 2003 cwas much faster,,
during image creation time its speed was 580B/minute average,,and restoring at avbearge of 1500MB/minute,,

wheareas in 11.5 creation time speed was 300 MB/min,, and restoring at 400MB/min,,
:-*

Hi All, and Welcome to 2016 !

I would normally open a new thread (given this one is so old), but @lunadesign describes my situation so exactly, I thought perhaps he might say what solved his problem.

The conditions troubling haghdm are slightly different, and I do not wish to duplicate all the work he describes if it is not necessary.

Thanks in advance for any insight and solution(s).

OK... got it.

Launched ghost32.exe with "-OR" switch, and the GUI behaved as before (ie: all partitions available from which to select target to overwrite).

Thanks.