NightOwl wrote on Sep 8th, 2005 at 11:12am:VitoPrimo
Only if there is a *NTFS* reason to do so--i.e. if there is a file system reason for using it--example--you want to use the encryption feature of WinXP, or (I'm shaky on this one--someone else may be able to confirm) you need unlimited file sizes for video or audio editing.
The only reason I'm considering doing this is that recently I've experienced some "weird" FAT32 file system failures. For example:
Upon cleanly shutting down one of my computers to create some Ghost images, Windows 2000 would not reboot. It turns out that the WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM file (I believe this is part of the registry) was corrupted. I was able to extract an old version of this file from a prior Ghost image and, about an hour later, get Windows 2000 to restart. This has happened at least 3 times over the last couple of months on this particular machine.
Yesterday on another machine (this one running Windows XP Professional) the System event log got corrupted. Whenever I opened the Event Viewer and tried to look at the System log, the Event Viewer would crash and generate an error message that mmc.exe (Microsoft Management Console, the shell that hosts things like the Event Viewer, Disk Manager, and so on) had failed.
I'm wondering if the touted "robustness" of NTFS would have prevented this errors.
By the way, I have run Windows error checking and defragmentation utilities; everything comes up clean.
NightOwl wrote on Sep 8th, 2005 at 11:12am:Curious--what is your reasoning for doing this?
I need the large file support that NTFS provides.
NightOwl wrote on Sep 8th, 2005 at 11:12am:Ghost 2003 can write to and read from for backing up NTFS partitions. But because Ghost 2003 is DOS based, NTFS partitions are not *seen* by DOS and those partitions will not be assigned drive *letters*. Instead, Ghost lists them as *1:1, 1:2 ..... 2:1, 2:2 ..... * etc. for disk 1: partition 1, disk 1: partition 2 .... disk 2: partition 1, disk 2: partition 2 .... etc.
I wasn't aware of this.
NightOwl wrote on Sep 8th, 2005 at 11:12am:E: drive will still be *visible* in DOS, and therefore in Ghost also--but, because it will now be the first drive *seen* by DOS, it will be assigned the C:\ drive letter designation.
Your C: and D: NTFS drives will not be visible in DOS, but will be seen from within Ghost as mentioned above with the *1:1....* drive designations.
I knew the drives would not be visible in DOS but I thought the limitation also applied to Ghost. Good news.
NightOwl wrote on Sep 8th, 2005 at 11:12am:(By the way, this is why it's a good idea to *label* each partition with a unique name so you can identify it when the drive letters are *missing* in Ghost--and if/when you are setting up your partitions, you should give each partition a unique *size*, so if the label is not showing, you once again can tell which partition it is based on size differences--keep a list handy for when/if needed!)
Great advice! Do the labels assigned in Windows 2000 or Windows XP show up in Ghost or do I have to use some DOS or Ghost utility to assign labels that will be visible in Ghost?
NightOwl wrote on Sep 8th, 2005 at 11:12am:If you have a floppy drive and/or a bootable optical drive--you can run Ghost from the A:\ prompt from a floppy disk or from the data portion of the optical media if you have burned the *ghost.exe* to the data portion of the optical media--and you have loaded the needed DOS files to access your optical drive from DOS--you do not really need the copy DOS *ghost.exe* to the DOS compatible C:\ drive in order to run Ghost. Also, you could have a DOS compatible partition *anywhere* on your HDD's and put Ghost there--once booted to DOS via floppy or bootable optical medie, you just have to switch to that drive and run *ghost.exe* from that location.
Good suggestions. Thank you for the prompt reply and the excellent info.
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