Radified Community Forums - Can information be retrieved from a broken ghost?

wrozeboom

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Can information be retrieved from a broken ghost?
Oct 6^th, 2005 at 4:50pm

(I'm new here, so I apologize if I don't post this inquiry properly.)

My first attempt to create a ghost 2003 backup, motivated by need to fix some deteriorations on my Win98/2-operated hard drive, has resulted in disaster. After creation of my 3-section ghost image, which gave me no sign of any defect, something went wrong with my attempted file repairs that completely wiped my hard drive. But ghost restoration has failed me also; and with help from my univ. department's technical services pros, I learn that (a) the image's sections are not linked and (b) its third (quite small) section is corrupt. We have been unable to recover any of the material in the two good sections, which I suspect may be due to loss of reinstallation code in the damaged last section. Is it possible to recover the material in these undamaged image sections bereft the last section? If so, where might we learn how?

Bill Rozeboom
Department of Psychology
University of Alberta
email: rozeboom@ualberta.ca

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Toby

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	Re: Can information be retrieved from a broken gho Reply #1 - Oct 6^th, 2005 at 7:47pm Ghost Explorer is the program you use to retrieve individual files from a Ghost image. Have you tried that? Or you can try restoring the image to a spare partition/drive and see if you can retrieve the files from there. I think there is a switch that tells Ghost to ignore errors.
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Re: Can information be retrieved from a broken gho
Reply #2 - Oct 6^th, 2005 at 8:28pm

wrozeboom

1. On what media are the 3 image files located--HDD or optical media?

2. How have you determined that the files are not *linked*?

3. How have you determined that the last file is *corrupt*?

4. It's too late now, but *safe* use of Ghost should have included doing an *Integrity Check* on a new image set after it's created. But, can you load DOS Ghost 2003 and perfom an *Integrity Check* on the existing backup image--results?

No question is stupid...but, possibly the answers are Wink

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(This is an old *NightOwl* user account--not in current use. Current account is NightOwl without a dash at the end.)

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Bill Rozeboom

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Re: Can information be retrieved from a broken gho
Reply #3 - Oct 8^th, 2005 at 1:35am

Re (1): The image recording is on a DVD (4.75gb) disk, which appears to have zero free space although the ghost recording
did not request additional space.

Re (2,3): I haven't managed to reach my technical consultunt to confirm this, but what I recall is that lack of linkage and corruption
of the third file is reported to monitor by the reinstallation program when this is activated.

Re (4): I did do an initial image check under dos, and received no report of anything wrong thought I don't recall precisely what it said. That's why I thought it was safe to proceed.

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Re: Can information be retrieved from a broken gho
Reply #4 - Oct 8^th, 2005 at 3:44am

Bill Rozeboom

Do you have Ghost 2003 installed on a functional system?

One of the Windows Ghost interface programs is *

Ghost Explorer

*. It's a program that allows you to, from within Windows, open and extract files from a Ghost image set.

If your initial Ghost image created to the DVD passed the *Integrity* check after making the image--the image should be *okay*, unless something has damaged the DVD disc and the data it contains.

After you launch *Ghost Explorer*, you click on the *file* menu item, then *open*, and then browse to your DVD drive with the disc in it. Select the first file.

Then, the program asks you to point to the last file of the set. You would then browse to that 3rd file and select it. If the image set is *okay*, Ghost Explorer should load and mount that image set. You can then extract files from the image set to another location on the system, i. e. a HDD directory.

Do you know how much data was on the HDD when you created the Ghost image? Ghost will usually create image files that are approx. 2 GB each. Ghost will also *compress* data if you select that option during image formation. So your 4.75 GB DVD should hold 2 files of approx. 2 GB plus a 3rd small file of 0.75 GB or less. So, with compression, you may have been able to put 5.1 or 5.2 GB worth of HDD data onto the DVD. Does that sound about right as to how much data was on your HDD?

Quote:

can you load DOS Ghost 2003 and perfom an *Integrity Check* on the existing backup image--results?

You did not answer the above question--did you try an integrity check of the Ghost image set on the DVD? What are the results?

No question is stupid...but, possibly the answers are Wink

!
(This is an old *NightOwl* user account--not in current use. Current account is NightOwl without a dash at the end.)

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Bill Rozeboom

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Re: Can information be retrieved from a broken gho
Reply #5 - Oct 8^th, 2005 at 4:35pm

My Norton SystemWorks 2003 screen that manages ghost2003 includes all the opertions you ascribe to *ghost explorer*, checking for ghost-image integrity in particiular; and I thought (still do) that I had run this right after creating my ghost files and was told that all three were OK. But when I now run the integrity check again (my computer is back in action with a bare-bones installation of essentials) I am imformed that my first image file is "valid" but 2nd and 3rd are not. The image disk has remained well protected, so I must have done something incorrectly during its original creation and my check then of its integrity; but I can't imagine what. The drive partition being ghosted was almost but not quite 5GB in size, and I did call for compression; so my understanding then of storage capacity needed agrees with
your assessment: my one DVD should have sufficed.

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Re: Can information be retrieved from a broken gho
Reply #6 - Oct 8^th, 2005 at 5:04pm

Bill Rozeboom

Running Ghost 2003 *Intgrity* check is done by selecting *Norton Ghost/Ghost Advanced/Image Integrity Check* when using the Windows interface for Ghost. The integrity check can not be run from *Ghost Explorer*.

Only the first image file of a Ghost image set can be opened with *Ghost Explorer*. The other files will cause *Ghost Explorer* to give you an error saying *Not a Ghost Image File*.

Can you open the Ghost image by using *File/Open/browse to the first file of the image set and select it/click *Open*--what happens?

No question is stupid...but, possibly the answers are Wink

!
(This is an old *NightOwl* user account--not in current use. Current account is NightOwl without a dash at the end.)

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Bill Rozeboom

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Re: Can information be retrieved from a broken gho
Reply #7 - Oct 8^th, 2005 at 11:44pm

Both of your probe suggestions have yielded favorable results: Calling *ghost explorer* shows me a list of much that was on my ghosted partition, and the same listing is returned by opening this as an ordinary Windows subdirectory. So much , maybe all, of my ghosted material seems still to exist; but my tech consultants and I don't know how to retrieve this by some alternative to Norton's programmed procedure that isn't working here.

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Re: Can information be retrieved from a broken gho
Reply #8 - Oct 9^th, 2005 at 12:45am

Bill Rozeboom

Quote:

but my tech consultants and I don't know how to retrieve this by some alternative to Norton's programmed procedure that isn't working here.

I'm not following your question--What *Norton's programmed procedure that isn't working here* are you referring to that isn't working?

If you can open the Ghost image file in *Ghost Explorer*, then you should be able to then use *File/Extract* to highlight files or directories with multiple files, and direct *Ghost Explorer* to copy the files from the image file to a directory on your HDD.

You can also use *drag and drop* by opening *Windows Explorer* and *Ghost Explorer*, use a *right-click* on the program bar at the bottom of the WinXP desktop and select *tile horizontally*. This will get both *Ghost Explorer* and *Windows Explorer* visible and one above the other.

Then select files or directories in *Ghost Explorer* and drag them to the destination directory in *Windows Explorer* and drop the files--they will be copied from the image file to the HDD directory.

The only other way to get access to files in a Ghost image file is to restore the whole image to a destination HDD. I know of no other *alternative(s)*.

No question is stupid...but, possibly the answers are Wink

!
(This is an old *NightOwl* user account--not in current use. Current account is NightOwl without a dash at the end.)

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Manikandan

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Re: Can information be retrieved from a broken gho
Reply #9 - Dec 9^th, 2005 at 4:25pm

Hi Guys,

In addition to the above mentioned sugessions. let me tel you something

Copy the contents (.GHO Images) of the DVD to a local Hard drive

`If you encounter any problem in copying in windows OS try this :
use the DOS COPY command with the /V switch, which enables verification, instead of dragging and dropping with the Windows Explorer. For example, type:

COPY /V C:\IMAGE.GHO D:\IMAGE.GHO

use this switch to VERIFY the image in DOS

-VFY Verifies each write to an image

use these switches to explore the images

(IF INDEX CORRUPTED use the below given switch to ignoire
------------------------------------------------------------------------
To use the switch, run GhostExp.exe from a DOS command line:

"D:\Program Files\Symantec\Ghost\Ghostexp.exe" -ignoreindex

to handle corrupted image
----------------------------------

To use the switch, run GhostExp.exe from a DOS command line:

"D:\Program Files\Symantec\Ghost\Ghostexp.exe" -corrupt

Try your luck

Regards
Mani

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S Cuyler

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	Re: Can information be retrieved from a broken gho Reply #10 - Dec 22^nd, 2005 at 7:12am I have a corrupted gho file. No EOF error message. Any suggestions on how to fix??
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