Welcome, Guest. Please Login
 
  HomeHelpSearchLogin FAQ Radified Ghost.Classic Ghost.New Bootable CD Blog  
 
Page Index Toggle Pages: 1
Send Topic Print
Ghost not backing up everything (Read 6611 times)
Justin
Guest




Back to top
Ghost not backing up everything
May 7th, 2006 at 6:37am
 
I installed Ghost 10 yesterday and something strange appears to be happening:

When viewed in Windows Explorer,  my hard drive (C), appears with 'Desktop' at the top, followed by 'My Documents' followed by 'My Computer' etc etc .

The 'My Documents' folder contains lots of sub-folders plus various files (letters etc) that aren't in folders.

When I do a backup to my portable 200GB Mobile Disk and then view it, either with Windows Explorer or the Norton viewer, the appearance is totally different and the 'My Documents' folder now appears under 'Documents and Settings'/Name of Administrator (it took some finding, I can tell you).

So far so good but; there are only folders in there, no loose files (letters etc) as there are on my hard drive.

In addition to that, I have one sub-folder in my 'My Documents' that has a further 250 sub-folders within it and of these, only 70 (seventy) have been backed up.  Thats 180 folders, all containing important documents, that have disappeared.  The ones that have been backed up have been plucked consecutively from the middle (numbers 70 to 140 inclusive).

In case there was a fault with anything in these sub-sub-folders, I created another folder in 'My Documents' and copied them to this.  They backup fine.

Is Ghost known to be selective in its backing up or have I just missed something?

Xav
 
 
IP Logged
 

John.
Übermensch
*****
Offline



Posts: 2072


Back to top
Re: Ghost not backing up everything
Reply #1 - May 7th, 2006 at 8:34am
 
Justin,

When you use the Microsoft Windows Explorer program, it displays My Documents as the first subfolder of Desktop.  That's normal.  But that is just for convenience.  As you discovered, the REAL My Documents is located at c:\Documents and Settings\userid\ ...  unless you have moved it elsewhere.

Note, you have to have the Explorer Tools/Folder Options/View set to "show hidden files and folders" and  NOT "hide operating system files" options set for ALL folders to see everything.

When using the Symantec browser, you don't see that "convenience view" of My Documents at the top, just the actual structure.  But everything should be there; selecting the folder on the left panel should display contents on the right panel.
 

Ghost4me  Ghost 9, 10, 12, 14, 15.  Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7
 
IP Logged
 
Justin
Guest




Back to top
Re: Ghost not backing up everything
Reply #2 - May 7th, 2006 at 8:52am
 
HI, thanks for your interest.

I was already viewing with the 'show hidden files etc' option selected and there's nothing there, same with hte 'Browse Files' option in G10.  There also isn't a single 'loose' file (one that isn't in a folder) showing in 'My Documents' even though I have about a hundred of them.

Do you think it's time to try and contact Symantec?  If so, do they respond to email requests?

Justin
 
 
IP Logged
 
John.
Übermensch
*****
Offline



Posts: 2072


Back to top
Re: Ghost not backing up everything
Reply #3 - May 7th, 2006 at 9:11am
 
First, did you check the "verify after backup" option when you run your image backup?  If not, open the Ghost Explorer and select the backup image file, right click, and verify the image. 

Let's make sure you didn't have an error during backup.  (Did you look in Status/View Event Log?  If not check it too.)

There are a lot of Ghost experts here on this forum.  In my opinion you'll get better support here.
 

Ghost4me  Ghost 9, 10, 12, 14, 15.  Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7
 
IP Logged
 
Pleonasm
Übermensch
*****
Offline



Posts: 1619


Back to top
Re: Ghost not backing up everything
Reply #4 - May 7th, 2006 at 10:12am
 
Justin, one easy way to confirm that a Ghost 10 recovery point contains all of your "\My Documents" folders is to mount the recovery point as a virtual hard disk drive, and then use FolderMatch to compare the "\My Documents" folder on the mounted recovery point to the original folder.
 

ple • o • nasm n. “The use of more words than are required to express an idea”
 
IP Logged
 
Justin
Guest




Back to top
Re: Ghost not backing up everything
Reply #5 - May 7th, 2006 at 10:59am
 
I hadn't been verifying etc and I just did so on your advice and it seems to have solved the problem.  All the data files are there too!

Thanks so much for your help.....can't get my head round it though.  After all, it's an option not an imperative.

Still, all's well that end's well as they say

Justin   Smiley
 
 
IP Logged
 

John.
Übermensch
*****
Offline



Posts: 2072


Back to top
Re: Ghost not backing up everything
Reply #6 - May 7th, 2006 at 12:47pm
 
I always do a verify as part of the backup now.  The verify doesn't change anything in the structure but just verifies that all the pointers and indexes are correct.

So why did all your data files and My Documents files appear now? 

Anyway, welcome to Ghost 10 and glad it is working!

Also don't forget to test your Ghost Recovery boot CD.  Make sure you can boot from it and try restoring just one small file.
 

Ghost4me  Ghost 9, 10, 12, 14, 15.  Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7
 
IP Logged
 
Page Index Toggle Pages: 1
Send Topic Print