Hi,
I have a problem when I try to restore a prevoiusly made ghost-image to the disk it is made of. Everytime I get this error 40011, which means that the destination drive may be too small.

Some background story: A friend of mine uses Ghost for some time now and he told me about it and we made some backups of Windows, Suse Linux, even Solaris and restored all of them successfully to test its usefullness.

So, one week ago, I bought my own copy of Ghost 10, although I only use Ghost 2003 as a bootable backup mechanism as I have Linux installed, which won't run Ghost 10.
I have done some backups with different compressions on an external firewire/usb-disk and, as a true believer of the alknowing Murphy , tried to restore these images now for testing purposes, instead of waiting for a real headcrash.
What should I say, each and every image resulted in an 40011-error.

The help pages of symantec are not really helpful, as they only offer a command line for cloning, which is not my intention.

Oh, the support for ghost 2003 was discontinued on May 31. 2006.
The Live operators wouldn't help, they said it is an unsupported version and that's it.

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/docid/1999113007224925

and even google offered no help at all.

According to the command line they provided, I tried to build one on my own but they all didn't work either:

ghost.exe -clone,mode=restore,src=d:\image.gho,dst=1,sze2=V -fis -or
ghost.exe -clone,mode=restore,src=d:\image.gho,dst=1,sze2=57xxxM -fis -or
ghost.exe -clone,mode=restore,src=d:\image.gho,dst=1,szeL -fis -or

Disk 1 should be restored, partition 1 is swap, 2 is the filesystem,
disk 2, or d:\, is the usb/firewire-disk.

I have searched the net, this board, read High rad completely and low rad up to page 25, I have found nothing that would even come close to this problem.

Any help is appreciated, thanks in advance

Hawkeye wrote on Aug 14^th, 2006 at 8:06am:

If I were faced with your situation, for schitz und giggles I would simply boot from the and engage the legacy Backup/Restore procedure in the Windows Preinstalled Environment by following the path to perform a Ghost Recovery of the *.gho/*.ghs files created with Norton Ghost 2003.

For commentary on a novel approach to using external HDDs, click on the URL below:

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=11440...

Hawkeye

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Well, that's good to hear--but your response, though it added some new--and perhaps important insight--is confusing.

You many be mixing switches that ultimately become incompatible--so some observations--

Quote:

The *-ia* switch is forcing Ghost to create a *sector-by-sector* image, which includes blank space *zeroes*, and *temp* files that a *default* image backup would normally skip to save space for the image file and speed the backup.

That switch is usually only used for forensic work, or if there's something *special* about your software/hardware that requires the restored HDD to *look* like the original in some way--certain copy protection schemes that look for code at a specific location on the HDD.

Ghost 2003, by default, is supposed to support Linux--most folks run into problems if there is a boot loader that uses a special area of the Master Boot Record (MBR) area that is normally not included when imaging with Ghost in it's default mode.  This issue can be dealt with by using the *-ib* switch, which forces Ghost to include the entire MBR area, but allows Ghost to do a *default* backup image that ignores free space zeroes and temporary files--again to save space and time.

Quote:


The Symantec FAQ that you referenced states:

Quote:

That's at the *beginning*, not at the end!  May be a *mute* point, but--we are talking computers here--technical, technical--apples may not be equal to oranges   !

Quote:

You may not of meant what the above says--you may have been just trying to state what program you use--but wiping *unused space* is not the same as a *complete* HDD wipe--that includes the MBR--so the whole drive is *empty*, and you can start with a clean slate--no previous formatting or MBR or partition tables to possibly interfere.

Quote:

This is where I'm confused--Ghost should handle creating the partition on its own when it's doing an image restore of a *whole drive*.  

How are you performing your image creation and restores--are you doing *disk to image* and *image to disk*, or *partition to image* and *partition image to disk partition*?

In a previous post, you said:

Quote:

Those switches are attempting to force Ghost to control how the partition size will be after the restore.

This is purely speculation, but if you are using the *-ia* switch to create the image, and then using *sizing* switches to effect the restore--this may be creating incompatible instructions--when Ghost tries to restore an image created by *-ia*--it's going to try to *recreate* the HDD structure in that *-ia* image--but those sizing switches may be telling Ghost something different!  

And, if you are partitioning to a specific size before attempting a restore--depending on how you are instructing Ghost to restore, that may be conflicting with what Ghost's original mandate was in creating the image file with the *-ia* switch!

The error being reported may not be the *correct* error--sometimes programs simply give up and report an error because it *sees* an error condition--but it does not have the needed error coding to properly identify the *real* error.

Quote:

I would suggest trying to use Ghost in its *default* operating mode, perhaps with the *-ib* switch if there's a boot loader in the MBR to deal with, and see if it can create and restore the images without resorting to a lot of switches.

Add switches only if the *default* mode is not working properly.

The *KISS* principle!

Quote:

You would have to *test* this, but I suspect that if you start Ghost with a command line switch, and then over ride it in the GUI options area--the last item selected will govern--if you start with a command line switch and make no changes once in the GUI--that switch will govern.

I'll be interested to hear the results of your testing!

OK, finally it seems that the core problem is clear.

I began to understand when 5 cylinders were unpartitioned (appr. 39MB).
When Ghost restored this image, no error happened and a really helpful display occured:

Partition 1 grew from  1027MB to  1033MB, but only  1027MB were used,
Partition 2 grew from 20481MB to 20487MB, but only 20481MB were used,
Partition 3 grew from 35683MB to 35688MB, but only 35683MB were used,
free space shrunk from 39MB to 22MB.

Now it all was clear:
Fact 1) the BIOS doesn't report the last cylinder, so
Fact 2) Ghost tries to calculate the last cylinder !!!

But: Fact 2 isn't restricted to Ghost, EVERY booted system (e.g. SuSE installer) calculated this cylinder on its own.

Here are some hard numbers from a completely wiped disk:
Disk label by manufacturer: 60GB, 16.383 cyl, 16 heads
Now it becomes interesting!
gdisk: 57.231,6MB, 7.752 cyl, 240 heads
SystemRescueCD: 60GB, 116.280 cyl, 16 heads
SuSE 9.3 installer: 55,8GB, 116.280 cyl
SuSE 10.1 installer: 55,8GB, 7.296 cyl
Solaris 8 installer: 57.xxxMB (sorry, forgot to write it down), 58.139 cyl

Conclusion 1: EVERY system tries to create partitions on cylinder boundaries.
Conclusion 2: Every system calculates different numbers because of the mute BIOS.
Conclusion 3: Ghost tries to resize(inflate!!!) partitions to its own boundaries.

Because of conclusion 3 it is nearly impossible to restore an exact copy of a system with cylinder boundaries other than ghosts' on the same disk. The only exception is, when all boundaries are (accidentally) the same. (or use -id, but see later why)

And now I am also near to understanding, why GRUB makes so much trouble.
Please correct me, if I'm wrong.
-ia (all) just copies partitions (plus just the MBR, not the extended boottrack where GRUB is located)
-ib (boot) copies the complete boottrack including MBR, but leaves the partition table untouched, and according to Conclusion 3 the (freshly restored) start-pointer for the second partition now points to the end of the previous partition or into unused area between partitions. I don't know what is there, but definetly no filesystem with GRUB's config files, that's why GRUB fails to start and waits with a prompt. (Just a guess, but fact is, GRUB doesn't work.)
-id (disk) makes an exact copy of each partition, the complete boottrack AND corrects the partition table to the new boundaries.

Now GRUB works and the backup works, too
(and all I had to do was to spend a week+weekend in front of the computer and get a lot of trouble with my wife )


To make a long story short:
use -ib if you use GRUB or similar bootloaders and
use -id if your (*BIEP*) BIOS won't tell the disk geometry.

Lessons learned, backup works. All I have to do now is to get some flowers and calm my wife.

I just hope that someday someone will find this all helpful as this might be the first (only?) solution to the 40011er error. 8)

Have an ice a day

Hawkeye

How old is the BIOS on your system?  Stumbled across this site:   

Understanding Disk Drive Terminology, Technology and Capacity Calculations, Copyright©2001,2005 by Daniel B. Sedory

In the sub-section titled *An outdated area called the Test Cylinder*, see here: 

Test Cylinder.

Made me think your problems! 

Does this apply to your BIOS and system?