First off, thank you for all the valuable information I was able to find on these forums yesterday before purchasing Norton Save and Restore, and today when trying to make it work!

I am trying to make an image backup of a PC with one drive by writing directly to an internal DVD burner. Using NSR to do this, things pretty well locked up after about 5 DVD's (SYSTEM went to near full cpu usage and stayed there until I unplugged the PC - no idea why as everything 'appeared' to be proceeding well). So much for hot imaging!

Next I followed the instructions for making a BartPE CD with ghost32.exe (restoreghost.exe) and ghostexp.exe, including editing ghost.inf to delete the ghostsrv and ghostcdr lines. I included the ghost 8 plugin, and the ATAPI plugin (downloaded the 4.71 drivers from Adaptec per the BartPE site).

I am able to boot the BartPE CD, but when I start Ghost it notifies "CD/DVD writing unavailable" (or words to that effect). I seem unable to get past this step, and I am hoping that someone here can help me.

I checked my CD/DVD burner against the list on the Symantec web site for Ghost 8 compatibility, and it is (apparently) a newer version on one that is listed (a Hitachi-LG). My PC is about 6 months olds - a Dell Dimension E510. Running Windows XP/MCE, fully patched.

I have read through everything on the forum that seemed remotely related (more than once!), so please excuse me if I have missed something obvious.

PS: I purchased the download version of NSR, in case that matters.

GhostQuest wrote on Nov 30^th, 2006 at 2:48pm:

I have been down the same path you are following, and sadly without result.  CLICK HERE to see where are not on the menu after all.  At first, I was "tongue-in-cheek" about the issue of going for Corporate Licensing of Norton Ghost Ver 8.2, but now I am ready to get serious if I can find nine other like-minded souls.

NightOwl wrote on May 22^nd, 2006 at 9:07pm:

NightOwl wrote on Nov 30^th, 2006 at 9:48pm:

There you go again - thinking rationally.  Admittedly, your assessment of the sitiuation is "spot-on" - as usual.

Nonetheless, despite my graying beard and snaggled teeth, I am quite infantile in wanting that which I cannot have - in this case it is Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 1.1  As a small boy, I was forever taking wind-up clocks apart just to see what made them tick

I began reading your replies Thursday before real life intervened for a bit. You went beyond my original questions, which is great! Here is where I'm at now:

I suspected that the ghostcdr.dll file had the cd/dvd support, but wasn't sure. Even at the quantity rate (if we got a group together as suggested) $40 is a bit steep for just that function, especially if it's as slow as you say. The NSR writing was slow enough. BTW, the corporate quantity license might not apply to an order from a group of individual entities (like people!). Have to read the license to know, but I doubt it would.

After reading your advice, I broke down and ordered a second hard drive. I'll do an image to there from time to time, and copy it to DVD for storage elsewhere. Fires happen too, right?

I have a second, older (much) machine with a (now) small first hard drive (30GB) and a second hard drive (160GB). I used a BartPE CD with Ghost32 to make an image of C onto the second drive. It made a very small '0' file along with a bunch of files about 2GB or 2.2GB in size each (that PC is not on right now). I used the Ghost32 menu options, I did not attempt to use any custom switches. I Figure I can copy those to the new PC (with the DVD writer) and copy them to DVD. As I didn't request it, I was lucky that it make small enough files, which leads to...

Brian, you mentioned split size of the ghosted image. How do I control that from within those Ghost32 menus (running in the BartPE)?

You also mentioned that on restore (from a DVD but with only 1 hard drive) that "Let's say you had 5 discs then the order would be 1 5 1 5 1 2 3 4 5 1". My system has two CD/DVD drives (one burner one read only). If I still had only one hard drive, would the same still apply or could I cut down on disk swapping by using both optical drives? Even though I will have a second drive on both systems, I think it's important to understand this. I might have a failure where I need to use the second drive as the only drive for a time, for example.

BTW, are the images created by Ghost essentially ISO-like files, meaning that I should burn them to DVD in the same fashion? Or, should I just create an ordinary data disk and copy them to it?

You mentioned that the Ghost 10 recovery environment would be able to read thh DVD's. Does that go for the NSR (Norton Save and Restore) recovery environment? That's what I purchased.

Brian also asked " Welcome to hot imaging. You mentioned you have a desktop PC with one HD. Could you let us know if the HD is partitioned? What are the partition sizes and the amount of free space in each partition? Do you have an external HD? Any spare HDs that you could use as a second internal HD?"

I think I've answered except the partitioning and free space. Free space is 176GB, the 'only' partition shows up as 228GB. I put only in quotation marks because there may be one or two hidden partitions. I started (I think it's called) diskpart on the BartPE CD to look for sure to answer your question, but it didn't run. The command line window opened (like with Ghost8.2), but then just exited without starting any partition program. Not wanting to take any chances on screwing up the system before I get a good image, I decided to leave well-enough alone for now. As best I remember the disk itself is supposed to be 250GB.

This system shipped without any OS, drivers, etc. CD's. There is a piece of cardboard saying how to recover, and with a web address to visit to request copies of CD's if I want them. Dell put all the necessary stuff on the hard drive in a separate area. Having been in or overseeing IT for more than 25 years, that didn't  float my boat. I visited the web site and it had no such instructions, et al. I called support and they were very forthcoming (and great to deal with), sending me a about six CD's in just a couple of days.

"Nonetheless, despite my graying beard and snaggled teeth, I am quite infantile in wanting that which I cannot have ..." El_Pescador, I thought it was just me!

About six+ months ago we got a new computer. The old one is still kicking. When we got it (nearly 7 years ago) the previous 'old one' wasn't much use for long. I had a second laser printer laying around, 300 dpi but it worked fine when I last had it hooked up. That was a long time ago. I set it up on the (now) old PC. It refused to power up. Long story short, I took it apart to see what I could see. Couldn't get it all the way apart (unless I resorted to serious destruction, and I was trying to fix it). Aborted and put it back together - sort of. When I finished I had screws left over ... Wife did the 'I told you so' routine!

GhostQuest

Brian does not appear to be available at the moment--probably fishing   --so I'll answer a couple of your questions:

Quote:


Part I:

There is no option once into the Ghost32 v8.2 GUI interface to control *splits*.  Ghost32 v8.2 is based on the DOS version of Ghost that is started from a DOS command line--and you can use *

Switches

* to control much of the behavior of DOS Ghost.

Turns out that Ghost32 v8.2 also accepts many of the same switches--so you have to open a command window in the directory where the Ghost32 v8.2 (aka RESTOREGHOST.EXE) is located, and start the Ghost32 v8.2 program with a command line load statement.

I don't use BartPE--so I don't know if you can open a *command window* in BartPE, and I don't know were the Ghost32 v8.2 program is located--hopefully Brian will be along and can answer that question!

Because Ghost32 v8.2 is designed to be compatible with the DOS versions of Ghost--DOS has a file size limit of approx. 2 GB--so the files created by Ghost32 v8.2 will be up to that size limit.

In another forum thread, the max size of data that a DVD can hold was stated to be

4482 MB

.  Dividing that by 2 gives a file size greater than the 2 GB (actually 2048 MB) file size limit--so dividing by 3 gives 1494 MB--so that's the split file size that will maximize the storage on the DVD using a Ghost32 v8.2 files type.  (My calculation may be flawed--if so someone will correct my reasoning   ! )  Note--the above forum thread is regarding saving Ghost 9/10 image files that do not have the DOS 2 GB size limit--but the idea is the same!

So, I have copied the *RESTOREGHOST.EXE* on the Ghost 10 Recovery Disk to my HDD, renamed it *ghost32.exe*, and it is located in this directory:  *G:\Ghost v10.x Info\RestoreGhost.exe renamed to Ghost32.exe\*.  I then open a command window in that directory, and type the command line: *ghost32 -split=1494*.  Ghost32 loads, and now when I create an image, each Ghost file will be 1494 MB's--except for the last one that will contain however many MB's are left over after the other 1494 MB image files have been created.





Here's the results of saving a partition using Ghost32 v8.2 and that command line switch to start it--and using Roxio's burning program to save those Ghost image files to a DVD--note that the file size in Roxio is not the same designation of *1494 MB*--but instead it's approximately *1,529,840 KB* (actual size varies depending on where Ghost can make the *cut-off* to end that image file--divide that number by *1024* and you will get approx. 1494), and in Windows Explorer it's approximately *1,566,557,755 kb* (divide that number by 1024 and then again by 1024 and you will get approx. 1494)!

Note--after placing three of the approx. 1494 MB files onto the DVD, there is approx. 320 KB of unused space indicated on the bottom *Estimated Project Size* information line.

NightOwl wrote on Dec 3^rd, 2006 at 12:46pm:

To get a Command Window in BartPE.....

Click GO > Command Prompt

ghost32.exe is in X:\Programs\ghost8.2

I tried NightOwl's    ghost32 -split=1494    and it does work in BartPE.

GhostQuest ,

Quote:

The reason I asked was those with a single partition on their only HD and plenty of free space can use Ghost 10 to write an image of the C: drive to the C: drive. It can then be burnt to DVD and the image deleted from the C: drive.

GhostQuest wrote on Dec 3^rd, 2006 at 11:43pm:

"Hot-imaging" and "cold-imaging" are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

El_Pescador wrote on Nov 30^th, 2006 at 12:38pm: