Hi,

I am trying to restore an image from a Network share to a Dell Optiplex 210L (Windows XP Pro SP2, 40GB NTFS Volume, 4 partitions).

The image is just over 2G in size. The restore is taking over an hour, which is way too long.

I have a Dell Inspiron 510M, which I restored an Image to. It took 9 mins to restore the Image (2GB). The laptop is partioned the same way, with 4 NTFS Volumes. The optiplex are both plugged into the same switch and both Images are located on the same share on the same Server on the same network.

Sound like a hardware issue? Speed of the hard drives?

Any ideas would be gratefully appreciated.

Thanks

Hi NightOwl,

Thanks for your quick reply. The image actually finishes but takes over an hour. I was able to resolve the issue. The restore now takes 6 mins. 210L drives are SATA. The issue was a BIOS setting for the hard drive controller. On the Optipley 210L BIOS you have two settings, Normal Mode (for latest OS) and Combination mode for legacy OS. Becasue I was using a Network boot disk I was effectivly working in DOS enviornment therefore the SATA drives had trouble restoring the Image. By changing BIOS hard drive controller setting to Combination mode for the restore, it drastically changed the speed. From over an hour to 5-6 mins. I changed the BIOS back when the restore was complete. Good article I found was ....

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/0/8e630335d1b9274388256a480063a14...

Many thanks for your help. I hope this helps also.

Cheers,

Vincenzo

useful info:
There are several modes available in the BIOS Setup for defining the motherboard behaviour with regard to S-ATA and P-ATA devices. Which options are available depends on the motherboard, but the following options will always be there:

    * Native, or Enhanced
    * Legacy, or Combined
    * Auto or Mixed

On some mainboards it is even possible to disable S-ATA altogether. If that option is chosen, the motherboard will work like it has no S-ATA at all.

On Packard Bell systems the Legacy mode is used by default. The main reason for this is the way the software is installed during production or during system restoration with the Master CD or DVD. During this process, Ghost (version 7.5) under DOS is used. This software is not yet able to cope with S-ATA in Native mode.

which one can conclude that you can still use old  ghost.exe(7,7.5,8) in DOS with new hardware Motherboard SATA hard disks if  the setting in the Bios is set to LEGACY MODE  ??

regards Ben