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Ghost 2003/Ghost 8.2 and Windows Vista (Read 401099 times)
NightOwl
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Re: Ghost 2003/Ghost 8.2 and Windows Vista
Reply #105 - Sep 25th, 2007 at 9:36am
 
justanotherday

Quote:
Bottom line I want to use a product that works and is competent like Ghost 2003. I loved that product but I will admit it was sssllllooooowwwww.

Hmmmm....compared to *what*?
 

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Re: Ghost 2003/Ghost 8.2 and Windows Vista
Reply #106 - Sep 25th, 2007 at 9:44am
 
Do you really need to ask that?
Been doing backups for 10 years. Dos based back ups have always ran slower than windows based backups. I have never felt good about windows backups. Been searching for another product that supports DOS ran image backups. Asked their tech support how could a competent backup be made while windows is in use. Something about PHyLock ... referred me to documentation. But when reading it I found this in their notes

"It should be noted that the consistency is based on a point in time.
Although there is an attempt to pick a "clean" point in time, there is no
guarantee that all software programs, internal caches, and the like are
in a clean state at that point.  This is true of ALL backup software that
is backing up a volume that is in use."

Anyway that answers my question on trusting windows backups.

Oh and back to your comment. Put a clock to ghost 2003 DOS image time for a large drive. Then put a clock to Ghost 12 windows backup. You tell me. If I'm wrong I will apologize for incorrect information.

 
 
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Re: Ghost 2003/Ghost 8.2 and Windows Vista
Reply #107 - Sep 25th, 2007 at 10:01am
 
justanotherday

Quote:
Do you really need to ask that?

Well, I thought you were comparing it to another DOS based backup or imaging program.  I have never been convinced that Windows *hot-imaging* is completely trust worthy--and your quote seems to once again suggest that even the engineers are not completely convinced either!  I have yet to install and try a Windows based imaging solution for that reason!  I will probably try one only if DOS Ghost will no longer meet my needs!

Who exactly are you referencing?

Quote:
Asked their tech support how could a competent backup be made while windows is in use. Something about PHyLock ... referred me to documentation. But when reading it I found this in their notes

"It should be noted that the consistency is based on a point in time.
Although there is an attempt to pick a "clean" point in time, there is no
guarantee that all software programs, internal caches, and the like are
in a clean state at that point.  This is true of ALL backup software that
is backing up a volume that is in use."
 

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Pleonasm
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Re: Ghost 2003/Ghost 8.2 and Windows Vista
Reply #108 - Sep 27th, 2007 at 8:20am
 
Justanotherday, can you kindly provide a link to the quote (Reply #106):

Quote:
"It should be noted that the consistency is based on a point in time.  Although there is an attempt to pick a "clean" point in time, there is no guarantee that all software programs, internal caches, and the like are in a clean state at that point.  This is true of ALL backup software that is backing up a volume that is in use."

Who authored this statement?  Where did you find it?  When?

For information that should help quell your concerns, please review the thread Hot Imaging.
 

ple • o • nasm n. “The use of more words than are required to express an idea”
 
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Re: Ghost 2003/Ghost 8.2 and Windows Vista
Reply #109 - Sep 27th, 2007 at 1:08pm
 
Here is the emails I sent and recieved. Start at the bottom and work your way up. I will post the readme in the next reply.

Once again if I am incorrect I apologize.





http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/utilities.html

Regards,
David F.
TeraByte Unlimited


got a link


Hello,

You'd use PHYLock with IFW.  PHYLock has a readme.
Regards,
--
David F.
TeraByte Unlimited
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com


David,
Are there any articles about making images of windows while in windows and how this is done and if it works 100% correct. I am a Engineer and I am really curious how this can be done with files in use.



Hello,

1 They all can be used.
2 yes.
3 no, you don't have to be, but you can use IFD or IFL or IFW from a PEBuilder type of disc (plug-in on main IFW support page) if that's your preference.



Regards,
--
David F.
TeraByte Unlimited
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com


I just bought a pc with Vista.

1.       Which of your products are Vista compatible and which are not?
2.       Can I make an image of my PC that is running Vista for storage and then install XP. Then down the road when I want to go back to Vista be able to restore the Vista image over the XP in use? Tried this with Ghost ver 12 and it doesn’t work, Symantec says I have to manually reload Vista first and then I can restore my stored image.
3.       Do I need to run from DOS to make images. I don’t think I trust making images from windows when files are in use? Can you explain this to me. I was always told the most reliable way is to boot into a program and not use window.
4.       I like ghost 2003. I do not like any of the versions since then. Is your product similar to the DOS versions of ghost. I never had any image problems with it. I just don’t think it works with Vista. Something about the way Vista formats drive???
 
 
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Re: Ghost 2003/Ghost 8.2 and Windows Vista
Reply #110 - Sep 27th, 2007 at 1:10pm
 
Second paragraph down. This is the first section of the readme. You can follow the link in the previous post and read it yourself.

And yes if I am misunderstanding I again apologize.





PHYLock(TM) Version 2
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PHYLock is an add-on software component for Win NT/2K/XP/2K3/AMD64 that
enables Image for Windows to maintain a consistent backup of an unlocked
partition or volume.

It should be noted that the consistency is based on a point in time.
Although there is an attempt to pick a "clean" point in time, there is no
guarantee that all software programs, internal caches, and the like are
in a clean state at that point.  This is true of ALL backup software that
is backing up a volume that is in use.
 
 
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Re: Ghost 2003/Ghost 8.2 and Windows Vista
Reply #111 - Sep 27th, 2007 at 1:25pm
 
Years ago when the first version of being able to make images via windows I made a call to Ghost tech support. I think back then the software did a virtual DOS drive or somethning. I however never used it. The support person told me using DOS boot disk was the only true reliable way.

BTW this was way back when tech support wasn't some one who spoke another language and was reading from a list of canned replies. This guy seemed to really know what he was doing.

I have called Symantec several times. Asked for supervisors. Asked them for answers to these questions. They didn't know and I was told I would get a call back soon with answers to my questions. NO CALLS! No surprise though. Found the same problem with HP. Interesting that when a company becomes part of a larger corp support seems to be very limited, usually email only.

In my humble opinion I wish Ghost was not part of Symantec.
 
 
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Pleonasm
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Re: Ghost 2003/Ghost 8.2 and Windows Vista
Reply #112 - Sep 27th, 2007 at 3:46pm
 
Justanotherday, thanks for posting this information.

It appears that the concern expressed by TeraByte Unlimited is not really directed toward “hot imaging” as a generic image backup approach; rather, it is specifically focused upon the performance of their PHYLock product.  If TeraByte Unlimited says that PHYLock can’t guarantee a consistent snapshot of a hard disk drive while running in Windows, then I have no reason to doubt that statement.  However, the fact that TeraByte Unlimited cannot achieve this objective doesn’t mean that “hot imaging” is a flawed approach -- it implies only that the implementation of “hot imaging” by one vendor (TeraByte Unlimited) has undesirable limitations.

Therefore, you may wish to take a close look at ShadowProtect and Norton Ghost 9/10/12, all of which use the snapshot driver authored by StorageCraft.  There is no evidence (logical or empirical) of which I am aware that suggests these products fail to reliably and consistently produce a stable, point-in-time image of a hard disk drive from within Windows.

Concerning customer support, note the accolades for the ShadowProtect product described in this thread.
 

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Re: Ghost 2003/Ghost 8.2 and Windows Vista
Reply #113 - Sep 28th, 2007 at 12:04pm
 
FYI, I posted an update on my experience in another related thread:

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1185409722/15

Basically gave up on Ghost 2003 with Vista.  Couldn't run Vista memory diagnostics, too much mucking around, and restore results were not sufficiently reliable.

Went with Vista Ultimate's built-in "Windows Complete PC Backup" imaging, and darned if it didn't work perfectly.  Will consider Ghost 12 after I hear more feedback, although this thread is encouraging so far.

Say, which version of PartitionMagic is Vista-certified now?  I'm only using a small chunk of my 200GB HD for Vista and apps, and would like to create a D: data drive, rather than have everything on C: on my Toshiba laptop.

Also, has anyone tried resizing their partitions in Vista using its built-in management tools?  I found this via Google:

How to resize a partition in Windows Vista:
http://vistarewired.com/2007/02/16/how-to-resize-a-partition-in-windows-vista/

Can anyone confirm this?  In the article's comments section, several posters referred to the difference between a volume and a dynamic drive in Vista is important as to whether resizing will work or not.  How would I know by looking at the drive in Vista's storage managment console?

If it works without reformatting, then we might not need PM for simple partition creation/resizing on the fly.

Thanks,

GhostUser
 
 
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Re: Ghost 2003/Ghost 8.2 and Windows Vista
Reply #114 - Sep 29th, 2007 at 6:17am
 
John. wrote on Sep 23rd, 2007 at 3:35pm:
Conclusion:  I had expected to have to perform a Vista boot repair or edit the bcd because the "restore MBR" option was not checked.  I assume that Ghost 12 must have automatically written a MBR on the drive.  At any rate, Ghost 12 obviously understood the Vista drive layout during the restore.  That is what I would call "vista certified".

Ghost4me, that's really interesting. Success!

Out of interest, does ptedit show a 63 sector or a 2048 sector partition offset on the restored HD and on the original HD?

Was the original Vista partition created by Vista during the Vista installation?

Was Vista the first partition on the original HD?
 
 
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Re: Ghost 2003/Ghost 8.2 and Windows Vista
Reply #115 - Sep 29th, 2007 at 8:34am
 
Brian wrote on Sep 29th, 2007 at 6:17am:
[quote author=Ghost4me link=1170184062/90#99 date=1190579733]
Out of interest, does ptedit show a 63 sector or a 2048 sector partition offset on the restored HD and on the original HD?
Was the original Vista partition created by Vista during the Vista installation?
Was Vista the first partition on the original HD?


Hi Brian.  I created a thread in the Ghost 9/10/12 board with more info about my test.
Ghost 12 restore results with Vista

1. See the thread re offsets.  (do you have link to the ptedit program?)
2. The original Vista partition came pre-installed on a new Dell pc.
3. No it wasn't.  That's the interesting thing:  Ghost either fixed up the partition order during the restore, or else the order doesn't matter anymore with bcd.  (see other thread).
 

Ghost4me  Ghost 9, 10, 12, 14, 15.  Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7
 
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Increasing your chance of a successful restore
Reply #116 - Oct 14th, 2007 at 8:35pm
 
Now that I'm building up my first Vista system and reading these 8 pages in catch-up mode, it sounds like a Ghost 2003 restore of a Vista image to the same hard drive where it had previously been installed is pretty much a sure thing.  And although the risk of an unsatisfactory result might be slightly higher, restore to an empty, never-used-before drive will probably also work if you use the three bcdedit commands as described by adenewton above in reply #61.

But, I would think that if your Vista hard drive dies and you have no choice but to restore to a new, unused disk, that might you increase your chances of success to 100% again if you take the time to do a preliminary clean install of bare Vista on the hard drive from the original media first.  This would make any required MBR (and any other)? modifications to the hard drive…. then go ahead and restore your previously made Ghost 2003 image over the top of that in the DOS environment.  Now your chance of failure should be reduced to about as close to zero as you can get?

Does that sound right?

Ken
 
 
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Re: Ghost 2003/Ghost 8.2 and Windows Vista
Reply #117 - Oct 15th, 2007 at 2:38am
 
k4kjf,

Quote:
But, I would think that if your Vista hard drive dies and you have no choice but to restore to a new, unused disk, that might you increase your chances of success to 100% again if you take the time to do a preliminary clean install of bare Vista on the hard drive from the original media first.  This would make any required MBR (and any other)? modifications to the hard drive…. then go ahead and restore your previously made Ghost 2003 image over the top of that in the DOS environment.  Now your chance of failure should be reduced to about as close to zero as you can get?  

Does that sound right?

On my current XP system, I have only created images of the system partition, not the whole disk. This means that I have not captured everything for a straight forward restore of the whole disk to a fresh HDD but only the system partition. I have not had the "opportunity" to test but my idea is to make a clean installation of XP only and do the partitioning and formating of the other partitions. Next, I would restore the image of the system partition.

Would it work? I think so and why not on Vista?

Christer
 

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Vista restore to "new" hard drive using Ghost 2003
Reply #118 - Oct 24th, 2007 at 10:52am
 
I twice completed the exercise suggested in my post #116 above and commented on by Christer in post #117 to verify that the concept is good.  In both cases the restores were successful, Smiley but with an unexpected hiccup that turned out to be easy to get around.

These experiments were conducted on a new, not-yet-activated, Vista Home Premium installation. The intention here was to verify that in the event of catastrophic failure, a previously made Ghost 2003 image of the system could be successfully restored to a new hard drive.

Activation issues are ignored. If you are restoring your system for good and valid reasons you should be able to convince the Microsoft Tech on the Activation hotline of that fact and should with his/her help be able to subsequently reactivate your system.

In both tests, the target drives were old retired Win2k or XP hard drives which had never held a Vista Installation. A 13 GB Quatum drive was used in the first test, and a 20 GB Maxtor in the second.

I'll describe the sequence of events for restoring to only one of the drives, but both were identical.

(1) I installed Vista Home Premium to the target drive using a copy of the original installation DVD. Any existing partition on the drive was deleted and re-created. This step is merely to prepare the drive (especially the MBR) to later receive a previously made image of a Vista system partition.

(2) Then for the restore I rebooted off a copy of the Ghost 2003 CD-ROM, the one that mounts the CD as Drive C and allows changing to the C:\Support folder and executing Ghost.exe from there.

(3) After Ghost was running under DOS, I replaced the Ghost 2003 CD-ROM with a DVD disc containing the files from a previously made Ghost 2003 partion-to-image backup.  (By-the-way, the C-partition from the original Vista Home Premium installation from which the image was made, was 9.7 GB and the resulting image files on the DVD totaled 3.4 GB. I had selected High Compression when the image was made.) I then initiated a partition-from-image restore operation and let it run to completion which took 28 min.

(4) Then I rebooted and after POST completed, was presented with a simple black screen containing white text stating the following:
  Windows failed to start.  A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. Insert windows installation disc, reboot and choose “Repair your computer”.
  File: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
  Status: -xc000000e
  Info: The selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt.


(5) I loaded the original Vista Installation DVD and rebooted via ctrl-alt-del, and following instructions, selected "Repair". Shortly the System Recovery Options dialog box was presented stating the following:

   Select an operating system to repair and click Next.  Only Windows Vista operating systems are listed and can be repaired:
  Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista
  Partition size: 0 MB
  Location: (Unknown)


Then another dialog box appeared on top:
“   Windows found problems with your computer’s startup options.  Do you want to apply repairs and restart your computer?
  View Details:


When I selected "Repair Details" the following text appeared:
  Name: Microsoft Windows Vista
  Identifier: {485B7………………………..}
  Windows Device: Partition=Not found


I clicked “Repair and restart”.  Didn't take long and I soon saw the logon screen. After entering my password, the restored desktop appeared along with a message at lower right first stating:
  Installing Device driver – click to view details…

Then it changed to:
  Your devices are ready to use.  Device driver software installed successfully

And finally a dialog box appeared stating:
  You must restart your computer to apply these changes… Clicked “Restart Now”.

After the restart all appeared normal. The image had been successfully restored to a "fresh" hard drive! I rebooted several times and each time the system came straight up, just like it did originally.

So…. apparently the partition table in the MBR as written for the original, initial Vista installation is not quite correct for the restored image – even though I restored a partition image to the original partition created by the initial Vista installation.  Not quite sure about why that occurred, but allowing the Vista install process to "repair" the restored system seems to be a simple fix.

Anyhow, that's how it worked for me.  I'd be very interested to hear of any other experiences applying similar techniques.

Ken
 
 
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Re: Ghost 2003/Ghost 8.2 and Windows Vista
Reply #119 - Oct 24th, 2007 at 3:17pm
 
Ken,
thanks for your information, very interesting!

I manage our computer at the flying club. It is a BOAC (Box Of Assembled Components), inherited from a number of "scrapped" computers but it works. If something should happen to the hard disk, I always have a clone physically installed but not connected. It's a matter of minutes to get the system up and running again.

When I have cloned a working hard disk to another, I always test run the clone (with the original disconnected). On first boot, XP is a bit confused because it is installed on a hard disk it has never seen before ... Shocked ... and the "found new hardware" icon appears in the Notification Area. When the new hardware has been installed (no input from me), a prompt to reboot appears.

My guess is that something similar occurrs with Vista but Vista "takes it more seriously".

I wonder what happens during the repair? I have never had to do such an exercise on XP but I have "heard" that all updates to XP has to be reinstalled. What about Vista?

Christer
 

Old chinese proverb:
If I hear - I forget, If I see - I remember, If I do - I understand
 
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