Hi,

Inspired by Rad's Blog "Norton Ghost 2003 supports dual-layer DVD discs (8.5-GB)", and armed with the knowledge that my UJ-845 DVD writer supports DL, I rushed out and bought a three-pack of Verbatim DVD+R DL Disks for around AUD$14 per pack, and a few TDK DVD-RW (4x) Disks for testing.

I don't have my computer set up for the type of mean and lean Image I'm after, but keen to see if this Ghost thing really works. I have a Laptop, no Floppy Drive, two HDDs in a Hardware RAID-0 Array, no Partitions, one CD/DVD Drive, and no stand-alone DVD-Burning Software. I'm still smarting over the fact that Ghost 10 (in Norton SystemWorks Premier 2006) failed to write directly to any type or brand of DVD that I tried. And the fruitless hours wasted on the phone to Symantec Support!

Tips and advice from the top-class contributors to these Forums lead me in the direction of DOS and Ghost 2003 which is packaged away on the NSWP 2006 Installation Disk. I hit a few snags in the Virtual Partion which dropped me to the DOS prompt. But I was surprised and delighted to see that running ghost.exe revealed a single C: Drive (my RAID-0 Array), and not just two HDDs. Yes!!

The problem that I am having is with the Optical Media. I have come across half a dozen or so Error Mesages, and I've lost track at the moment. ATM, my computer is having a rest from relentless rebooting, so I'll test my memory here.

For my first attempt at writing an Image, I used straight-out-of-the-packet TDK DVD-RWs. When the computer reboots to the Virtual Partition, I see and hear activity on the DVD Writer. But then the screen goes to a counting-down DOS screen with options to Reboot or Retry. From memory, the Error Heading is "CD/DVD error - try a different media brand or type". Selecting the Retry option starts Ghost with the warning "The DVD Disk is not Blank. Overwrite it?" Selecting "No" gives a message to erase the disk - "No", "Quick" or "Full". Selecting "Yes" to the previous Overwrite question gives "Unable to Erase this disc." Everyway I go leads to either a plain DOS prompt with instructions to use ghreboot.exe, or the DOS countdown screen with the options to reboot or retry.

I had a few unused TDK CD-RWs lying around so I thought I'd give them a go. And it worked. My first Ghost Image! Not quite. Eighty CDs and six hours seemed a bit much! LOL... At least things seemed to be working.

Next I tried a straight-out-of-the-packet Verbatim DVD-R (8x). No go! This is testing my memory... The error message was something like "The DVD is not blank. Insert a disk that has not been previously written." And exactly the same thing with the brand-new DVD+R DL Disks.

I was thinking that CDs were my only option. (80 CDs is not really an option!) Then I remembered my BartPE was on a Verbatim DVD+RW. So I erased him and gave that disk a go. It also worked! I only had the one DVD+RW so cancelled the operation after the first disk was written to. I think I needed 8 disks for my presently bloated system... around 30 GBs for the Image; around 40GBs used on my C: Drive.

Finally, before I finished up, I gave another unused Verbatim DVD-R a try. This time Ghost started writing the Image. If it hadn't worked, I probably would have given up, gone out and bought an external Drive, and gone back to Ghost 10. But now I'm determined...  

A new day, and just now, I tried the DVD-RWs again. Straight-out-of-the-packet, but no go! I haven't yet given the DVD+R DL Disks another go, but I guess that that is next.

I'm struggling to find any rhyme or reason for this behaviour. I would like any suggestions for troubleshooting the issue. Is there any way of predetermining whether an attempt by Ghost to write an image to a DVD will be successful.

I noticed that when the Virtual Partition is booting, there is an option to hit F5 or F8 to step through the config.sys and autoexec.bat. Would this be useful? What would I look for?

Being unfamiliar with DOS, how would I go about opening and reading the Ghosterr.txt in the Virtual Partition to look for clues?

Or does the fact that the DVD-Rs failed at first then later worked, point to a glitch on the hardware side of the DVD writer? Resetting something?

Is there a freeware or shareware programme that might help troubleshoot?

All suggestions and advice will be appreciated.

El_Pescador wrote on May 16^th, 2007 at 4:53pm:

EP, I'm not in your league with external HDs. My first was USB with a fan. My second is SATA/USB without a fan. Using SATA mode, I monitored the HD temperature and I was surprised to find that it ran cooler than my internal HDs.

Hi, this is somewhat familiar territory for me.

You can use Roxio or Nero (and other programs) to "format" the DVDRW.

a used RW type disc is probably "formated" by the software that wrote to it.

I don't use RW discs, just -R and +R discs with an internal DVD-RW Drive.

There is another post here or on the old Radified forum about "external optical drives" started by NightOwl. You will have to search for it, my memory escapes me.

I think it may be impossible to use external USB optical drives, but I may be wrong.

That's strange. It actually formatted them like a CD-R then?

When I use DVD-R or DVD+R Ghost uses the whole disc (or most of it).

There must be some missing code in Ghost to hand DVD-RW? It is like Ghost believes they are CD-RW instead.

Picture of a DVD+RW written with Ghost 2003 in the Virtual Partition. Note the size of the Image Files and the size of the CD Drive under "Details".

http://lh4.google.co.uk/image/allanf.allanf/RlTcJ42Yy_I/AAAAAAAAAB4/XVlqD78s5QU/...

(Testing picture uploads. Apologies for broken link in future.)