Welcome, Guest. Please Login
 
  HomeHelpSearchLogin FAQ Radified Ghost.Classic Ghost.New Bootable CD Blog  
 
Pages: 1 2 
Send Topic Print
Ghost 2003 and external disk (Read 36094 times)
markymoo
N00b
Offline


I Love Radified!

Posts: 9


Back to top
Re: Ghost 2003 and external disk
Reply #15 - Nov 14th, 2007 at 9:03am
 

Hi bbct , I am back here is the necessary util to wipe your mbr fully. It works in windows. Wiping the first 63 sectors.

http://mbrwizard.com/

The command you need to do from a cmd box is this. First you need to list the drive to make sure you wipe the right drive.

MBRWiz /List

Wipe the entire first head on the first disk. Replace 0 to the drive you need to wipe.

MBRWiz /Wipe=HEAD /Disk=0

Then just recreate a partition with any s/w you use.

I had a external usb and i wiped with lots of partition software and even wiped the MBR but it still didnt mount files to see the drive. I examined the MBR and in the extended part was remains of an old Boot Manager like Grub that booted a hidden fat16 partition for dos utils.  It only when i wiped the entire MBR that it was good again. So a lesson learnt.







 
 
IP Logged
 

NightOwl
Radministrator
*****
Offline


"I tought I saw a puddy
tat..."

Posts: 5826
Olympia, WA--Puget Sound--USA


Back to top
Re: Ghost 2003 and external disk
Reply #16 - Nov 14th, 2007 at 9:41am
 
bbct

Quote:
thank you for the clarification about Ghost marking method. Do you know what are the consequences in usual Ghost operations (cloning/imaging) if one declines to mark the disk when requested?

In the DOS version of Ghost 2003, everything works fine--you just receive that request each time you load Ghost--and because of that, you can not use the *automation* command line features of DOS Ghost because there is no way to suppress or by-pass that nag screen.

If you were using the Window's Ghost interface--you could not proceed with any of the Ghost procedures--Windows Ghost 2003 simply forces you to allow the marking!

I have never found letting Ghost *mark* the drive to be a problem.

(By the way, Ghost also performs a second writing to a HDD that you perform a cloning or restore process to--called *fingerprinting*--it's a brief summary stating the most recent  procedure performed, and when it was performed--How to determine whether Ghost wrote to a disk or partition

It is also stored in sector 62 of the boot region.  This data is written by Ghost by default without any user request or intervention.  If you want to see what information is present, after booting to DOS, run Ghost with this command line:

Ghost -finger

But, you can suppress this behavior by starting Ghost with this switch (rather obscure and not well documented switch):  *-Fprnt=N*

ghost -fprnt=n

Quote:
BTW, could anybody suggest me the best/easiest/quickest method to wipe all info (MBR, MFT and so on) from the disk to start with a fresh hardware?

I second markymoo's recommendation for MBRWizard!
 

____________________________________________________________________________________________

No question is stupid ... but, possibly the answers are Wink !
 
IP Logged
 
bbct
Dude
*
Offline



Posts: 16
Italy


Back to top
Re: Ghost 2003 and external disk
Reply #17 - Nov 14th, 2007 at 10:12am
 
markymoo and NightOwl: thanks for directing me to MBRWizard.

I used it with mixed results:

*MBRWiz /wipe /mbr...* was successful, but

*MBRWiz /wipe /head...* reported an "Error 12: invalid entry in boot record" or something similar.

However, I've just created a primary 200 GB, fat32 partition on the disk (with Gparted, from Linux System Rescue CD), let's see if it works...
 
 
IP Logged
 
NightOwl
Radministrator
*****
Offline


"I tought I saw a puddy
tat..."

Posts: 5826
Olympia, WA--Puget Sound--USA


Back to top
Re: Ghost 2003 and external disk
Reply #18 - Nov 14th, 2007 at 11:27am
 
bbct

Quote:
I used it with mixed results:

*MBRWiz /wipe /mbr...* was successful, but

*MBRWiz /wipe /head...* reported an "Error 12: invalid entry in boot record" or something similar.

I have found that the documentation for MBRWizard is sometimes *muddled*--it's not entirely clear if a command is for the DOS version and/or for the Windows version!
 

____________________________________________________________________________________________

No question is stupid ... but, possibly the answers are Wink !
 
IP Logged
 
markymoo
N00b
Offline


I Love Radified!

Posts: 9


Back to top
Re: Ghost 2003 and external disk
Reply #19 - Nov 14th, 2007 at 11:28am
 
MBRWiz /wipe /mbr will of wiped sector 0 thats not enough.

you should do this then

MBRWiz /Disk=0  /Wipe=2

0 being the number of your right drive.

i give the correct syntax for windows.
 
 
IP Logged
 
bbct
Dude
*
Offline



Posts: 16
Italy


Back to top
Re: Ghost 2003 and external disk
Reply #20 - Nov 15th, 2007 at 10:05am
 
NightOwl and markymoo

thank you for the feedback!

Here are some results:

- wiped MBR of the Lacie
- made 200 Gb FAT32 partition (remaining space unpartitioned; used GParted)
- Ghost (with bios usb support) reports a new disk, marked it
- checked "look in" window: Ghost sees the Lacie and assigns a dos letter to it
- saved and checked successfully image of a small fat32 partition (about 4 GB, but only 370 Mb of data on it) Smiley
- tried to save an image of my WinXP partition (NTFS, 30 Gb, 8 Gb of data), got Error 29089 "Write to image file failed" at 36% Sad
- reboot, tried again, got same error at 93% Angry

- added an extended NTFS 200 GB partition (used Gparted)
- reboot, Ghost (with bios usb support) starts but crashes before the welcome screen (Ghost blue start screen overwritten by lines of garbled colours)
- deleted extended NTFS partition
- reboot, Ghost starts normally
- tried again to save image of Xp partition on the FAT32 partition, got almost immediately error 29089 (Ghost error reports 0% completed)

- wiped again MBR of the Lacie (thanks markymoo!)
- made 1 Tb NFTS partition (used Gparted)
- Ghost (with bios usb support) reports a new disk, marked it
- Ghost reports error 27014 "insufficient memory available" (Ghost error "Failed to allocate 1024 bytes of conventional memory. DOS error: memory control block destroyed (0x0007)"; Program call stack shows that execution is stopped after "LfoDeviceCommand::StartDriveEnumeration" and before "getDrives")
- modified config/autoexec (added device=himem and dos=high, removed driver for sata CD/DVD and mouse)
- reboot, Ghost starts
- checked "look in" window: Ghost sees the Lacie and reports it as NTFS volume
- Ghost freezes when Lacie selected as target of partition>image or check>image in the "look in" window
- tried -fni, no changes

I got a partial success with only one FAT32 partition, however in the case of a backup program, a partial success is like a total failure.

Googled error 29089: it seems like a Ghost 2002 error which was unable to work with usb disk, but Ghost 2003 should have resoved it.

I think I should give up...
 
 
IP Logged
 

markymoo
N00b
Offline


I Love Radified!

Posts: 9


Back to top
Re: Ghost 2003 and external disk
Reply #21 - Nov 16th, 2007 at 9:29am
 

something sounds suspect if you got failure at 36% and at 93% and not necessary the drive. isn't there a switch on back of lacie drives to change the speed of the firewire to default? if i remember rightly.

try this next. it will take a while. Smiley

MBRWiz /Disk=0  /WipeDisk=1

0 being the drive number

i pm'ed you on an alternative solution.


 
 
IP Logged
 
NightOwl
Radministrator
*****
Offline


"I tought I saw a puddy
tat..."

Posts: 5826
Olympia, WA--Puget Sound--USA


Back to top
Re: Ghost 2003 and external disk
Reply #22 - Nov 16th, 2007 at 10:47am
 
bbct

Quote:
I think I should give up...

If the hardware is not compatible with the software...well, then you're going to get a lot of lumps on your head banging it against a wall...  Wink !

But, you seem to have already determined that with alternative hardware, things work fine:

Quote:
Then I borrowed a different usb disk (TEAC 120Gb) from a colleague and... Voilą, Ghost worked perfectly with default bios (usb support/legacy enabled and SATA configuration on enhanced) and no dos drivers! And it is a NTFS disk!

Maybe that very large sized USB HDD is not supported in DOS--at least on your system.
 

____________________________________________________________________________________________

No question is stupid ... but, possibly the answers are Wink !
 
IP Logged
 
bbct
Dude
*
Offline



Posts: 16
Italy


Back to top
Re: Ghost 2003 and external disk
Reply #23 - Nov 19th, 2007 at 10:43am
 
markymoo,

I'm using the usb interface. I can't get Firewire working under dos: the aspi1394.sys does recognizes the Lacie and install itself, but Ghost crashes on start-up. BTW the Lacie has both firewire 400 and 800 interfaces, but my PCI adapter is only 800. I'll try to wipe again the disk, but I don't think this is the real problem.

NightOwl,

indeed it is frustrating to have a peripheral which works prefectly with one hardware (Thinkpad) and not with other (Asus P5B). I tried the Lacie also with my older PC, an Asus P4P800, here the problem is even worst: the pc hangs on boot when the external disk is found by the bios!

Do you have any idea about Ghost error 29089?
 
 
IP Logged
 
bbct
Dude
*
Offline



Posts: 16
Italy


Back to top
A solution...
Reply #24 - Nov 20th, 2007 at 10:45am
 
Well, at last I think I've found a trick to circumvent my desktop (Asus P5B) bios inability to access the Lacie via usb under Ghost.

This was my reasoning:

1) Thinkpad/Ghost > Lacie
2) desktop > TCP/IP peer-to-peer > Thinkpad
3) desktop > TCP/IP peer-to-peer > Thinkpad > Lacie

and it works!

I made two TCP/IP network Ghost boot disks, linked the desktop to the Thinkpad with a crossover ethernet cable and was able to image a desktop partition to the Lacie, which is connected to the Thinkpad via usb.

I successfully imaged/verified both one small FAT32 partition and one large NTFS partition to the Lacie (NTFS).

Now I have two questions:

- if I want to verify an image just saved in one of the slave drives, I must establish a new peer-to-peer connection (select master/slave), even if Ghost has not been closed. In other words, Ghost seems to close the connection between master and slave each time it carries out an operation. Is this normal behaviour?

- I would like to establish a Ghost TCP/IP peer-to-peer connection over our departmental lan. Our server has a DHCP service (Windows Server 2003). I selected the "get IP address from DHCP" option in Ghost boot wizard, but when I try to establish a connection Ghost says "Unable to start TCP/IP, Can't find DHCP server, Possible network setup problem (error 19913)". The NIC driver should be OK because it works in the case of a direct connection with the crossover cable. Maybe it needs to be configured in the case of a lan connection?

Thanks fo any help

(Admin, if I'm going OT please let me know, I'll start a new thread).

 
 
IP Logged
 
NightOwl
Radministrator
*****
Offline


"I tought I saw a puddy
tat..."

Posts: 5826
Olympia, WA--Puget Sound--USA


Back to top
Re: Ghost 2003 and external disk
Reply #25 - Nov 21st, 2007 at 1:07am
 
bbct

Interesting work around to your problem!  I think I'd try to get a compatible USB HDD...but your effort shows good trouble shooting resolving skills!

Quote:
Ghost seems to close the connection between master and slave each time it carries out an operation. Is this normal behaviour?

I have not used networking often enough to answer that question--but, I suspect it may be.  One possible work around is to use the *-script* switch along with a script file:

Quote:
-script

Allows you to specify a series of commands (one per line) that Norton Ghost will execute
in sequential order.

For example:

ghost -script=script.txt

Following is an example of script.txt:

-clone,mode=create,src=2,dst=c:\drv2.gho
-chkimg,c:\drv2.gho
-clone,mode=create,src=2,dst=c:\part2.gho
-chkimg,c:\part2.gho

This might allow Ghost to perform sequential steps without going back to the opening screen--but maybe not--would have to try to see!

Quote:
when I try to establish a connection Ghost says "Unable to start TCP/IP, Can't find DHCP server, Possible network setup problem (error 19913)"

I had a similar error problem which took me over a year to finally find why I was having the problem--and my problem may not apply to you--but it turned out that unless I physically powered down the system--and then re-booted from a *cold* start--my BIOS and NIC would not properly reset and connect and get a new IP from the router.

My usual way to re-boot to DOS was/is to re-start from Windows--and the NIC card was retaining the resource settings from Windows--and the DOS settings did not match those--and so the NIC never communicated with the router to get the automatic IP assignment!  Easy enough to try to see if it makes a difference for you!  Maybe you already power down?!
 

____________________________________________________________________________________________

No question is stupid ... but, possibly the answers are Wink !
 
IP Logged
 

alexbohner
Ex Member




Back to top
Re: Ghost 2003 and external disk
Reply #26 - Nov 22nd, 2007 at 9:37pm
 
[quote author=bbct link=1194451981/15#17 date=1195056748]markymoo and NightOwl: thanks for directing me to MBRWizard.

I used it with mixed results:

*MBRWiz /wipe /mbr...* was successful, but

*MBRWiz /wipe /head...* reported an "Error 12: invalid entry in boot record" or something similar.

For clarification, you wiped the MBR with the first MBRwiz command, therefore no valid MBR still remained on the disk for further operations.  The error from the second command was simply stating this.

Regards,
Alex

 
 
IP Logged
 
bbct
Dude
*
Offline



Posts: 16
Italy


Back to top
Re: Ghost 2003 and external disk
Reply #27 - Nov 23rd, 2007 at 3:20am
 
NightOwl,

even with a cold reboot, the network boot disk simply created with Ghost boot wizard does not work, unless the computers are directly connected and IP addresses given in wattcp.cfg. BTW I discovered that most recent NIC are capable of crossover detection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_crossover_cable, so a crossover cable is not required in my case (Realtek RTL8168/8111 of Asus P5B and Intel PRO/1000 of the Thinkpad).

At last I was able to use Ghost over lan with DHCP using  the Universal TCP/IP Network Bootdisk. I've not yet figured out how this boot disk works, but I would like to, in order to create a slimmed down version (I think it loads a ramdisk...).
Your suggestion to cold boot is a good one and should be usual practice when testing hardware configurations, as I learnt early in my experiments with the USB bios settings! However I noticed that after closing a network dos session, Xp takes a little longer to login in our lan, even if I cold reboot.


alexbohner,

Quote:
For clarification, you wiped the MBR with the first MBRwiz command, therefore no valid MBR still remained on the disk for further operations.  The error from the second command was simply stating this.

thank you, this explains also why the second time I wiped the re-formatted disk, this time only with the "MBRWiz /wipe /head" command, I did'n get that error.
 
 
IP Logged
 
NightOwl
Radministrator
*****
Offline


"I tought I saw a puddy
tat..."

Posts: 5826
Olympia, WA--Puget Sound--USA


Back to top
Re: Ghost 2003 and external disk
Reply #28 - Nov 23rd, 2007 at 8:52am
 
bbct

Quote:
unless the computers are directly connected and IP addresses given in wattcp.cfg

So, when you created the boot disk, you specified the IP addresses for each boot disk.  So, the IP address you chose is specific to that boot disk, and Ghost assigns it to the NIC during loading--does that sound accurate?

Quote:
At last I was able to use Ghost over lan with DHCP using  the Universal TCP/IP Network Bootdisk.

Well, that strongly suggests that it's a setting or driver problem that hasn't been set correctly by the boot wizard--you could try to use the F8 key during boot and initial loading of the *Universal TCP/IP Network Bootdisk* so you can select *Step-by-Step* execution of the boot files command lines.  Should be able to see what driver is loaded and what command line is used--don't know if it would help--but it lets you see what's happening in *slow motion*!
 

____________________________________________________________________________________________

No question is stupid ... but, possibly the answers are Wink !
 
IP Logged
 
bbct
Dude
*
Offline



Posts: 16
Italy


Back to top
Re: Ghost 2003 and external disk
Reply #29 - Nov 23rd, 2007 at 9:38am
 
Quote:
So, when you created the boot disk, you specified the IP addresses for each boot disk.  So, the IP address you chose is specific to that boot disk, and Ghost assigns it to the NIC during loading--does that sound accurate?

Yes

Quote:
you could try to use the F8 key during boot and initial loading .... it lets you see what's happening in *slow motion*!

Good idea, as usual! I'll report next week, bye
 
 
IP Logged
 
Pages: 1 2 
Send Topic Print