We still use Ghost 2003 (powers that be will not fork out the money for anything newer) and I've run into difficulties. To make a long story short -- I have a project that requires the burning of images to DVD. Here's the results of testing so far:

(1) DVD drives (both internal and external) are not seen through Ghost when using a boot cd or floopy created using Ghost. This happens for both pushing and pulling of images.

(2) The same internal and external devices will boot to the Ghost boot cd but will only see drives locally (not including the cd/dvd drive) or shared on the network.

(3) Images burned to DVD or CD using Ghost explorer and a third party burn utility are not seen by Ghost when pushing / pulling an image.

Images can be created / pulled down from our network shares but not from any local optical drives. The same optical drives that Ghost does not see during creation will boot to the application using the created boot discs. I'm not yet convinced this is a driver / compatibility issue as I can boot to the optical drives. Any suggestions?

robert.pierce

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Unfortunately, sounds like you are violating the normal EULA licensing agreements for Ghost--Ghost 2003 is a retail product licensed for a single computer--not meant for use in the corporate environment.

Having said that:

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Ghost 2003 can only burn an image to an optical disk if the built-in DOS driver for optical writers recognizes your optical drive as compatible.  If it does, then the optical drive will be identified in the drop down destination menu box with the *@* symbol in front of the drive description.  Being as Ghost 2003 was last updated in early 2005, newer optical drives are less likely to be compatible.

Ghost 2003 has never been able to write to an external USB optical drive--only internal optical drives.  But, with the proper DOS USB drivers loaded, Ghost can use an external USB optical drive to read images.

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Booting from an optical drive is completely separate from accessing data on an optical disc.  Your system's BIOS has to support booting from the optical drive, and being able to mount the hidden boot sector on a bootable optical disc as a *virtual* floppy drive--which gets assigned the drive letter *a:\*.  Your optical drive has to be *seen* by Ghost 2003's built-in DOS driver and have the *@* symbol assigned in front of your drive's description--or, you have to have your optical drives assigned a DOS drive letter during boot in order to be able to access the data portion of the optical disc.

Again, if your optical drive is recognized by Ghost 2003's built-in optical DOS driver, then your drive would be listed in the *source* drop-down menu with the *@* symbol in front of the drive description.  If it doesn't show up with that *@* symbol, then Ghost 2003 does not have the ability to use that built-in driver.

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Ghost 2003 will error out saying the image file is not a *Ghost image file* if a 3rd party burning utility is used--Ghost 2003 will recognize an image file that was burned to an optical disc only if Ghost 2003 burned the file using Ghost's built-in driver--i.e. your drive has to have been recognized by Ghost and placed that *@* symbol in from of the drive description.

You can get Ghost 2003 to recognize a Ghost image file burned to optical media by a third party utility by loading DOS optical drive drivers during DOS booting--if that driver assigns a DOS drive letter to your optical drive, then when you select your optical drive using its DOS drive letter, and then navigate to the Ghost image file, then Ghost 2003 will be able to mount that image file successfully.

If you have the Ghost Boot Wizard utility installed in a Windows installation, you want to select the *CD/DVD Startup Disk with Ghost*.