Been a user of Ghost 2003 for several years and, despite a few quirks with ext USB drives along the way, have found it excellent for imaging and restoring individual partitions, something that later versions and alternative products simply don't do. Consequently, it's an app I hold in high regard and which I'd like to continue using, if at all possible.

About every two years I have a clearout and a tidy-up of my WinXP-based system and format the hard disk, or go back to an early partition image, and reinstall programs, dispensing with older programs no longer needed and installing new ones where appropriate. It's now getting close to that time.

On the occasions when I go right back to square-one, I've always reinstalled the whole Windows version of Ghost (ie. from the CD), but given that I've a floppy disc with Ghost 2003 Build 793 on it that I made a few years ago and with which I image and restore my partitions, do I really need the actual Windows program on my PC? I've never had cause to open and use the Windows environment version of Ghost 2003, so it seems it just sits on my hard drive taking up space for no good reason. When doing things in the Ghost PC-DOS environment, is the Windows installation ever referenced in any way? For instance, I've been wondering about the file VIRTPART.DAT that gets written into the top-level of the Root partition. Is perhaps the Windows program required to write that file into the Root partition?

So, if I never reinstall the Windows version of Ghost 2003, will the Build 793 floppy still work for making images and restoring partitions in XP?

One other thing I've been wondering is whether the jury is still out on whether Ghost 2003 is compatible with Windows 7. I presume it'll be completely incompatible with the 64-bit version of Windows 7. Anyone got convincing evidence of the compatibility, either way?

I'm pleasantly surprised.

Sounds like I ought to make, say, a couple of copies of the PC-DOS Build 793 floppy, then. Do I need to take any special care when doing that? I mean, can I just copy the files on it to a new folder in Windows and then move the files back on to a new, formatted floppy?

So, what significance has that VIRTPART.DAT file, then, in my root partition? Does that file not play a part at all in imaging or restoring?

For Windows 7, where do I set that -fdsp switch? Is it by any chance in PC-DOS under Options? If there, then is that only a per-session setting? Or does the switch need to be set permanently on the floppy, somehow?

And it works with Windows 7 64-bit as well? Crikey, that's amazing.

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I have never done that but yes, I think you can store the "ghost floppy/floppies" on the hard disk.

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If Ghost is launched from within Windows, VIRTPART.DAT gets created when the computer is rebooted "into Ghost". I have never launched Ghost from within Windows and have only heard about it.

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In the Norton Ghost Boot Wizard, choose Standard Ghost Boot Disk. When you get to "Ghost executable location", under "Parameters" type in: -fdsp

That sets the switch permanently.

Brian,
I think the "Ghost USB flash drive" is a good idea. I hope I'll get around to it some day. When I bought the components for my new build and insisted on a floppy drive, the guys started doing some "strange dances" ... ... !

Christer,

In your reply you said that if Ghost is launched from within Windows, VIRTPART.DAT gets created when the computer boots "into Ghost". That may well be the case but I've never, to my knowledge, tried to launch Ghost from within Windows on this machine, and yet that file is there, in my root partition. Have a look in your own root partition, to see if you've got it as well.

And as for that switch, ah yes, it looks like it's going to be worth me keeping the Ghost program for a while yet, until I've made sufficient and appropriate boot floppies.

voximan wrote on Sep 21^st, 2010 at 5:24pm:

voximan,

It's almost that simple, but it needs to be more than just formatted, it needs to be a bootable floppy.  Copy/recopy won't make it bootable.  If you start by making a DOS-bootable floppy, then copy/recopy should be sufficient for Ghost 2003.  For other programs, though, you can't always presume this practice will work.  They may expect the floppy to boot a particular OS (eg, MSDOS-6, MSDOS-7, FreeDOS, Caldera DOS, ...) or their own proprietary OS (like BootIt-NG, which is familiar to forum regulars).  They may also use hidden files that your copy/recopy method would miss.

Instead, you ought to look into a utility that makes backup images of a floppy disk.  It's much the same principle as Ghost--whereas Ghost makes images ("restore points") of hard disks, these utilities make an image of a floppy disk.  Store that image anywhere you want, and when you need it pull it back out and use it recreate a new floppy disk.  No formatting issues or anything, it's a quick and simple one-pass procedure.

There are a thousand ways to make a floppy image.  Google for "rawread.exe" and "rawrite.exe", a pair of DOS utilities that have been around for perhaps a quarter century, and still work fine--even from a command-prompt window in XP.  Or download my TrackCpy utility--which I wrote back in another era, and also works from a XP command-prompt window.  If you use linux there's the "dd" command, and in Windows there's WinImage.  The Nero or Roxio CD-burning programs, I believe, still create a floppy image from a physical floppy as a byproduct when building a bootable CD project.  And if you use any of the virtualization products (Microsoft Virtual PC, VMWare, VirtualBox, et al), they all seamlessly handle reading or writing,  to or from, virtual (ie, images) or real floppies as a matter of routine.

FWIW, in practice I don't bother making duplicate copies of floppy disks, CDs or DVDs for safekeeping.  Instead, I make images.  I have a whole library on an external hard disk of images going back over two decades--from an image of my original DOS-2.1, 360K, 5.25" floppy to an image of my Win7 DVD!  I can keep all my backups together in one place, the images are easy to organize into hierarchical folders, and I don't have to deal with physical media storage hassles.  If a floppy, CD or DVD eventually goes bad, I can recreate a new one anytime I want.