While testing my new build with Norton Ghost 2003, I have noticed a few peculiarities when files larger than 2 GB are present on the system.

One session files like pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys are excluded from the image. I have always avoided hiberfil.sys by disabling hibernation and set the pagefile to a semi-fixed size 768-1536 MB. (1.5 x RAM as the minimum and twice that as the maximum.) The size of my images have always become 768 MB smaller than "used space".

Now, with W7 and 4 GB RAM, the pagefile gets larger. It was set to "windows managed" by the installation. I don't recall the size but I set it to semi-fixed at 2048-4096 MB.

When creating the first image, used space was 12190 MB. I expected the "MB copied" to become 12190-2048=10142 MB but it became 11167 MB.

Now what? Well, I had forgotten about hiberfil.sys which was 3070 MB. I should have expected the "MB copied" to become 12190-2048-3070=7072 MB

Now what?? "MB copied" were 4095 MB higher than expected and the size was only reduced by 12190-11167=1023 MB.

When the image was created, it leapt from ~7000 MB to 11167 MB in a second which prompted me to check the image file size in Windows Explorer (or whatever it's called in W7). The size was 6,96 GB = 7127 MB.

Next, I disabled hibernation and got rid of hiberfil.sys. The next image was created as I expected: Used space = 9120 MB. "MB copied" = 7072 MB (2048 MB excluded.)  In Windows Explorer, the size was 6,96 GB.

Finally, I increased the pagefile to 4096-8192 MB which resulted in more peculiarities. 11168 MB used resulted in 11168 "MB copied" but the file size in Windows Explorer was still 6,96 GB.

Conclusion: When files larger than 2 GB are present, Ghost 2003 runs into trouble. The reason is probably that the image files are split into 2 GB chunks. Even if the files are excluded from the image, Ghost 2003 has to make calculations and it doesn't get it right. "MB copied" gets wrong and the time expectancy to create the image and the resulting transfer speed also get wrong.

I'm satisfied that the resulting image is the right size and passes the integrity check but I'm still trying to figure out the logics behind this ... ... if there is any.

Edited: I guess the "error" is a multiple of 1 GB (1024 MB) and the actual values are due to "rounding off" effects. This is due to the size of pagefile.sys being a multiple of 1 GB and the size of hiberfil.sys being close to a multiple of 1 GB. I wonder what would be the case with "non-multiple" sizes?