Bol at home

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What version of Ghost are you using?

For future reference, you can use subdirectories that help keep backup types (whole drive vs partitions) separated from each other--so partitions could all be in a subdirectory called *part_c, part_d, part_e, etc.*, and whole drive images could be *drive_1, drive_2, etc.

I use two digit month and two digit day to keep track of individual images--again using the subdirectory name to separate images--so today's subdirectory would be *0610*--and I use that same designation for the image file name *0610.gho*.

So, a whole drive image path could be *X:/drive_1/0610/0610.gho*--and a partition image path would be *X:/part_c/0610/0610.gho*.

Do you have the complete Ghost program?  If so, you should have *Ghost Explorer* (ghostexp.exe).  You can use that Windows based program to view what is contained in each image file to see what files, subdirectories and partitions are present in the image.  It's a good idea to keep copies of Ghost Explorer on several different media sources--because if you only have it on your main HDD--if it dies, it takes that program with it!

If you use the same compression when creating different images, then a whole drive image should be quite a bit larger than an individual partition image file of a multi-partitioned drive--although sizes will vary over time as data is added to the system.

If all else fails, you can restore the image to either a test HDD, or the future system HDD and see what you get.  If it's not what you expected--just restore the next likely image file and again see what you get!

Let us know how things go!

Dan Goodell

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You are absolutely correct!  I forgot about that aspect of restoring an image.

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You will be able to *see* what the image file contains in terms of a single or multiple partitions with either of the two restore options--*Local > Disk > From Image*, or *Local > Partition > From Image*.

In the former (whole disk restore)--after selecting the image file and the destination HDD, near the end of the selection process you are presented with the option to accept Ghost's suggested sizing of the partitions on the destination HDD, or you can re-size to whatever size you want--so you will *see* what partitions are present.  If you have *named* your various partitions with names you can easily recognize, you then see easily what's there.

For the latter (individual partition restore)--after selecting the image file as source, you are presented with an option screen where you select the individual partition to restore--so again you see the partitions present and the order that they are laid out in the image.  (But, in this case, Ghost does not show the partition *names* like in the above *whole disk restore* option--don't know why the Ghost programmers didn't use a consistent presentation scheme--but, that's the case here--there's all kinds of other identifying data such as file system used for the various partitions, size of the partitions, etc.--just not the *names*!)