I have used Ghost for years and yes it has saved me many times.  Currently I use Ghost 12 and discovered to my dismay that the multiple backups of my C: Drive were corrupt.  It appears the OS was corrupt and Ghost just make images of it.  When I went to restore it, obviously the OS was corrupt.  My questions is, how do I verify that the image including the OS is good?  I can restore to a separate hard drive, (K:), but how can I boot from that drive without opening the computer and disconnecting the drive.  Is there any other way to verify the backup.
Thanks in advance for the advice.   

eightd2

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Well, as the old saying goes, "Garbage in, garbage out"!  If your OS has something wrong with it (and apparently you were not aware of it), then any Ghost image will also have that corruption recorded within that image file.

The only way around this, that I can think of, would be to have enough backup image files going back far enough so you can eventually restore an image that was made before the corruption occurred.

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Ghost has a function that checks that the image *integrity* is okay--you have to run that as a separate procedure.

But, how to know if an OS has some sort of corruption--there are multiple testing procedures to see if anything is wrong with the system--such as anti-virus scans, anti-spy-ware scans, hardware testing scans, Windows Registry scans, etc.--but, unless you guess correctly at what to test for--or are aware of the problem to begin with, until you become aware of the problem, you will be saving that corruption to any Ghost image files that you make!

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On newer systems, you can enter the BIOS utility during boot and select which HDD will be the boot drive--so that can avoid the issue of having to open the physical case up and changing the HDD wires around.

But, again, sounds like you didn't know there was a corruption--so how does restoring an image file to another HDD and booting from it help--you wouldn't know you are looking for any corruption?  Or, are you saying you know there's a corruption, and you want to test your old image files by restoring them to see if the corruption is present in that image file?  If so, just restore them to your current main HDD and check for the corruption (you could make a backup image of the present state of your HDD to restore later if you're worried about loosing your current corrupted OS).

eightd2

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Yes, correct if you choose that option. 

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You can do a *manual* check--see *Verifying a recovery point after creation* on page 68 of the Ghost 12 User Guide.  Older DOS based Ghost you use *Local > Check > Image File*.

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No.  But, you can assign a drive letter to a Recovery Point and run a virus check or ScanDisk (Chkdsk) on it--see *About exploring recovery points* on page 99 of the User Guide.

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Only if you have cloned a *bad* version of the OS directly to the other HDD--or from a backup image that has the bad OS!  As I mentioned, if you have enough backups going back far enough, you should be able to find a *good* backup somewhere in the past!

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Symantec will not allow the Ghost 2003 Windows interface to be present on a system if you install Ghost 9 or later--I've never seen an explanation why.  But, Ghost 2003 is a DOS based program--you do not need the Windows interface to use it--just need the necessary boot media to get to DOS and have access to the Ghost program.  So, you can install the more recent versions of Ghost if you wish--and use Ghost 2003 from DOS without any problems.