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midwestsurfguymidwestsurfguy wrote on Mar 22nd, 2012 at 8:14pm:A colleague of mine was using ghost 8 to make an image of a hard drive
Ghost 8 DOS--*ghost.exe*? Or, Ghost 8 Windows--*ghost32.exe*--that runs under Windows and not DOS?
midwestsurfguy wrote on Mar 22nd, 2012 at 8:14pm:All went well and the image verified. They even opened the image once to view files just to be safe
Seems like you did everything one should do to increase the comfort level that all went well.
midwestsurfguy wrote on Mar 22nd, 2012 at 8:14pm:re-installing the a clean system. Once the OS was setup they tried to re-open the ghost image to bring back the user data
Well, that's kind of *over kill* for using Ghost! There are other ways to backup and restore *User Data*. Ghost's claim to fame is being able to restore the OS without re-loading the OS from scratch--and having to re-load all the apps too--and of course, the user data is also restored!
What OS was the image taken off of? What OS is being used now to attempt opening the image?
midwestsurfguy wrote on Mar 22nd, 2012 at 8:14pm:the image will not open. Checked the disk that had the image with various disk utilities have no problem with it.
That's always disheartening. I presume we're talking about Windows *Ghost Explorer*? And it sounds like the image is on a HDD--internal or external--USB?
What version of Ghost Explorer is being used? Is it the same or newer than the version of Ghost used to create the image? A Ghost image that is from a newer version of the Ghost program that creates the image may not be compatible and loaded correctly on a version of Ghost Explorer that is older.
midwestsurfguy wrote on Mar 22nd, 2012 at 8:14pm:I know I need to find out what the error message is when ghost tries to open the image. I will try to find out tomorrow
Sometimes that can be helpful. But, many times Ghost error reporting is less than useful! Yes, there's an error--but the reported error may or may not be something that is interpretable, and of actionable usefulness.
midwestsurfguy wrote on Mar 22nd, 2012 at 8:14pm:I just wondered if there were some suggestions of things to try?
Well, I would re-try the *Image Integrity* check using DOS Ghost or Windows Ghost32--will one of them load the image and return a *Passed Integrity Check* response.
If *Yes*--then, instead of trying to use Ghost Explorer (that is not working!), you could find another spare HDD (has to be larger than the data size of the image file), restore the image to that, and now transfer user data from that restored HDD to the new OS.
Here's some references regarding Ghost Image issues:
How to handle a corrupted image fileHow to verify the integrity of an image fileThere's some interesting information about patching Ghost Solution Suite v2.5 and other information about stored image files on NTFS partitions
Let us know what you find out!