OT : Ghost

Hi Lee,

Ghost is a complete and total image of your disk as it is. Kind of like creating an ISO of a CD to copy it, but the entire disk.

because it only copies the data thats on the disk, you dont necessarily need an identical sized disk

Si

I find ghost absolutely excellent. Previous back up strategies needed the operating system reloading before putting back my data. With Ghost, it creates a complete image whilst running on 'pcdos', and if so set up can burn a CD or DVD that is bootable. As it isn't running your normal operating system whilst backing up there are no problems with open files that cannot be backed up. I now do a monthly complete ghost image which I can re-load in under 12 minutes. I do however prune the rubbish of my hdd first to keep the size down to onee DVD, clearing out the cache etc.

AWEM

AWEM

Ghost 2003 OEM

£12.18 inc vat on ebuyer.

That is the OEM, so if it comes without the box and destruction book, you can come round here and i'll give you mine since i dont need it (I was thinking about throwing it out anyhow since i only use the CD!)

Tom Woods uttered summat worrerz funny about:

Cheers, ordered. I'll let you know about the book, maybe after my exam on the 12th before I dare break anything.

If I understand it correctly ref the lap top I make an image on a network drive then bung on to DVD / CD via the machine with the DVD writer? Sounds simple enough.

Does it image all of the whole hard drive? I'm finding it hard to beleive it would cram all that stuff on a cd or DVD or does it use a number of disks? For instance once reinitiating the ghosted image would I notice any difference to the likes of email settings... old emails... stuff and things :-)

Lee

Lee_D uttered summat worrerz funny about:

Ignore the last, just re read Si's reply - Been a long hard day but if anyone wants to know about exposing a wound for the purpose of begging then I'm your man.

;-)

Lee D

it makes an exact image and will span disks

Andrew> I find ghost absolutely excellent. Previous back up Andrew> strategies needed the operating system reloading before Andrew> putting back my data.

I'd second that, and the later images can create a ghost image while under Windows.

I'm paranoid enough that I keep the drive with the image powered down when not in use, so that even if a virus destroys the machine, the data on the imaged disk is clean.

Get a decent USB2 external drive and a copy of Norton Ghost and you're well away.

Andy

That's not paranoid... I'm paranoid enough to keep the external drive in the fire safe when it's not in use.

My fire safe is down at the self storage place 16 miles away!

On 30/08/2006 17:01, Lee_D wrote: > Right my little techie friends , no point spending the coffee break reading here. There is no escape ;-) >

We use Drive Image Pro at work.

Dont ask me how it works - but it can reliably create an iso of your entire system, with boot partition, OS, and data while windows is still running..!

A mate of mine working in Malaysia has sent me his ghost images to store in my fire safe, so that's about 6, 617 miles !

It creates an image of your hard drive with a .gho extension. You also have to create a special boot disk & store the ghost image on a different partition, network share etc.

If you want free then use NTBackup (built into Win2k / XPPro) to create a SysState backup, along with your system & data partitions.

Restoring from either will completely restore your PC to the state it was when you backed up - desktop, installed apps, email, favourites - the whole lot. Just watch out - Ghost isn't that great if you try to restore to different HW than you created the image on. Oh & WPA is also a pain if you change HW.

Regards, Chris.

Mark Solesbury wrote:

At this point I wish I could clarify that I meant 16 miles straight down, but alas no ;-) Straight *up* would be interesting too!

Hi,

Ghost is an excellent program, but there are cases where it can cause severe problems.

If you are going to use Ghost, there are a couple of situations you should avoid.

1. NEVER use Ghost to duplicate NT based systems (windows NT, 2000, XP, Server 2003) if those systems are ever likely to end up on a Windows

2000/2003 domain. Te reason is that every system is given a unique ID during setup, which is used by the domain controllers. If you set up the systems, and then Ghost them, when they join the domain, they all appear to be the same system. The first inkling of a problem is when you can't log on from certain machines. You can get round this but it is a pain.

1. Do not use Ghost to move an NT based system to different hardware. Windows is now particularly sensitive to hardware, and it is detected at the start of Windows setup where it says "Setup is inspecting your hardware". At this point, it is evaluating the Hardware Abstraction layer to use, and depending on the results, it sets up the registry to expect data based on the HAL detected. In particular, the power management software makes a massive difference - the ACPI HAL uses a totally different registry structure from the other HAL's. Also, if the IDE chipset is different (Sis instead of Intel for example), you will get an inaccessible boot device error.

2. If you want to move Windows to new hardware (such as when your motherboard fails), the ONLY supported way is to back the system up using the Windows Backup applet (it was written by Seagate and it's actally quite good). Make sure you include the System State when backing up. Then on the new system, install the operating system, and service pack it to the same level as your original system. Then restore from Backup. Now re-install Windows on top of this backup - this ensures that the hardware is correctly setup. Finally, re-apply the latest service pack.

I know it's a bit of a pain, but this is the only reliable way of moving a system. As an IT consultant, I have probably done this about

20 times in the last year, and it has worked every time bar one. That one time was when a fellow consultant here in Zimbabwe had tried to use Ghost to transfer a Server 2003 system to a new motherboard. After two days trying, we gave up trying to get the Dial up networking to work, and re-installed the system from scratch.

So be careful how you use Ghost. It is a wonderful tool for moving data from one disk to another. But please, do not rely on it as your only backup mechanism, as if you have a motherboard failure, you may have severe problems. Use the inbuilt NTBACKUP utility (except XP Home edition), to back your system up to a file as well.

I also believe that Ghost has a problem with the new disk volume structure being used by Windows. This replaces the old DOS based partitions. You may have noticed when installing Windows, that you can't use the whole disk - about 8Mb is reserved. This is used to stoed information about the disk, for use by the dynamic volume system now supported by Windows. In this 8Mb, they store the new volume table, and the disk's unique ID. If you Ghost this area, Windows will think that both disks are the same, and get very confused. I think this is what happened when Martin (Mother) ghosted his disks.

Sorry about the length of this, but I think this is valuable information, and could prevent a fellow LR enthusiast losing his life's work!!

Cheers! Graham Carter Carter Computer Services (Pvt) Ltd P.O. Box A1619 Avondale Harare Zimbabwe Tel: +263 4 300082 Cell: +263 91 329310 Fax: +263 918 329310 email: snipped-for-privacy@mweb.co.zw

This is what sysprep is for!. Though i dont think Lee wants to mess with this! I run 10 or so schools and we have at most 2 ghost images for each school that each work on 2-15 different hardware sets!.

Pretty much everything that is a P3 and better will work on the 'advanced computer and power interface ACPI' HAL now. Everything will work with the 'standard' HAL but dont autoshutdown.

I thought there was a SIDchange utitily with ghost too for changing the SID so you can use it on a domain? (sysprep does the same thing and i use that)

Sysprep overcomes this quite happily. Or if you just delete the GUID key from the registry before connecting to the network Windows re-creates it on next startup and all is happy again.

-snip-

I've moved many W2K systems to new hardware (completely new motherboards with different processor and chipsets). The easy way is to install the W2K hardrive in the new system, boot from the W2K CD, selecting the upgrade option. This will initiate the HAL inspection and the new hardware will be installed. At the next reboot let the hard drive boot and your previous system will be recovered.

Hi Danny,

That procedure will work as well - running that setup is the important thing.

My comments previously assumed that a new disk was being used.

Ghosting the hard disk will, I believe, cause a problem if you Ghost the part of the disk with the information about volumes on the disk. If you leave both drives in the system, Windows will think they are the same drive, and the Fault Tolerant software will get very confused.

Cheers! Graham

Graham Carter uttered summat worrerz funny about:

Where does this Fault tolerant software hang out... I think I need a drink!

;-)

Lee D