[jdh24]

I decide to do a clean install of XP pro last night. Right now the computer has all the MS updates, Catalyst 3.6 drivers for the video card, and all updated drivers for the mobo. When I tired ghosting the computer last night, I got a bunch of NTFS errors "I think†and ghost would close down. This is in DOS. My current hard drive is a 20 gig with a 5 gig NTFS for windows, 10 gig NTFS for apps, and 5 gig FAT32 for ghost. I tired version 5.1d and 6.01 of ghost with the same results. I did a search and I see that a lot of people use ghost, but they never say what version. So what version of ghost do you guys use, or what other software does the same thing?


thanks

jared

 

[jcarlsony2k]

I can't speak for powerquest products specifically, but I do like the following two packages:


-> Symantec Ghost 6.5 Enterprise


-> Acronis True Image Professional (Server Based).



I do feel your pain -you've got the perfect config and you definitely want to preserve that.


Acronis is nice from an automation perspective, as well as because it DOES NOT require the client to reboot onto a floppy to image it. E.G. the acronis 'server' (any box you have lying around with Win2K Srv and the acronis package installed into server mode) -- can request and pull down an image from an acronis client (the HTPC that you've installed Acronis on in a client mode config) -- at any time using any options. Put this on a calendar and you've got backups on demand. The final kicker was it's incredible compression routine. We compressed a 2.5GB server hard drive partition to 700MB! I still can't believe it today.


The bottom line: a bit pricey, and somewhat complicated, but Acronis True Image is probably the coolest package I've yet seen.


Good luck.


Jeff

 

[Axel]

I use Ghost 2003. AFAIK earlier versions had problems when your back-up drive was NTFS formated - it had to be FAT.

I also use DriveImage2003 on another PC. DI does pretty much the same for me. For some reason I have problems getting one or the other software to work w/o problems on both PCs (issues with not finishing or security/accessibility errors). For me it is important that I can create/restore images from within Win. and that I do not need FAT partitions. Both packages allow me to do it. I did not pay much attention to networking capabilities or other more sophisticated features - there might be differences, though.

____

Axel

 

[jvincent]

I use Ghost2003.


I have a bootable DVD that contains a complete image in case of total disaster and I usually keep a couple of stable versions on the "data" partition of my disk drive for quick restores.

 

[JoshFink]

Jeff, quick question regarding acronis. I love the product but for the life of me I can't get it to install in server mode even though it is the server product. What I mean is that I cannot get it to pull images.


I bought the server product because it was my understanding that the non-server product would not work with RAID arrays.


Thanks for the help


Josh

 

[jdh24]

Is ghost 2003 the only version that will copy from and NTFS partition? My other 2 partitions can be deleted and change since there is nothing on then. So they can be NTFS or FAT32 as needed.


Thanks


Jared

 

[jvincent]

I can't speak for other versions of Ghost but 2003 definitely works for NTFS -> NTFS, since that is all I have on my machine.

 

[Axel]

Quote:

Originally posted by jvincent I can't speak for other versions of Ghost but 2003 definitely works for NTFS -> NTFS, since that is all I have on my machine.

Yep, 2003 works!


There might be older versions out there that FULLY support NTFS, as well. My guess, though, is that those have to be "at least" Enterprise versions. Make sure you read the fine print thoroughly , not that you end up with a version that is only capable of creating an image from NTFS, but cannot read from it...

_____

Axel

 

[Wendell R. Breland]

Ghost 2003 will work for NTFS if the Cluster Size = 32KB or smaller, it WILL NOT work with a Cluster Size = 64KB or larger.

 

[jimwhite]

also add Ghost 7.0 and Ghost 7.5 ..... they work fine on NTFS partitions!





EDIT: ..... in XP as well....

 

[Sheky]

Some older versions of Ghost work fine with NTFS but they don't work with XP.

 

[Axel]

Quote:

Originally posted by Sheky Some older versions of Ghost work fine with NTFS but they don't work with XP.

Quote:

Originally posted by jimwhite also add Ghost 7.0 and Ghost 7.5 ..... they work fine on NTFS partitions!

Quote:

Originally posted by Wendell R. Breland Ghost 2003 will work for NTFS if the Cluster Size = 32KB or smaller, it WILL NOT work with a Cluster Size = 64KB or larger.

Isn’t that great when things are so clear cut, like in the case of Ghost……

______

Axel

 

[RGyorfi]

I'll throw my nod to TrueImage as well. That is just one slick piece of software.


Faster, compresses better, and runs within Windows itself. What more do you want


The virtual read-only drive it can create of your images is pretty sweet as well.

 

[tji]

I use 'dd' on linux. It does a byte by byte copy of the device. It doesn't look at or care about the format or contents. It's just a raw dump. It's not as friendly as ghost, or similar apps. But, it's free, and it just works.


Boot from a linux rescue floppy, or Knoppix boot CD (or just boot into Linux, if it's on a seperate physical disk).


dd if=/dev/hda of=/mnt/hdb/diskimg


or, if You have Windows in a partition on a shared disk, you could do somthing like this: dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/home/tji/windows.img


You could also use gzip or bzip, to compress the image down nicely: dd if=/dev/hda | gzip -9 > /mnt/smbsrv/winimage.gz



To extract it, just switch if & of:


dd if=/mnt/hdb/diskimg of=/dev/hda


or, gzip -d /mnt/sbbsrv/winimage.gz | dd of=/dev/hda



---

Warning.. As with most low level Unix/Linux tools, it gives you more than enough rope to hang yourself. You can easily overwrite something you didn't intend, or trash your system in various ways. So be careful.


But, typical of Linux, there are also some cool hacks to verify the image, etc. If you did a partition backup, you can mount that image, just as if it was a physical disk or ISO CD-ROM/DVD image:


mount -t vfat -o loop windows.img /mnt/windows

mount -r -t ntfs -o loop winxp.img /mnt/winxp

mount -r -t iso9660 -o loop RH90_disk1.iso /mnt/cdimg


You can also do that with complete disk images, by specifiying the offset to the partition, but that's much trickier.

 

[Brian Puccio]

Another dd user here on my linux learning machine (it's running Debian with all the beta software, so it needs to be reforamtted a lot, so now I just restore the last working image).

 

[xstanbx]

Well, I just tried Acronis TrueImage (since they had a discount for Ghost users of $9.99) to see how it worked as being able to work in windows natively would be a good thing, but they neglected to mention it does work at all with Windows Dynamic disks... oh well.... the next time I rebuild my system I will try to remember to leave the boot partition as basic..... fun fun fun

 

[xstanbx]

Sorry, should read "does NOT work with Dymanic drives"

 

[antorsae]

You may want to try G4U (aka Ghost for Unix):

http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/


I have no direct experience with it.


-Andres

 

[barhoram]

I've got Ghost 2003. Love it. How do you make a bootable backup copy on DVD? I can't seem to figure this out?? I've been just keeping files on the data part of my hard drive. Any pointers, or step by step instructions appreciated. Drew

 

[MadSkills]

Ghost 2003 is the most recent version so i would just use that. you can purchase it in Systemworks along with Norton Antivirus which is, IMO, the ideal antivirus product, so it's a good buy.