Failure to create backup image by Ghost 2003

I tried to create backup image of my computer without success using Ghost
2003 and looking forward to any assistance from experienced members.

Hardware in use:-
1. Toshiba R150 NB
2. USB 1.1 bootable floppy drive
3. HP 8100 IDE CD Writer Plus + USB 2.0/1.1 to IDE adapter

Software in use:-
1. Standard bootable floppy disk created by Ghost 2003
Options selected: USB support - UHCI driver, assign DOS floppy
driver name and PC DOS

When I boot the disk, it ran smoothly and opened Ghost successfully.
However, when I selected Local-Disk-To Image and select local source
drive. In the Look in, there is only Disk 1 and A: Local drive and the CD
Writer did
not show up. Can someone advise the possible causes and fixes so I can go
forward.

I note that after I quitted Ghost, I pressed Ctrl + Alt + Del the system
rebooted to the CD Writer if I removed the bootable disk from the floppy
drive. It seems the CD Writer was successfully connected but just did not
appear.

Thanks,

Ray

I recommend trying a different backup utility- ive had nothing but problems
with norton ghost- failure of backups, refusing to even start backing up
etc- other than that have you check symantec's knowledge base?
www.symantec.com its somewhere on there

FingAZ


"Ray" wrote in message
...
I tried to create backup image of my computer without success using Ghost
2003 and looking forward to any assistance from experienced members.

Hardware in use:-
1. Toshiba R150 NB
2. USB 1.1 bootable floppy drive
3. HP 8100 IDE CD Writer Plus + USB 2.0/1.1 to IDE adapter

Software in use:-
1. Standard bootable floppy disk created by Ghost 2003
Options selected: USB support - UHCI driver, assign DOS floppy
driver name and PC DOS

When I boot the disk, it ran smoothly and opened Ghost successfully.
However, when I selected Local-Disk-To Image and select local source
drive. In the Look in, there is only Disk 1 and A: Local drive and the CD
Writer did
not show up. Can someone advise the possible causes and fixes so I can go
forward.

I note that after I quitted Ghost, I pressed Ctrl + Alt + Del the system
rebooted to the CD Writer if I removed the bootable disk from the floppy
drive. It seems the CD Writer was successfully connected but just did not
appear.

Thanks,

Ray

"Ray" wrote in message
...
I tried to create backup image of my computer without success using
Ghost
2003 and looking forward to any assistance from experienced members.

Hardware in use:-
1. Toshiba R150 NB
2. USB 1.1 bootable floppy drive
3. HP 8100 IDE CD Writer Plus + USB 2.0/1.1 to IDE adapter

Software in use:-
1. Standard bootable floppy disk created by Ghost 2003
Options selected: USB support - UHCI driver, assign DOS floppy
driver name and PC DOS

When I boot the disk, it ran smoothly and opened Ghost successfully.
However, when I selected Local-Disk-To Image and select local source
drive. In the Look in, there is only Disk 1 and A: Local drive and
the CD Writer did
not show up. Can someone advise the possible causes and fixes so I
can go
forward.

I note that after I quitted Ghost, I pressed Ctrl + Alt + Del the
system
rebooted to the CD Writer if I removed the bootable disk from the
floppy
drive. It seems the CD Writer was successfully connected but just did
not
appear.

Thanks,

Ray





http://snipurl.com/bpyu

and there are more KB articles found by searching on "USB" at Symantec's
support site. Maybe one of them apply to you. The one I listed says
you can do cloning (it doesn't mention imaging) via USB.

I think Norton Ghost 2003 is the last version of Ghost. There is a
later version 9.0 but users have said that it is a rebranded copy of
DriveImage. Symantec bought Powerquest and got their DriveImage (and
PartitionMagic) products. You won't find DriveImage available for sale
at Symantec. So apparently Symantec has finally decided to dump their
Ghost product, buy a replacement for it (DriveImage), and rename that
replacement to the name of their old product.

--
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On Sun, 2 Jan 2005 19:17:53 +0800, "Ray"
wrote:

I tried to create backup image of my computer without success using Ghost
2003 and looking forward to any assistance from experienced members.

Hardware in use:-
1. Toshiba R150 NB
2. USB 1.1 bootable floppy drive
3. HP 8100 IDE CD Writer Plus + USB 2.0/1.1 to IDE adapter

Software in use:-
1. Standard bootable floppy disk created by Ghost 2003
Options selected: USB support - UHCI driver, assign DOS floppy
driver name and PC DOS

When I boot the disk, it ran smoothly and opened Ghost successfully.
However, when I selected Local-Disk-To Image and select local source
drive. In the Look in, there is only Disk 1 and A: Local drive and the CD
Writer did
not show up. Can someone advise the possible causes and fixes so I can go
forward.

I note that after I quitted Ghost, I pressed Ctrl + Alt + Del the system
rebooted to the CD Writer if I removed the bootable disk from the floppy
drive. It seems the CD Writer was successfully connected but just did not
appear.

Thanks,

Ray

When I Ghosted to CD I recall that I had to set one of the HDD options
for Ghost to see my CD. Direct IDE or ASPI/SCSI, can't remember
which. You might give it a try. I just rebooted and looked at the
options, but couldn't determine what I did before because my Ghost
floppies don't have the CD drivers now.
Besides that, I recommend you ghost your image to another partition
and then burn the image file(s) if you must have them on CD.
You might have to use a CD spanning utility if the image files are too
big for a single CD.
Personally, with drives so cheap, I don't use CD's for backups any
more. I backup images to 2 separate drives.
While on this subject, here's some general backup advice.
This is what I do, but I'm open to better methods.
1. The C partition is exclusively for XP and *all* apps you don't
want to reinstall. Mine is 10gb, with 5gb used.
2. Downloads, setup programs (setup.exe's), banking data, docs, etc
are kept in a "backup" folder in a partition on a different drive.
3. A mirror "backup" directory is kept on a third drive. I use Power
Desk's file synchronizer to keep them identical.
4. When Ghosting the C partition I ghost to the second and third
drive. Each have a "C-Image" directory with subfolders named as date,
and maybe some description, like 20040905-SP2 for when SP2 was
installed, then Ghosted. Folders are your friend, as they both
describe and segregate data. When Ghost spans to a second image
at 2gb it uses the first 5 characters of the file name you gave it and
adds 001, so using my file naming scheme I end up with multiple GHS
files named 20040001.GHS when using 200401 thru 200409 as file
names. Might be a way around that naming, but since I use folders it
doesn't matter, so I use that naming convention.
Create your Ghost target folder on both target drives before you boot
to the Ghost floppy. Ghost to each directory. It is much faster than
copying one image to a second drive within XP.
5. Ghost whenever you decide to keep an app you have installed. If
some time has gone by, and some garbage might have accumulated in
XP, restore your previous image, reinstall the app, and Ghost
immediately.
6. Synchronize your "backup" folders any time you make changes to the
original. It's fast.
7. Restoring from an image. This is the greatest opportunity to lose
data. Quicken or other accounting apps with current data could be
overlaid, Mail client mailboxes could be overlaid. What I've done
is copied these type of apps to the other drive 'backups' directory
and changed the links so they run from there. Sorta kludgy, but it's
worked so far. Not for the novice, but easy enough. Doc and Settings
get copied to a different drive before restore, then copied back
afterwards.

Anyway, I'd like to hear other ideas. I've had XP running almost 3
years and never had to reinstall it or any app. I almost got burned
once by restoring an image without thinking about Quicken but luckily
the timing was right and I had a current backup on another drive. I
did lose some Agent e-mail, but now both of those are running from a
different drive. Still have a feeling I'm missing something. That's
a good thing.
With Ghost and cheap hard drives around, it's amazing to me to hear
all these stories like "I reinstalled XP, but that didn't work, so I
formatted again then reinstalled XP and all my apps but then I blah
blah.....reinstalled XP and all my apps...it's been 2 months now and
I'm going to try my 58th install of XP at sunrise...blah, blah.."
It takes 5 minutes to Ghost XP and all your apps, and 5 minutes to
restore.
Sooner or later I'll leave the P4T533-C mb behind, but I plan on
keeping XP and apps on the new one. That should be fun.
Googling around I found somebody had done this by deleting all devices
except the PCI Bus, then letting XP identify hardware.upon reboot.
Kind of like sourdough starter.
Anybody done this?

Thanks,

--Vic

On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 00:59:53 GMT, Victor Smith
wrote :

snip
It takes 5 minutes to Ghost XP and all your apps, and 5 minutes to=20
restore.
snip

Hi Vic,

I also use Ghost 2003 to image my boot drive C with XP and apps as you
do, but I wish I could get it done in 5 min like you say you do!!!

I don't get any change out of 45 minutes to image C:. It does have
19GB on it compared to your 10GB, but that's still more than twice as
long. It doesn't seem to make much difference whether I image to an
internal partition or to an external HDD using firewire or USB2.

I also use Dantz Retrospect for full and incremental images from
within windows, and incrementals get done in a few minutes, but a full
backup with Retrospect takes nearly as long as Ghost.

So what's your secret? Are you doing incremental backups with Ghost 9
rather than full images with Ghost 2003?

BTW, for later burning to CD/DVD, you can tell Ghost what size to span
(700M or 4.7G) instead of 2G, by using command line switches
--=20
Regards,
Peter Wilkins

On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 14:26:31 +1100, Peter Wilkins
wrote:

On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 00:59:53 GMT, Victor Smith
wrote :

snip
It takes 5 minutes to Ghost XP and all your apps, and 5 minutes to
restore.
snip

Hi Vic,

I also use Ghost 2003 to image my boot drive C with XP and apps as you
do, but I wish I could get it done in 5 min like you say you do!!!

I don't get any change out of 45 minutes to image C:. It does have
19GB on it compared to your 10GB, but that's still more than twice as
long. It doesn't seem to make much difference whether I image to an
internal partition or to an external HDD using firewire or USB2.

I also use Dantz Retrospect for full and incremental images from
within windows, and incrementals get done in a few minutes, but a full
backup with Retrospect takes nearly as long as Ghost.

So what's your secret? Are you doing incremental backups with Ghost 9
rather than full images with Ghost 2003?

BTW, for later burning to CD/DVD, you can tell Ghost what size to span
(700M or 4.7G) instead of 2G, by using command line switches

Peter,

I use the Ghost that came with System Works Pro 2003, only reason I
bought it. I don't use incrementals.
Since you've inadvertently made me doubt myself, I just Ghosted my C
to two drives, restoring myself to full sanity.
It was time anyway. Here's the rundown.
The only Ghost switch not defaulted is autoname.
I do *not* compress. I've seen that it slows down the imaging
considerably, even in "fast compress."
C is a ten gig partition on a new 250gig Maxtor 7200rpm.
Targets are an older 60 gig Maxtor and a fairly new 160gig Maxtor.
Both targets are 7200rpm.
C is on the mb (P4T533-c) primary ide channel.
One target is on the secondary ide channel, the other on a Promise
controller. I forgot which is which, which reminds me that while
I label all logical drives by disk and partition (eg Max250-1 (C,
Max250-2 (G ) when I install, it might help to get the controller in
the name too. The drives are hard to identify in the bays without
pulling them or disabling them. All are ATA 133.
Ghost stats a
Source partition data: 5824 mb (both copies)
Copy to 160gb Max
MB copied: 4263
Elapsed time: 3:17 min
1298 mb per min

Copy to 60gb Max
MB copied: 4263
Elapsed time: 3:39 min
1167 mb per min

I recall putting the 60gb on the Promise but won't swear to it.
If I get the gumption to look, I'll pass it on if there's interest.
Note the difference in the source partition stat and the megs copied
stat. It might be a simple reporting issue, as both numbers are known
before the image begins, and don't change as it progresses.
But if I hadn't been restoring Ghost for years with no problems those
numbers might be scary.
I don't know enough about the Ghost data read/write process to
explain the differences. But it does bring to mind something else.
Ten or fifteen years ago I had a Connor tape backup drive. It took an
hour or so to backup 100mb or so of files, and about the same to put
them back.
But it put each file back in contiguous space. IOW, it defragged the
HD, albeit without any 'slack' or 'most used' bells and whistles seen
in modern defraggers. OTOH defrag itself had to run overnight versus
the couple hours of the tape backup/retore, and at that time probably
just defragged as the tape backup was doing. This benefit was never
advertised by Connor.
Something else that brings to mind is that I liked the Connor software
Windows version better than the DOS version.
So I knocked everything off Win 3.1 except file manager and Connor and
put it zipped on one floppy to use for restores. The autoexec.bat
would unzip needed DOS and Win 3.1 files onto a clean HD and bring
up Win 3.1 with all that was needed to restore from tape.
XP is surely a different animal.
As to your 19gb C partition, is that partition size or data size?
Like I said, I try not to keep data on the C, and don't currently have
big apps (Powerbuilder, Oracle, etc) besides the MS stuff.
I suspect your drives/controllers are slow relative to mine, or you
are compressing the images. All else being equal, even a 19gb Ghost
image would take a bit less than 15 minutes.
Not counting XP shutdown, DOS/Ghost boot, and XP startup, which in
themselves are for me as lengthy as the Ghost imaging.
BTW, pardon my rattling on. I do that sometimes.

--Vic

In article , Victor Smith
writes
When Ghosting the C partition I ghost to the second and third
drive. Each have a "C-Image" directory with subfolders named as date,
and maybe some description, like 20040905-SP2 for when SP2 was
installed, then Ghosted.

snip
Anyway, I'd like to hear other ideas.

One suggestion is to get your dates down from 8 characters to 3, as YMD.
For Y, leave out the 200, and when we get to 2010 go on to A...Z, which
will keep you going until 2035. For M use 0...9 X Y Z (or ...9 A B C if
you prefer), for D use 0...9 A...U. So instead of 20040905 you would
have 495 (or 459 if your date uses the irrational US dating scheme).
--
Thoss

On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 09:02:24 GMT, Victor Smith
wrote :

On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 14:26:31 +1100, Peter Wilkins
wrote:

On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 00:59:53 GMT, Victor Smith
wrote :

snip
It takes 5 minutes to Ghost XP and all your apps, and 5 minutes to=20
restore.
snip

Hi Vic,

I also use Ghost 2003 to image my boot drive C with XP and apps as you
do, but I wish I could get it done in 5 min like you say you do!!!

I don't get any change out of 45 minutes to image C:. It does have
19GB on it compared to your 10GB, but that's still more than twice as
long. It doesn't seem to make much difference whether I image to an
internal partition or to an external HDD using firewire or USB2.

snip
So what's your secret? Are you doing incremental backups with Ghost 9
rather than full images with Ghost 2003?
snip
Peter,

I use the Ghost that came with System Works Pro 2003, only reason I
bought it. I don't use incrementals.
Since you've inadvertently made me doubt myself, I just Ghosted my C
to two drives, restoring myself to full sanity.
It was time anyway. Here's the rundown.
The only Ghost switch not defaulted is autoname.
I do *not* compress. I've seen that it slows down the imaging
considerably, even in "fast compress."
C is a ten gig partition on a new 250gig Maxtor 7200rpm.
Targets are an older 60 gig Maxtor and a fairly new 160gig Maxtor.
Both targets are 7200rpm.
C is on the mb (P4T533-c) primary ide channel.
One target is on the secondary ide channel, the other on a Promise
controller. I forgot which is which, which reminds me that while
I label all logical drives by disk and partition (eg Max250-1 (C,
Max250-2 (G ) when I install, it might help to get the controller in
the name too. The drives are hard to identify in the bays without
pulling them or disabling them. All are ATA 133.
Ghost stats a
Source partition data: 5824 mb (both copies)
Copy to 160gb Max
MB copied: 4263
Elapsed time: 3:17 min
1298 mb per min

Copy to 60gb Max
MB copied: 4263
Elapsed time: 3:39 min
1167 mb per min

snip
=20
As to your 19gb C partition, is that partition size or data size?
Like I said, I try not to keep data on the C, and don't currently have
big apps (Powerbuilder, Oracle, etc) besides the MS stuff.
I suspect your drives/controllers are slow relative to mine, or you
are compressing the images. All else being equal, even a 19gb Ghost
image would take a bit less than 15 minutes.=20
Not counting XP shutdown, DOS/Ghost boot, and XP startup, which in
themselves are for me as lengthy as the Ghost imaging.
BTW, pardon my rattling on. I do that sometimes.

Hi Vic,

Wow! What a response! Thank you!

There are three main reasons for the speed differences: the first is
that I have been using maximum compression; the second is that my HDD
are slower than yours, and the third is that I always do an automatic
verify, which takes nearly as long as the actual backup, so almost
doubles the time.

I have been using max compression for years as I have been a bit disk
limited, but I now have an external 300GB USB2 drive which should take
care of that problem, at least for a few months :-)

My boot partition is 45GB, of which 19GB is used: mostly OS and
programs but some data that is a bit inconvenient to move to or keep
on another partition. Using max compression (Z=3D9) I only get 4-500MB/M
compared to your 11-1200!

I just did an image to my external HDD, no compression no verify. It
still took 25 min, but speed increased to 650MB/M. I cant really
complain about that, as on checking my external HDD spec it says the
maximum USB2 transfer rate is only 480MB/M!

Thanks for the detail you provided, it gives me a benchmark to work
towards.





--=20
Regards,
Peter Wilkins

On Mon, 3 Jan 2005 10:42:34 +0000, thoss wrote:

In article , Victor Smith
writes
When Ghosting the C partition I ghost to the second and third
drive. Each have a "C-Image" directory with subfolders named as date,
and maybe some description, like 20040905-SP2 for when SP2 was
installed, then Ghosted.

snip
Anyway, I'd like to hear other ideas.

One suggestion is to get your dates down from 8 characters to 3, as YMD.
For Y, leave out the 200, and when we get to 2010 go on to A...Z, which
will keep you going until 2035. For M use 0...9 X Y Z (or ...9 A B C if
you prefer), for D use 0...9 A...U. So instead of 20040905 you would
have 495 (or 459 if your date uses the irrational US dating scheme).

Thanks for the suggestion. So long as I can avoid the Y2K+35 Date
Squad, it'll work.

--Vic

On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 23:53:50 +1100, Peter Wilkins
wrote:


There are three main reasons for the speed differences: the first is
that I have been using maximum compression; the second is that my HDD
are slower than yours, and the third is that I always do an automatic
verify, which takes nearly as long as the actual backup, so almost
doubles the time.

Peter,

Has a verify ever found a problem? If so, what kind?
Since I back up twice, to different drives, I've forgone
verification. But I'm interested in what you've seen.
BTW, the speed of any type backup is affected not only by size,
but by number of files that must be indexed with an image that
is designed to be read.
As a point of reference, my C has 41,989 files.
One other note. All my partitions are NTFS, defaulted to
whatever is now the normal cluster size, probably 4k.
On the subject of speed, this has just occurred to me, and
at some point I will try it. Instead of creating images, which
with no compression are the size of the original data, and which must
be indexed, create a number of "backup" partitions on the non-C
drives. Then use partition to partition copying. I haven't done such
copying, but suspect it is faster than creating an image as the NTFS
equivalent of file allocation tables are simply copied over and no
indexing is required.
The downside here is estimating partition space requirements
correctly, and the clutter of having extra partitions, though renaming
them to the higher letters with XP should keep things fairly tidy.

--Vic