Bought Norton Ghost2002, question

[Ron P.]

After reading the manual, and deciding to go for the disk to disk clone method, I come to the portion that says after cloning, shut system down and remove destination drive from system to prevent damage to both of the bootable OS.
If this is the case, how do I go through a regular weekly or monthly back up regimen? If I can't have both drives running at the same time, how do I amend the destination drive?
If this is the case, how do multi OS computer systems operate? Surely both drives must be installed and running when the system boots.
Any help in clarifying any misunderstandings I have would be great.

[TwoRails]

Hi Ron,

First, disk-to-disk is usually used to upgrade to a new hard drive and is not really meant to have a cloned backup in the system. More typically, you could do a disk-to-image (either to a different drive, or burn right to CD) or partition to image (again, to a HD or CD).

I usually Ghost a Partition to image on HD. Edit it, if desired, then burn to CD if I want to keep it. I burn to CD for backups, but I often discard the Ghost. I'll Ghost before making system changes, or before installing software. If everything works fine after the changes, you can get rid of the Ghost... or not.

What's you HDD setup?? Number of drives / partitions / sized??

HtH

TwoRails

[Ron P.]

2 40 gig HDDs fat32 no partitions.

I guess I'll just clone the seagate to the ibm then switch masters.

If I understand correctly, the problem with Imaging is that you can't run from it. So you still need to format a new drive, load windows onto it and then transfer the saved image to the new drive to retain all the last saved settings.

It still doesn't explain how you can have two OS operating in the same case. Some have Linux on one drive and Widows on another. How can that be, and if it's true, what's the difference by having to copies of win98.
Does anyone have an answewr for that?

[TwoRails]

Hi Ron,

If I understand correctly, the problem with Imaging is that you can't run from it. So you still need to format a new drive, load windows onto it and then transfer the saved image to the new drive to retain all the last saved settings.

No, that's not correct. If you cloned it, it will be identical: no loading anything is required. And it's a lot faster, by a whole bunch.

For backup purposes, it would be a waste of a hard drive just to clone one to the other when you could just image one to an image file and either: leave it on the second drive (which doesn't help much with a major system problem), or burn the image to CD where you can restore it in case of a HD failure.

The disk to disk is better suited in replacing the HD, like if you had a 40 gig and wanted an 80, you'd go disk to disk, put the cloned to disk as primary, and that's all there is to it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Running two OSs is a totally different subject, and Ghost is not a utility to do so.

So, what is it exactly that you are trying to do?? make a backup?? or make a dual boot system??

TwoRails

[Ron P.]

Well, this is where I'm confused, when my master went down last time, I wasn't able to get to my 2nd Hdd. without windows running.
Is there some trick to getting into the 2nd Hdd without an OS running, to be able to open the image file so that I can transfer it to the other drive?
The Norton manual tells me all the ways to save the file, but not how to get at it if the first drive isn't running, and if it did, I must have blanked out during that bit of info.

[glc]

I believe you can do that from a Ghost bootdisk.

[casey]

You use a Norton Ghost boot disk or a Win98 boot disk with the Ghostpe.exe on it.
After booting, run the Ghostpe.exe or Ghost.exe and you can Clone, Image & Restore.

[Ron P.]

This aft, I created a disk to disk floppy, didn't try it, I went into DOS and transfered, (cloned the Seagate to the IBM, prefer running the IBM to the Seagate it's faster) and removed the seagate from the system.
Creating the disk to disk was pretty easy.
I'm wondering, at the front of the ghost manual, where the boot disk creation info is, is the boot disk with only (ghostpe.exe) on it the one that alows you to get into the DOS version of ghost on a crashed drive? Or, is it the slave drive that you access and transfer back to the crashed drive?
I did have a prob getting the boot disk to take, it seems that I'm unable to copy system files to the floppy from the format floppy window. Even though the msdos.sys file shows on the floppy, it is empty. I had to run (Find: files and folders) for the msdos.sys and save it to the floppy. When the file was being transfered, it asked if I wanted to replace -0- kb file with the new 1.68kb file.

[TwoRails]

Hi Ron,

I'm still not fully understanding what you are wanting...

1) disk-to-disk floppy ??

2) yes, doing a disk-to-disk is easy. Did one this afternoon myself in about 30 minutes. 10 for the physical stuff, 20 for Ghost to xfer the 80 gig drive to the 120 gig drive.

3) get to the DOS version of Ghost?? There is No Windows version, ONLY a DOS version in 2002. Slave / Master has nothing to do with a crash and Ghost. You have to run Ghost to do any restoring.

4) getting the boot disk to take ??? Ghost's boot disk builder does all this for you. You do Not format the floppy with a System file transfer, as the Disk Builder puts it's own system files on it.

5) msdos.sys ?? See number 4, this is done automatically, and it uses PC DOS, Not MS DOS.

Have you been to Symantec's web site?? There are tutorials about using Ghost in the support pages, as well as other useful info.

TwoRails

[not important]

http://radified.com/Ghost/ghost_1.htm
Try this site.

[Ron P.]

1) Yes, a disk to disk floppy, once you format the disk you have an option to add switch commands to the floppy to get it to do something, e.g., copy disk to disk
(ghostpe.exe -clone,mode=copy,src=1,dst=2.)

2) Of course there is a windows version, just go to start programs, there's Ghost explorer and the boot disk creation program.

3) Apparently you have a different version of ghost than I do, on page 24 of the manual it clearly states to format and install system files on the floppy, It then says in step 6,
"In the Ghost Boot Wizard, in the DOS version window, click "GET MS-DOS""
It only uses PCDOS if you select PCDOS, the manual suggests that not all systems opperate on that and that MSDOS is to be selected. My comp has restart in MS DOS, not PCDOS. So, if this is incorrect, I'm confused more now than before.

[Ron P.]

Not important, thanks big time for that link. After reading the last post from Two rails, I went back and tried to create a floppy without formatting and loading msdos.sys and it worked. That's what I get for reading ahead. The link to Rad looks very informative, I saved it to use in the future, thanks again

[TwoRails]

Hi Ron,

Glad you hear you seem to having it working to your liking

1) Kewl about the disk-to-disk thing. Since I've always have not needed special parameters, I never used that part of the Boot Builder and forgot all about it... I find it just as easy to click the menu choices since I run the program only occasionally and seem to do something different each time.

2) I guess it's just semantics.... The actual "Ghost" part of "Ghost" is DOS only. The Explorer and Boot programs are just supporting utilities that are not required to run Ghost, but are nice to have.

3) I don't have my manual handy (it's locked out in the work shed) but you can run either. I normally just run the "stock" settings (meaning PC DOS) but found that sometimes PC DOS will choke on larger, like my 120 gig, drives. Doing the 120 giger was the only time I had to us MS DOS.

It does seem like a nice link, but just downloaded the PDF to print out later due to time limitations right now... (should even be here, but I'm hooked )

TwoRails

[pawprint]

FYI,any *.gho image can also be accessed for individual file restores, etc. via ghostexplorer.
start>norton ghost>ghost explorer
open ghostexplorer, and click on the open existing document button located under file. Browse to the *.gho image, and double-click to open.
Interestingly enough, it also lists the file choice of the *.gho image. I have 2 FAT32, and 2 NTFS images.
cheers, ~pawprint~

[TwoRails]

Hi pawprint,

Ya, I think that's a fantastic feature !! That's how I've been doing certain backups. Love the drag-drop, add / delete capibilities

TwoRails

[Ron P.]

Does anyone have an idea of the compression ratios for saving images? I have an LS120 and might consider saving an image to it's floppies if the compression is high enough.
I'm thinking if it takes too many floppies it's not worth it.

[casey]

With maximum compression you can fit about 1.3 gig onto 1x 700MB CDR.

[Ron P.]

Well that kind of shoots the LS 120 idea down the tubes. I suppose I can wait for the CDR, I might be able to pick one up around next summer. My system is just a tad over 2.5gig, I'll be dumping FlAiOL at the end of the month so that'll scrap a few hundred mbs. So, MAX compression is about 2 to 1

[TwoRails]

Originally posted by Ron P. Well that kind of shoots the LS 120 idea down the tubes. I suppose I can wait for the CDR, I might be able to pick one up around next summer. My system is just a tad over 2.5gig, I'll be dumping FlAiOL at the end of the month so that'll scrap a few hundred mbs. So, MAX compression is about 2 to 1

Hi Ron,

You can easily breakup the image into what ever size you'd like, including to fit on a LS120. You can use the paramiter option and the split command line switch, or simply recompile it into the size of choice.

HTH

TwoRails