ghost 9.0 backup

[pontifex]

I created a backup of my hard drive using ghost 9.0.
My hard drive had 12,240 mb used space.
I did a manual backup with standard (40%) compression to another hard drive. I did not tell Ghost to divide the backup for better archiving/putting the image on multiple cds/discs.

when i go to the folder i designated as the destination for the backup, there are 2 image files in it. One is filename.v2i and the other is filename_s01.v2i. the 1st .v2i file is 3.99 GB and the s01.v2i file is 3.15 MB. why didn't it just create 1 single image file?

According to the help in Ghost 9.0, if you tell it to divide the images into smaller chunks, it will create files with filename_s01.v2i, filename_s02.v2i, etc.

I want to put the image in a DVD. My question is, do i need to put both files on DVD or just the 1st .v2i file? If I need both files, when I go to do a restore, do i insert the 1st .v2i file disc and once that is copied, it asks me to insert the 2nd DVD with the other s01.v2i disc?

hmm..now i just thought of something. Since I did tell it to back up to the hard drive and not to divide, is that why it created a 3.15 gb s01.v2i file? if i told it to divide the image file into say 700 mb chunks so they would fit on a cd, would it create a smaller s01.v2i file so that it could fit on a cd with the regular image file?

 

[warcrow]

I beleive it spans over several files, which is an inherent attribute of the ghost extension and is limited to several GBs. You will need all of those files to restore...

 

[BlueWeasel]

This is a guess, but is the HD that you saved the Ghost images on formatted as FAT32? FAT32 has a maximum filesize limit of 4GB and that appears to be the case since the first image file is ~3.99GB.

I haven't used Ghost for a while, but you should be able to put each V2I image on a DVD. Ghost shouldn't care where the images are at as long as they are together. When restoration of the first image is complete, you should be prompted for the next image file. If it's on a different DVD, then just swap discs and it should see the 2nd image.

 

[pontifex]

yes, it is formatted as fat32

thanks guys. i figured it was something simple like that but i couldn't find any info in the help file or the website about any limits.

now my next question:
this is my work pc. i'm going to need to make images of several co-worker's pcs. do i actually need to install the ghost software onto their machines to do the ghost or is it possible to run ghost off the cd, like an autorun type of thing?

 

[BlueWeasel]

Originally posted by: pontifex
yes, it is formatted as fat32

thanks guys. i figured it was something simple like that but i couldn't find any info in the help file or the website about any limits.

now my next question:
this is my work pc. i'm going to need to make images of several co-worker's pcs. do i actually need to install the ghost software onto their machines to do the ghost or is it possible to run ghost off the cd, like an autorun type of thing?

Do you have an option to make a bootable Ghost CD? You could make that and use it to boot into the Ghost interface (similar to DOS) and make the backups.

Otherwise, I doubt you could run it directly off the Ghost CD from within Windows.

 

[warcrow]

If you're talking about a couple machines, just make a boot floppy (dont think ghost supports bootable ghost CDs beleive it or not) and (if you have a ghost server), start a ghostcast server and ghost them over the network storing the images on the ghost server. Thats what we do (although we use Ghost console).

 

[pontifex]

ghostcast huh? i'm assuming that i would need to put some kind of client on the pcs for this ghostcast server to work, correct?