Ghost Image of Dual boot Computer...

[Kayes]

Hello

I have just re-fromatted HDD and lost 2/3 of data :|
Anyway, thought it might be quite a good idea to have a ghost image.
Anyone got any suggestion?

 

[SUOrangeman]

Uhh, do it (with Norton Ghost)!

-SUO

 

[Kayes]

oopps,

think I better make it clearer.
so, far one of my friend suggest that I install each operating system on a clean hdd.
but i do not understand how it works with dual boot.

 

[T2T III]

If you are going to run a dual-boot system, then, yes, either two hard drives or two partitions are recommended. You didn't mention which operating systems you are using, so I'll make an assumption for an example:

1) Install Windows 95, 98 or ME on the first drive or first partition.

2) Install Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 Professional next on either the 2nd drive or 2nd partition.

3) After the installation of the OS in step #2, you will now have a boot manager that will appear when you turn your PC on. This boot manager will allow you to select which operating system you want to run. Ensure that you install in this order because I'm not sure if the boot manager will get installed if you installed 95, 98 or ME second.

4) If you are using other operating systems which I have not listed, then you might want to look into one of the commercially available boot managers. Also, if you are going to install Linux, it should come with another flavor of boot manager.

5) Now for my input on Ghost. If you are going to make a backup of your disk(s) or partition(s), then you'll have to consider the following:

- Ghost 2001 will allow you to burn your backup immediatly to CDR/CDRW. However, I haven't been able to get this feature to work.

- Earlier Ghost versions allowed you to make a backup of your drive or partition to an image file. When creating the image file, you could specifiy the size of the split so you could later burn the image files to CD. However, when using Ghost to make a backup in this manner, you will need to have a free drive or partition to send the data to because you can't put the backup on the same partition that you are backing up. Once you have made the backup using the 'split' method, you can burn the images to CD and delete them from the drive.

 

[Kayes]

wje

I got dual boot now but how do you back up dual boot?
each partition an image or one image for both?

 

[Hankysmoo]

When I made images of my dual boot computer and restored them, my boot partitions werent saved and therefore, i lost my win2k

 

[Radboy]

Yes, each partition/OS gets its own image.

If you set it up so that the destination for the image is on a diff hard drive from the source, it'll go twice as fast.

 

[Kayes]

radboy,

what about Hankysmoo problem?
what happen if I change my partition size later?

 

[Radboy]

I don't know what he means by "my boot partitions weren't saved".

Don't change your partition size. If you do, re-image.

 

[Kayes]

my friend did his image (only win2000) with a big primary partition.
then he said you can actually restore the image tlo any partion as long as it has enough space.

 

[Radboy]

Yeah, you can restore the image to whatever partition you want .. long as it has enuf space. Is that your Q?

 

[Kayes]

I think I need to try it out first sometime this week.
will up this thread if I got question.

 

[BuckMaster]

If you have a spare H/D what I did was use nortons ghost and do a disk (Master}to disk (Slave).
This way I have a back of my Master H/D. If any chance my sytem crashs I put my backup H/D (Slave}in and do a Disk to Disk again and with in 10 minutes Im back up and running with my good drive again!! Keep in mind swithing the H/D jumpers from slave to master now to intstall everything back over. With all my apps,games, and programs again! I took one of my old 6.4 GIG H/D's and keep it in a safe place now. I will do this every month to keep it updated.

 

[Radboy]

This might help .. but it's more for the Ghost novice.

 

[Kayes]

Rad,

I am a novice in this.
Thanx for the link!

 

[overmars]

Before you try Ghost, I suggest you look at another application. It's called Image Cast 3. The reason I mention this is because you can d/l a free demo and avoid paying like $50 for a prog that you'll use only once.

The link is here:


Free demo of IC3

bueno suerte,

marc

 

[Radboy]

If you don't need support for EXT2 (Linux native file system) or CD burners, can grab v6 here for $16.71.

 

[SUOrangeman]

Getting back to plain-jane Ghost, you *should* be able to get to a point were your dual-bot would work again. The only hiccup would be the MBR.

I have 4 OSes on my hard drive that I can boot from Win2K's loader. I would imagine that if I imaged all of the OS partitions and my boot partition (C: for Win2K and WinME), I could restore the system with a little work. Let's say my HD dies and I rebuild the partitions from images. At that point, all of the files should be back minus the MBR. If I boot with the Win2K CD, I'm hoping that I can repair the boot sector, restoring the MBR so that it at least boots Win2K. Since the other OSes can be started from Win2K's loader, I would just reconfig the boot.ini file (and verify the exisatence of the boot sector files it needs for the other OSes) and I should be back 100%. Make sense?

-SUO

 

[ArkAoss]

wait that don't grab the mbr? i think there is programs that'll do that, grab the mbr, sepratly, but ijust imaged my multi os drive, well the 2 major partitions, the c: and the ntfs one, with ghost to cd.. . didn't try to recove it yet, but if i hafta reconfig the mbr, it might be tricky, i know ghost pretty well, so any ques run em by me thru pm. . and also for fun with the nt bootmenu look up bootpart at winimage.com ; great lil proggy. i know i saw somthing that'd grab the mbr, (which would be good, then you could put the mbr backup and the loader on a floppy, reload the c with ghost then the mbr then the ntfs and be good to go in an instant..

correct me if im wrong

 

[Kayes]

now I am confused a bout the mbr... :Q
will need to check further...

 

[Radboy]

I've restored 10 or 12 images of my boot partitions, and never had any probs with MBR.

My system is diff in that my C: drive has no bootable OS .. WinME, W2K, Whistler Pro beta1 are all on partitions other than C:.

I did have an MBR prob once when I installed LILO (Linux Loader) to my MBR. Couldn't boot to *any* OS .. but that was solved with FDISK /MBR .. which got rid of LILO in MBR.

I know boot.ini goes on the C: root, so if my C: drive craps out, I'd have probs. I have boot.ini file backed-up on another drive.

I also heard the same thing SU said about booting w/ W2K CD and selecting "Repair" option .. that should fix any MBR probs.

Again, I've never had any probs with MBR.

 

[Kayes]

cool!

so far I have playing with some partitions.
I backed up my win98 and restored once. Is it true that the partition size does not matter?
I have set up my win98 to back now. Tonite will be doing the Win2K.
Probably will check this thread again before ghosting.

cheers.

 

[Sir Fredrick]

If you image your boot partition the MBR should be taken care of just fine It's worked for me in the past with Norton Ghost PE

 

[overmars]

D00d, you guys gotta try Imagecast if Ghost is screwing up on you all. It's so much easier to use than Ghost. That or Drive Image would be a good alternative.

marc

 

[Zucchini]

another tip, keep your boot/os partitions to a minimum size, maybe 3-5GB. Only install applications on these partitions, don't kill space with music/games etc. That way you can easily image and restore the partition without losing stuff It also prevents insanely huge image files.