How do you ghost XP without a bootdisk :-(?

[Brandon2000]

To anyone there that can help. I have searched throughout this forum for answers. I just installed xp pro on my system through booting through the cdrom. I have the sytem just the way I like it and I want to ghost it just in case something goes wrong. But I can't make a bootdisk (it will boot to dos, but I can't even access my harddrive). I know there is a feature for the ghost 2002 that allows me to make a disk but it still does not access the hard drives. Some people on this board says that I can boot off the cd. I have tried that, but how do I use that with ghost. I don't want to format, I want to be able to access my drives so ghost will works. Thanks for any replies...

 

[JenniferX]

I just got Ghost 2002 yesterday. I ghosted my system (XP Pro) and it worked fine. I am running a 60GB raid 0 on a Promise Fasttracker 100. I used the PCDOS bootdisk that it made and it found the drives fine. It should find you drive(s) IDE wise easier than it did my raid array. If you have SCSI then you have to select that option in ghost before making the boot disk in the ghost boot wizard application.

It does work under XP, so your problem should not be related to that. If you are trying to boot using the bootdisk and do anything other than us ghost, then you won't be able to see your HDD(s) or filesystem. The application can see the NTFS partitions, if you are using that filesystem, but PCDOS/MSDOS can't.

I probably haven't helped with your problem though.

If you need to boot with a CDROM, then just make a bootable CD and copy the ghostpe.exe and script file to it. I can give you the exact steps to making it. It does work cause I have done it. You'll need a copy of XPBOOT.BIN to make a bootable CD for xp.

 

[Brandon2000]

I got the ghost to find the drive. But the only way I can make that happen was to force my e: drive (which was ntsf) to become a fat32 drive. Then when I reloaded with ghost it founded. Not sure why it can't go from ntsf to ntsf, kind of crap there if you ask me. But it's ghosting right now. I hope that will work, ghost a ntsf drive to a fat32 drive. Also, after I am done, how do I format my regular drive if I wanted to get the image back. Because if I am using the current bootdisk, the only drive I can see is my floppy and the fat32 drive. My main is the ntsf, but I can't see, it will say location not specified or something like that. A lot of people say that I can format with the xp pro cd, but when it does that, it installs right away (but I don't want that, since I have the image on ghost and I would want to get everything back from the image, please help)! Thanks again...

 

[corkyg]

Ghost can read NTFS but not write to NTFS. DriveCopy 4 does both cheaper, faster, and easier.

 

[Richard98]

As I understand, Ghost 7 can only save image files to FAT 32 Hard Drives and to CDRWs; however it can restore the images to ntfs drives. Sorta screwey.

 

[Brandon2000]

I got the image onto my fat32 drive without anymore problems. But now what do I do, if I wanted to go and format my computer without the entire reinstallation process, are there anyways I can do this? The drive I need to format would be the ntfs drive, my main drive, but then I want to use the image that I have now. I tried the windows cd, and it formats, but then it goes right into the installation of xp. I don't want that, i just want it to format and stop, are there anyways around this, man, what happened to the old days with just a simple bootdisk, thanks again for the all the helpful responses...

 

[waycool]

Did you buy this product and not read the Book? Or, did you steal the programe and are looking for help with warez you don't know how to use?

 

[Brandon2000]

Nice reply there, of course I bought the program. It's OEM, actually from the hotdeals from anandtech. I read the pdf file, but it's not really clear. No one really even knows how to make a bootdisk for xp, it turned out it was the ntfs file partition. If you are not going to help, please don't crap the thread. I am just trying to get some expert opinion on the process...

 

[NesuD]

well if you are wanting to reformat with the intention of imaging the drive with the image that you have already made you don't need to reformat. Your ghost image that you have already made will take care off everything to do with the disk formatting. you can actually install a ghost image to a brand new blank drive and not have to format it. The formatting is all contained within the image already.