Multiboot and Norton Ghost - Please help!

[Muse]

I finally got around to initiating the system rebuild I'd been planning for a long time and I thought it was going pretty well until I tested to make sure my Norton Ghost backup strategy was really working as anticipated.

Before the rebuild, I had a 40 GB HD on which I was running Windows 2000 Pro SP2. I bought a 60 GB HD and decided to make it my primary master drive and have my 40 GB as my secondary master, both drives being on my Promise HD controller. I decided to multiboot Win2k, Win98SE and WinNT 4.0 SP5 (upgrade to SP6 later).

In the past, the fact that my HDs were on the Promise controller seemed to have no effect on my Ghost usage. There was no problem with that, and Ghost sees the drives fine.

I made the 60 GB drive my Primary Master and fdisked it creating 3 partitions:

C: FAT, 1 GB
D: FAT, 1 GB
E: FAT32, 1.5 GB for my Win98SE

I intended to have a common paging file, pagefile.sys on the C: partition, to be used by all 3 OSs, as was suggested to me. I decided to have a separate D: FAT partition to keep data that I wanted accessible to all OSs. Once I got Win98SE installed and running on E:, I installed WinNT 4.0 in an NTFS partition. I then installed Windows 2000 SP2, and everything seemed fine.

I then made a few configuration tweaks and decided to Ghost everything so that if I needed to go back to a truly basic configuration for some reason, I wouldn't have to start from scratch. I didn't attempt to set up the common paging file yet, since I've never done that and wasn't confident about it. I did put the Win2000 paging file in the C: partition, though, with a maximum and minimum size of 850 MB. I figured that after Ghosting, I would set up WinNT and Win98SE to use the same paging file, same max and min value.

I did the Ghost today, but it didn't seem to work out. I'm using Norton Systemworks 2001, with the included Ghost 2001. I ran Ghost from a boot floppy in the normal way and decided to make several Ghost image files, all saved to my 40 GB secondary master drive. I made a Ghost image of the entire Primary Master 60 GB HD and then I made a separate Ghost image of each partition on the drive:

C: FAT 1 GB Boot
D: FAT 1 GB Common data partition
E: FAT32 1.5 GB Win98SE
F: NTFS 3 GB WinNT4 SP5
G: NTFS 10 GB Win2000 SP2

There was about 41 GB unallocated space left on the 60 GB primary master drive. I was, of course, going to allocate that into a few partitions, at least one for applications and the others for data. I didn't make any changes of significance to my 40 GB original drive, just in case I had to go back to that for some reason (which is where I am now, BTW!).

Aside from making these Ghost images to my 2nd HD, I created an image of the entire 60 GB drive to a CDR, writing directly from Ghost. After making all these images I decided to test them out. Better to find out now if there's a problem than find out later when I'd stand to lose a lot of work if it didn't work! I've used Ghost some in the past and never had a real problem and didn't think I'd have one now.

The first problem I encountered was that the very floppy I used to run Ghost in the first place (a Win95 boot floppy with the Ghostpe.exe file and the CDROM drivers on it), would not boot only an hour later when I tried to run Ghost to restore my backup image. It stalled at the place where it says it's checking out the DMI pool or something like that. So, not having another Win95 Ghost boot floppy (forget where I read the Norton instructions on how to make a Win95 Ghost boot floppy), I used one of the stock Norton Ghost-created boot floppies, which uses PC Dos. However, I discovered that that floppy couldn't see my CDRom's image files. That's why I made a Win95 Ghost CDR-driver boot floppy in the first place, because the PC-DOS ones don't work. Don't know where I found that out, but I think it was somewhere in the Norton documentation, along with the instructions on how you convert a PC-Dos boot floppy to a Win9x boot floppy. I got around that problem by running Ghost.exe directly from the CDR.

However, when I restored the disk image to the disk I found that things were really screwed up. The only OS that would boot was NT. Win2k seemed to almost boot and then I'd get a screen saying Loading Personal Settings flashing to Applying Personal Settings to Saving Personal Settings, and it would flash between those three several times a second in an endless loop I could only stop by resetting the system. This happened no matter how I restored the Ghost images, from CDR or HD. Windows 98SE would not boot at all from the Win2k boot loader. Only WinNT 4.0 seemed to work, and I loaded it right from the Win2k boot loader.

After a while I found out that a bunch of other stuff wasn't restored as I'd expect. The 1 GB FAT C: partition was restored as a 4 GB partition!! I thought that a disk restoration puts everything back just like it was! The pagefile.sys file that was in the C: partition was no longer there. There was one in the root directory of the Win2000 partition that looks to be just the default paging file that Win2000 creates, around 780 MB.

The D: FAT common files partition which I created as a 1 GB partition had become 2 GB upon restoration. WinNT's partition, originally 3 GB was restored as 10.6 GB, and the Win2000 partition, originally 10 GB was restored as 35.5 GB. I'm flumoxed!

Is Norton Ghost not usable in multibooting systems? Or am I just doing something wrong?

Do I have the wrong paradigm about Ghost? I'm pretty confused now. I sure don't want this program surprising me like this in the future. I was confident about it before today, but now I'm a worried guy. Thanks for any help!!

 

[Muse]

I've at least gotten Win98 and NT to work. I reinstalled Win2000. But I want to know what made the Ghost image screwed up. Was it having unallocated space on the drive or was it having the Win2000 paging file on the boot partition?

 

[Bglad]

I don't think Ghost 2001 works with NTFS partitions. You had to have the pro version of 2001 for that. You either have to run NT and 2000 off fat32 partitions or get Ghost 2002.

This could cause all kinds of problems when it doesn't recognize those partitions and who knows what it would do.

Looking at the Symantec website, it looks like a disk to disk copy is supposed to work but they admit that people have problems with that too and there is no workaround offered. Doesn't look like you did disk to disk though.

 

[Muse]

<< I don't think Ghost 2001 works with NTFS partitions. You had to have the pro version of 2001 for that. You either have to run NT and 2000 off fat32 partitions or get Ghost 2002.

This could cause all kinds of problems when it doesn't recognize those partitions and who knows what it would do.

Looking at the Symantec website, it looks like a disk to disk copy is supposed to work but they admit that people have problems with that too and there is no workaround offered. Doesn't look like you did disk to disk though. >>

No it's not true. You can Ghost NTFS partitions with Ghost 2001, but the thing is you can't save the files to NTFS partitions. Well, of course, you can store them there later, but Ghost, being a DOS program, won't be able to read and restore from Ghost image files stored on NTFS partitions. However, if stored on FAT or FAT32 partitions, Ghost can read and restore from them. What I'm finding, though, and this IS disconcerting, is that the Ghost boot disks that are created from Ghost Explorer in Windows, boot to PC DOS and can't see FAT32 partitions! I'm getting around that by running Ghost from Win9x boot floppies. To create a Win9x boot floppy with full CDRW support is tricky. I can't remember where I found the instructions. I had one but it went bad yesterday and I was too stupid to have created a backup. It's not a biggie, though, because you can boot with a PC DOS floppy with CDRom support and run Ghost.exe that Ghost has put on the CDRs that it creates with image files. Well, I did it yesterday OK and restored from the CDR later, so I know it works, even without a Win9x Ghost CDR supporting floppy.

I've worked through the problem I posted about. It seems to have resulted from the fact that the disk I imaged had a lot of unallocated space. That looks like a real no no for Ghost if you want an exact restore as I anticipated. In the future I'll make sure I don't have any unallocated space on a drive I want to image. To get around it for the time being I just created an empty partition with the rest of the empty space. The image files I created today of the disk and/or its partitions restore things OK, far as I can tell. I had to do a total reinstall of Windows 2000, though, because the one Ghost restored was simply trashed. Never could get it to stop that crazy blinking when it was _trying_to_open_

 

[kursplat]

just curious... why FAT ?
good luck. can't wait to see how this turns out

 

[Bglad]

Its taken me awhile to get the logic of whats going on here but now I see. The old version will work with NTFS when it is in its sector to sector copy mode but it will not read or write directly to NTFS.

2002 seems to work fine with NTFS. At least I've had no problems. But this begs the question of how does it work? In fact, I made my 2002 boot disk taking its MS-Dos from an old Win98 boot floppy.

I jumped from Ghost 2000 to 2002. Don't exactly know what all the differences are but there is a pretty big difference from 2000 to 2002. Also, 2002 gives you an option when you make the boot disk asking whether you want to use Pc-dos or MS-dos. If you use Ms-dos it asks you for a boot floppy and steals the files from there. 2001 doesn't do this? Of course you can always boot to dos then run the executable but its just an extra step.

 

[Muse]

<< just curious... why FAT ?
good luck. can't wait to see how this turns out >>

Right now I have two FAT partitions, the first two on the 60 GB primary master HD. The first one, and the only primary DOS partition, has to be FAT since that's the only file system that can be read by all 3 of the operating systems I installed: Win98SE, WinNT 4.0, Win2000. The second partition is in FAT since I wanted at least one data partition that could be read by all 3 OSs. I'll keep my email and newsgroup program and it's data files there and some documentation and information tables I keep and maybe some other stuff.

I think I finally untangled the mess and it was evidently caused by there being a whole lot of unallocated space on the drive when I did a disk image. I won't let that happen again. I allocated the rest of the space and the disk image restores fine, as far as I can tell.

 

[Muse]

<< Its taken me awhile to get the logic of whats going on here but now I see. The old version will work with NTFS when it is in its sector to sector copy mode but it will not read or write directly to NTFS.

2002 seems to work fine with NTFS. At least I've had no problems. But this begs the question of how does it work? In fact, I made my 2002 boot disk taking its MS-Dos from an old Win98 boot floppy.

I jumped from Ghost 2000 to 2002. Don't exactly know what all the differences are but there is a pretty big difference from 2000 to 2002. Also, 2002 gives you an option when you make the boot disk asking whether you want to use Pc-dos or MS-dos. If you use Ms-dos it asks you for a boot floppy and steals the files from there. 2001 doesn't do this? Of course you can always boot to dos then run the executable but its just an extra step. >>

If you boot to DOS and then run the Ghost executable you don't have CD Rom support that is loaded from the Ghost boot floppies. I didn't know that Ghost 2002 could write to and read from NTFS partitions. I knew that the Enterprise version could, but that was expensive. That's the one that systems administrators used. How does it work? I don't know. Good question, especially if you have it booting in Win98 DOS. The 2001 version doesn't give you the option to make a Ghost boot disk with MS DOS. You are stuck with IBM PC DOS and that's a major problem. PC DOS doesn't see FAT32 data. The readme.txt file is where they tell you how to convert a PC DOS Ghost boot floppy to an MS DOS Ghost boot floppy. It's not easy! In fact it's a real tussle, but if you follow their instructions letter for letter, it works. I finally managed to do it yesterday and made 3 extra copies! But what I realized is that it's probably better to boot from a CD with Ghost. If you create a CDR with boot support, Ghost copies Ghost.exe to the CD. You boot from that and Ghost opens in a flash - no more waiting for it to load from floppy. I'm going to try to run it from CD from now on. I have a CDRW drive and a DVD drive, so I can probably run Ghost from the DVD and write to the CDRW as well as my HDDs.

 

[Bglad]

I don't like the CDRW option. First I find it unreliable. Second, I hate switching all those CD's. Switching to burn them and then switching again to run the check. Third, Ghost won't access a CDRW until it has been completely erased. A quick erase won't do it so that is an extra 20 min/disk to erase. This is way too much trouble.

I'm mad now that I just upgraded to the new version instead of going with DriveImage.

 

[Muse]

<< I don't like the CDRW option. First I find it unreliable. Second, I hate switching all those CD's. Switching to burn them and then switching again to run the check. Third, Ghost won't access a CDRW until it has been completely erased. A quick erase won't do it so that is an extra 20 min/disk to erase. This is way too much trouble.

I'm mad now that I just upgraded to the new version instead of going with DriveImage. >>

If I was looking to upgrade to Ghost 2002, I'd look around for a good deal on Systemworks 2002 which I assume has the program. I got Systemworks 2001 for $19 + shipping, less than $24 I think. Went to www.pricewatch.com. I've seen it for less, actually, since.

I haven't tried writing to CDRWs yet. The last two batches of CDRs I bought cost me less than .15 each. In fact, I got a 50 CD spindle of 32x CDRs for $1.99, assuming I get my rebates. That's .06 apiece, I think, so I'm not worrying about using CDRWs right now. I look at the ads in the Sunday paper looking for great offers on blank CDRs. So far, I'm having real good luck Ghosting to CDRs. Like I said higher in the thread, it looks like booting to CD is definitely the way to go when using Ghost. It was hypothetical above, but I've done it several times today and it works great - as long as the CDR boots to Win98 or Win95 (I assume, but I'm using Win98) DOS. The CDR I have that boots to IBM PC Dos won't boot! It's in the trash. If you boot to CD that has Ghost.exe on it, you have every option - you can read or write to or from HD or CD. You're in Ghost but you don't have to deal with the CD drive at all if you want to read and/or write only to/from HD data. I'm not checking my CDs in Ghost. Haven't had a problem yet. If I were to get an image copying program now and didn't have one I'd look into DriveImage, definitely, for the reasons I stated already. However, I think I can do a workaround to enable unattended Ghosting with batch files using a TSR that sends keystrokes while a batch file is running. I heard about a free download that does that.