Restore Ghost Image onto Promise Raid

[KillerBob]

Hi,

I want to find out how I'd restore a ghost image of a partion on my Promise Fasttrack HW Raid0 array?

I have 2 disks in Raid0, split into 4 partitions. Disk C is ghosted onto DVD, as is the entire array (all 4 partitions). I used Ghost 2003 for this.

How would I restore them in case of disaster? Would I use the bootable CD-ROM with the software on, and would the system then see the entire Raid0 array and/or the partitions? WinXP needs the drivers installed for the Raid controller, but I don't know if that is true for the "Dos" as well? Would I simply restore my drive C, or should I count on using the image file of the entire array?

I don't have a disaster right now, but usually end up messing up the machine somehow.

BTW, the DVD is a Sony DRU-500a.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Lord Evermore]

The boot disk just needs to have the RAID controller drivers loaded so that DOS can see the array. Then you can restore the same as any other restoration.

 

[KillerBob]

That's the problem, the only drivers available for the Promise Fasttrack Raid controller are the ones for WinXP, Win2K, Win9x-Me, and WinNT.

Can I use any of them for the DOS restoration, and if so, what do I put into the config.sys?

 

[Lord Evermore]

The drivers for Windows would be protected mode 32 bit drivers, so they won't work. I'm really not sure how you'd do it. It may be that the ASPI drivers included with Ghost when it makes a boot disk will allow DOS to use the controller (since they're used to read a large variety of SCSI controllers).

According to this http://ghost.radified.com/ghost_1a.htm Ghost should work on its own. I forgot that most full boot disks load ASPI drivers, so a manufacturer-specific driver isn't needed.

 

[Mday]

DOS will see the arrays as normal drives\partitions (it's invisible to DOS). as long as your bootdisk has the drivers for the DVD writer\reader, it'll be fine. i have worked with fasttrack and backup\restoration with ghost. it'll be fine.

 

[KillerBob]

Guys,

Thanks for the info!

According to Symantec, Ghost is certified with my Sony DRU-500a DVD RW, and in a small test it does see the DVD as well as the HDs in my system. The two going through the Promise RAID controller are seen as one, but all the partitions are readily available.

However, the data on the partitions (NTFS) is not available, and only FAT-16/32 users can utilize the "compare image", "extract individual file", and the "restore corrupt data" functionalities of Ghost (shame that Symantec still can not crack that nut).

Now as all seems to work in theory, does anyone have any experience with this?

 

[MadRat]

Did you save the partitions as a spanned image across multiple disks, or as separate partitions with each their own image?

 

[CAMS]

Originally posted by: KillerBob
Hi,
How would I restore them in case of disaster? Would I use the bootable CD-ROM with the software on, and would the system then see the entire Raid0 array and/or the partitions? WinXP needs the drivers installed for the Raid controller, but I don't know if that is true for the "Dos" as well?

Well I am confused, you did make a image?
Ghost does this from DOS so the RAID controllers drives are not an issue as it worked.
Restore the image the same way you made it.

 

[MadRat]

But if he made separate images for each partition then he has to repartition the new array before restoring the old partitions. If he made one master image of the array then he can simply rebuild the old image onto the new array.

 

[KillerBob]

MadRat,

My initial test was simply imaging partition 1:1 (C onto a DVD. I could select to image the entire array as well (seen as one HD in Ghost). I guess the image from the entire array would include the partitioning done by WinXP?

CAMS,

You are right, the Ghost system sees the array, and the partitions are readily available to restore to.



So, in the end it seems it would work. I can image the array, or the partitions individually onto DVD, or another HD. Ghost sees the array when booting from the Ghost floppy disk, and can see the Sony DVD as well.

Now, has anyone actually had any success with this; restoring a Raid0 partition, or an array, from image using Ghost?

 

[Lord Evermore]

You don't have to repartition to restore partitions, Ghost creates them for you if needed (you can restore to free space and it'll resize them if needed). At least, that's how I remember it working the few times I used it.

I'm presuming it isn't Ghost itself that's making the array visible. If you booted to DOS with a clean floppy containing only the 3 primary files, I don't expect the array would be visible. It is important to make sure your boot disk is a full boot disk with ASPI drivers.

Anything which requires Ghost to read actual data from the NTFS partition (such as to restore corrupt data) might not work due to DOS not being able to read NTFS. If you put NTFSDOS on the disk, Ghost could probably read the partition just fine, because it's the underlying OS determining whether the file system works. However I'm not sure why Ghost would even need to read the actual file system to do a comparison, since it could be done bit-by-bit, without needing to even know the file system.

I wish Microsoft would give up trying to force people to switch to NT-based OSes in order to read NTFS drives, since there are still so many situations where we have to boot to DOS in some fashion, despite their attempts to eliminate it. They should create their own DOS-native NTFS driver. Even basic read capabilities would be nice. Or build an entirely new "DOS" based on the NT command interpreter that isn't disabled like the Recovery Console.

 

[MadRat]

Ghost 7 and above works fine with NTFS in Windows NT through XP. I use it all the time.

 

[KillerBob]

Excuse my ignorance, but what is NTFSDOS? I assume it is a version of DOS that I can create a floppy from that sees NTFS file structures. Where would I pick it up?

 

[Lord Evermore]

No, it's a "driver" that allows normal DOS to read NTFS partitions. You run it in the autoexec.bat or from the command line and then DOS or Win9x can see NTFS. However it isn't free, and only the Pro version allows full write capability.

I just went through Symantec's docs. Ghost 6 and higher allows you to read the NTFS image and restore individual files from it. 6.0 doesn't create an index during the imaging, but 6.01 does so that the reads are quicker.

However Symantec says that only Ghost 2003 is able to save an image file directly to an NTFS partition (since it runs in DOS mode). It can save to network drives though even if they're NTFS, since the file system doesn't need to be supported locally. It can read an NTFS partition to create the image and index the files, it's bypassing DOS support in that case, similar to how NTFSDOS does it.

Make sure that Ghost does not use sectory by sector copying of the drive, since that won't properly copy the RAID array.

More info.

Basically, if you have a version higher than 6, you'll be able to make images properly, you just can't save it to another NTFS drive unless you have 2003.

 

[KillerBob]

All of you, thanks for all the info. It's been very helpful.