Why does Ghost have to hate?

[sechs]

I finally got around to making a set of boot disks for Ghost 8. I'd like to be able to switch to storing my images on an NTFS volume, rather than FAT.

The issue is that when I attempt to image my system volume, Ghost hangs on "adding remaining MFT files." The exact file is always different, but the message in the lower left is always the same.

I've tried imaging to FAT volumes and NTFS volumes, to ATA drives and SCSI drives. It doesn't make a difference. Better yet, no other volume that I have seems to suffer from this issue.

The volume in question has passed several boot-time chkdsks, and has low fragmentation.

Ghost 7.5 does not exhibit this behavior.

Any ideas on what the heck is going on and what I can do to fix it?

 

[Tea]

There is probably quite a lot to learn about Ghost. Unfortunately, I have yet to learn any of it.

Every time I use Ghost - which is rarely - it takes ages while I stuff about looking for a reasonably recent copy on an OEM CD somewhere, then buggerise about making boot discs or trying to read the CD (and usually - making a CD, as for some obscure reason the folder that Epox (or whichever motherboard maker it is, I think it's Epox) put their Ghost files is invisible from the command line - which, of course, is what you need to use to get at it) and wind up taking a spare hard drive, making it bootable, copying Ghost to it, adding a mouse driver, and strapping the damn thing so that I can boot a system with three hard drives: boot & Ghost, old drive, and empty new drive.

Then I sit back and wait an unreasonable amount of time, after which one of three things happens:

(a) The transfer doesn't work at all and there is no useful data on the new drive.
(b) the transfer seems to work OK but Win 2000/ or Win XP refuses to go past a completely blank desktop. (I wouldn't dream of using Ghost with a W9X system - I have a much more practical works-100%-of-the-time method of my own for that .)
(c) Everything works as designed.

All three happen regularly. (a) and (b) are the most common, but (c) sometimes happens instead. I have no idea why.

So here is my puzzle. (a) and (b) I can explain fairly simply - Ghost is, after all, a Symantec product, but I am at a loss to come up with a rational explanation for (c).

 

[time]

I wondered when someone would point out that Ghost is (these days) a Symantec product.

I was then going to smugly suggest you try DriveImage.

Imagine my shock and horror when I noticed the new company logo at the top of the page:

 

[sechs]

Ghost has been a Symantec product for at least 5 years. If you guys are using a pre-Symantec version, that may explain the issues....

I've tried DriveImage; all it does is mangle my NTFS partitions.

 

[Tea]

Drive Image used to be excellent. Back a few years ago, we used it quite a lot.

Dust to dust
ashes to ashes
Another good product
gets the Symantec crashes

 

[sechs]

Isn't DriveImage a Symantec product now, anyways?

 

[Tea]

Exactly. Hence my poem.

 

[Mercutio]

Tea, your shop needs the joy of a retail copy of ghost.

Really, Tony, it's worth the 100 AUD and includes quite a few useful features that would serve your needs.

sechs, I have no idea why you might be having that problem, but have you explored the various options ghost has for making copies, like sector- or block- or file-level copying?

 

[sechs]

I haven't made time for that yet. I was just putting in the several hours to determine, yes, it is just this volume, and no, it's the disk that you're trying to save the image to. I'd also have to clear out 20 GB of space somewhere to put the image.

 

[CityK]

The issue is that when I attempt to image my system volume, Ghost hangs on "adding remaining MFT files." The exact file is always different, but the message in the lower left is always the same.

When I made an image yesterday I took note of the message at the bottom left. Its stays the same (i.e. "Adding remaining MFT files to image") throughout the entire process.

How far into the imaging does it get before it hangs?

 

[sechs]

Sector-wise image works perfectly. No suprise there.

Symantec support suggest that the master file table was to fragmented, which it isn't.

 

[sechs]

Update

Symantec support sent me an updated version of Ghost which actually managed to make an image on the fifth try.

I'm hoping that this is a hotfix version, because it freezes while checking volumes....

 

[time]

Okay, enough messing about. Try Drive Backup from Paragon, or better yet, the Hard Disk Manager suite.

The latter has countless features, including the ability to defrag non-standard block-sized NTFS parititions under Win2k (as well as the MFT), full write access to multiple Linux partition types, etc, etc, etc.

It is NOT a Symantec product, and it has yet to bite me.

 

[blakerwry]

ah, I've been looking for something that will let me read ext3 in windows.

 

[sechs]

This would, of course, involve someone buying copy of said software for my use. Ghost is provided to me for free....

 

[Tea]

Well, I bought a retail copy of Ghost.

It doesn't work. I imaged the boot partition on my laptop to another drive (at USB 1.1 - eagh!) and the image is perfect but Windows 2000 refuses to boot, saying the page file is corrupt or missing, go to system properties and make a new ne". Ha! How am I supposed to get to system properties when I can't boot?

I'm looking for answers on the web now, but not finding much.

 

[CityK]

Tea,

Boot into dos and run fdisk \mbr on the drive

CK

 

[Tea]

Thanks, CityK. I already nuked the drive (after an endless amount of stuffing about). I can boot, but only if the old drive is plugged into the USB port.

It turns out that Windows 2000, for reasons best known to itself, has assigned the new drive as E: - thus, it goes looking for its desktop and ini files on drive letter C:, even though I'm booting off the new drive with the old drive disconnected!

Windows is stupid. This is not a problem you get with OS/2 or DOS or Windows 9X.

Anyway, I tried doing it over the LAN instead, but I caouldn't get the Intel NIC drivers to install after 3 tries, so next I nuked the new drive again, and I'm trying an entire-disk copy over USB. (I have the new drive plugged into an external USB 2.0 box, connected to a USB 2.0 port, but Ghost's drivers are shonky and the system only boots to DOS-based Ghost if you have only USB 2.0 devices, and no USB 1.1 devices at all. I can disconnect my external USB 1.1 trackball, but not the touchpad. And you can't turn the touchpad off in the BIOS because it's a Tioshiba, and Toshibas don't have a BIOS (at least not in the generally accepted sense of one that you can press a key at boot time and tinker round with).

Net result, I have to run the whole thing at USB 1.1 speeds, which are terrible. So I'm trying an all-of-disk copy now, having no idea what partition sizes it's going to give me on the new 80GB drive, and it has managed to do 4% so far in 22 minutes. The estimated time remaining is 7 hours and a few odd minutes - so I sure hope it works!

 

[Buck]

Tea, is this a regular process you want to set up, or is this just a one-off for this laptop drive? You could always create a backup file within Windows 2000 and restore it to the new disk in the system. Yes, this would require installing Windows 2000 first.

 

[Tea]

This particular one is a one-off.

But seeing as I just spent some of Tannin's hard-earned on a retail copy of Ghost, I want to gert some value out of it and, later on, use it for other jobs.

I'm mega-late and have to fly. Back tonight.

Late tonight.

sigh

 

[sechs]

You need to set the image all option, or the the volume signature doesn't get added to the Ghost image. When you restore the image, Windows will assign a new signature, and this can really jack up drive letters.

 

[CityK]

It turns out that Windows 2000, for reasons best known to itself, has assigned the new drive as E: - thus, it goes looking for its desktop and ini files on drive letter C:, even though I'm booting off the new drive with the old drive disconnected!

Yep. I discovered this fun out about a year and a half ago when I got ghost2k3 (bundled in NSW Pro). It was very, very frustrating at first. I discovered that if Windows is allowed to "see" a new drive, it writes something like a 6 byte signature to the drive's mbr. So if you then go on to try to replace your old drive with the new one via restoring an image from the old drive to the new drive, when you attempt to boot up you'll be greated by a missing pagefile message....which, as you highlighted, won't allow you to proceed any further in any fashion whatsoever....thankfully, this can be easily resolved by booting into dos and simply running the command "fdisk /mbr" or booting off the windows installation CD and entering into the recovery consule and using the "fix mbr" command or something like that. Personally I just use the dos route as it is less time comsuming and the end results are the same.

And you can't turn the touchpad off in the BIOS because it's a Tioshiba, and Toshibas don't have a BIOS (at least not in the generally accepted sense of one that you can press a key at boot time and tinker round with).

There should be one Tea. The old Toshiba laptop I inherited has one, albeit it was a strange key combo if I recall (haven't used it for ages...actually its in pieces right now). I know the situation was similar with one of my relative's new Toshiba....something like cntl-f2 or cntl-pause.

 

[Howell]

When I need to image laptop drives I use adaptors and put the drives into a desktop.

 

[Buck]

Why not just use xcopy [drive letter] [drive letter] /h /o /c /k /e /y /i

Works nice on my copy machine.

 

[ddrueding]

Wow, I didn't know so many people were having issues with Ghost. I've been using it for about 3 years now without issue. Haven't even opened a manual.

Yesterday I backed up a freshly built server. I booted directly to the CD, ran Ghost from the support directory (no installation or boot-disks required), inserted a blank DVD, and burned the system and page/log partitions (not the data) directly to DVD. I think this software is brilliant!

But then, I am easy to please...

 

[CityK]

Wow, I didn't know so many people were having issues with Ghost. I've been using it for about 3 years now without issue

Don't get me wrong. I use Ghost on a regular basis, and it works fine for me. It was when switching from the older version to the newer version that fully supports NTFS that I ran into difficulty for the first time. Once I figured out what was happening I have had no problems with it since...

Haven't even opened a manual.

I read through the manual back when I got it, only because I had the same problem as Tannin encountered. It was boring and my attention wandered constantly. I probably overlooked a bunch of stuff or its significance didn't strike upon me.

Why not just use xcopy [drive letter] [drive letter] /h /o /c /k /e /y /i

Works nice on my copy machine.

I thought there was some sort of drawback with xcopy. I remember reading something on SR once (and you know how I believe everything I read on the internet) that it misses some sort of this-or-that-something-or-other.

You need to set the image all option, or the the volume signature doesn't get added to the Ghost image.

I would so like to try this out right now to see if this alleviates the difficulty that I ran into way back then. Unfortunately I don't have any empty partitions or drives I can mess around with right now. But next chance I get I will certainly try this out .... in fact, in the meanwhile, the very next time I do an image I am certainly going to have a look see at what options I have selected.

 

[Tea]

Well, I just got home and .....

.... wait for it ....

.... (this one is good) ...

.....

I looked at my laptop first thing, and it was DEAD.

I got one quick look at the W2K desktop on my old drive (it should have been still running DOS, at the conclusion of the 12hour, 30GB USB 1.1 image operation, remember?) and then it refused to start.

Also, my dektop machine (which runs 24/7) was switched off, but the Smoothwall (which runs 24/7 but is Baby AT format with a real (i.e., mechanical) powere switch) was on.

It appears that the power went off while I was away. This shut down the desktop and nuked the power suppy on the laptop. Having been running on batteries for a period of something between 1 and 30 hours, the batteries are now dead and I can't start the thing up at all with either drive.

grrrr....

 

[Tea]

Did my Gost clone operation work?

Will I be able to fix everything with FDISK/MBR?

I have no idea. On Tuesday (Monday is a holiday) I'll send the PSU unit awwy for RMA and, because I don't like waiting, order a spare one.

Tune in about this time next week.

Same crappy time.

Same crappy station.

 

[Tannin]

If, on the other hand, you are waiting for Tea to learn to proofread her posts, don't bother tuning back in.

Tea is incapable of learning.

 

[CityK]

That's okay. Her allusion to the dynamic duo was enough to guarantee that I'll be back next week.

 

[sechs]

Update

So, Symantec has decided that it's my volume, and not Ghost, which is causing this issue. They have no explanation as to why Ghost 7.5 has no trouble at all.

Better yet, when I nefariously asked for suggestions on non-Symantec products to use in place of Ghost, they suggested PowerQuest.

So, I'll be sticking with Ghost 7.5.

 

[time]

Just yesterday, the system administrator at one of my clients was cursing the 2002 version of Powerquest's DriveImage. He was trying to store the image on a NTFS partition, but it was being corrupted.

I took in a copy of Paragon Hard Disk Manager and everything went as smooth as silk. The sysadmin was also impressed at how you can mount backup images as drives under Windows.

It doesn't have every feature of Ghost, such as CD mastering, but it has plenty of other tools that I think are more useful - and it's certainly less intrusive than some of its competitors.

 

[Tea]

Pity I didn't read that before I bought Ghost.

(I still shuddder at the thought that I gave some of my money to Symantec, of all companies. I think I'd rather gve it to the IRA or Microsoft.