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jzurek
Posts: 3
Joined: 8/25/2007
Status: offline
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RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives - 8/26/2007 0:14:46
You must have the standard version of Acronis; the PRO version can write hard disk images (or partition images) straight to DVD media, even when Acronis was booted from the DVD drive. If the image is too large to fit on a single DVD it will span to multiple DVDs. So basically the same as what Ghost2003 does when run from a "vintage" PATA machine.
However, with Acronis one gets a difficult "recognition" of the empty DVD media when starting the backup process. Acronis appears to have a problem recognizing a DVD in a drive that hasn't spun up yet , also it sometimes gives errors that the "media is bad" which disappears after a few retrys. It is also considerably slower than what Ghost used to be, while the compression it delivers is slightly less than Ghost, even in maximum compression mode.
This slowness is true when one writes an image file to the HD, as well as when writing it directly to the DVD.
I haven't tried Acronis yet when writing to a network disk, but I am pretty "spoiled" here by Ghost because 2003 used to do this flawless. So best case Acronis would perform the same here but we'll see.
What I liked so far are the Acronis DVD boot capabilities though; a very spiffy "Windows-like" user interface available from direct boot mode.
But all in all, I would have preferred Ghost 2003 over Acronis if the former only would have been able to recognize the SATA DVD drives......
BTW, I also tested Ghost 12. Downright terrible, I have removed it from my PC again. I will probably have to adopt Acronis; in all fairness the image files that it created (written either to DVD or to HD) did restore my C: partition without a problem so it does what I need.
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Larry M.
Posts: 3016
Joined: 2/20/2003
From: Greenville, South Carolina, USA
Status: offline
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RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives - 8/27/2007 18:35:50
quote:
So best case Acronis would perform the same
Don't agree. Ghost consumes hard drive space and system resources, Acronis does not. Additionallly, a complete operating system backup (to external hard drive) in Acronis takes approximately 20 minutes which I do not consider excessive.
I always remove Restore Points before backup then reinstate same thereafter setting another Restore Point. DVD media, by comparison to external hard drive, lacks reliability and is also cumbersome.
_____________________________
Larry M.
"Money talks only when it's a large amount."
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jzurek
Posts: 3
Joined: 8/25/2007
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RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives - 8/28/2007 22:10:24
I agree about turning off Windows system restore before creating the backup - Leaving system restore intact before the backup creation results in an image file almost 30% larger. In fact, I even turn off hibernation - because if you leave that on, it takes another 2 Gbyte for the backup for hyberfil.sys (assuming the machine has 2 GByte RAM installed as is the case for me)
I do not agee about Acronis' speed. I did a comparison backing up the same C: volume on my SATA Dell dual-core machine to the D: partition, while booting the backup program from either the USB floppy drive (for Ghost) or from the CD ROM (for Acronis).
Result: It takes Acronis 25 minutes with compression set to "normal", it takes Ghost 8 minutes with compression set to "high". Also, the resulting Acronis image file is then 25% larger than the Ghost 2003 image file, for the SAME backup being made.
Acronis restores the image file in 20 minutes, Ghost restores it in less than 6 minutes.
I do not understand the argument about system resources. When I make a backup (or restore an image), I do not think it is wise to run other tasks on the machine in parallel. The backup (or restore) task is the only one that matters when running such a task, so the argument about the potential system load on the rest of the machine seems irrelevant.
BTW, it has been a long time since I have been working with a CD/DVD writing program that produces "coasters". When I cleaned out my garbage can yesterday I realized I hadn't seen that phenomenon for a while - 4 DVDs down the trash. Produced by Acronis.
My conclusion: I will miss Ghost 2003 when I make the inevitable move to Vista.
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bruceh
Posts: 1
Joined: 9/25/2007
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RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives - 9/26/2007 0:25:53
quote:
ORIGINAL: karlislielais
1. first you need to understand, that when I did the first reboot, Ghost made a "virtual partition" (that's how I call it - I don't know if the word "virtual" is right here) and set it as primary, so every time I started PC it booted from Ghost's partition, but Ghost 2003 has some problems with SATA so it couldn't direct me to SATA HDD and boot Windows.
2. So, I used a nice, little app Ranish - a dos partition manager. First I booted PC with Win98 Startup Disk (the best thing that Microsoft has invented), when it was done, switched it with floppy discette with the Ranish's part.exe in it and ran it. When the application opens you can see a list of all partitions, how big the are etc. You can do several things - set primary partition, erase partition, hide partition etc. And here it was - the evil Ghost partition that ruined my life - I could recognize it by FAT-16 file system and ~8 MB size. All you need to do is to delete it (with "Delete" key)! And windows can boot again. Hoorey!
So, short summary:
To normally boot Windows again, after Norton Ghost 2003 has made a virtual partition that doesn't recognize SATA discs,
1. download Ranish Partition Manager
2. copy the files inside the zip file on a floppy discette
3. get Windows 98 Startup Disk
4. put the startup disk into floppy drive and turn on your pc, boot form floppy drive
5. when it has booted, switch startup disk with discette which contains Ranish Partition Manager
6. run part.exe (type in the command line "A:\part.exe")
7. find partition from the list that has FAT-16 file system and ~8MB size and delete it.
8. reboot
I just ran into this Ghost 2003 vs. SATA problem for the second time. The first time I accidently resolved myself, which might answer the question of why some people can run Ghost on a SATA disk and some people cannot. On a Dell Optiplex GX520 I was able to get it to work by changing BIOS so that the Drive > Sata Operation setting changed from "Combination" from "Normal".
Today I was setting up a new Dell Vostro 1000 and, doh, it happened again. However this time there was no BIOS setting which would fix the problem like it did on the GX520.
When I read Karl's posting, I was hoping this would be a fix for me. My first problem was that I couldn't create a win98 startup disk (without a lot of work). But one trick I have previously used is with a Bootable Ghost 2003 backup CD. After I boot with the CD, I return to PC-DOS. I had downloaded the Ranish partition manager and copied it onto a flash drive. I wasn't sure if the flash drive would be visible under PC-DOS. Luckily it was visible (my option was to burn a CD).
When I ran the ranish part244.exe (v2.44) it came up with a list:
0 MBR Master Boot Record
1 PRI Unused
2 PRI Unknown
3 PRI Windows NT NTFS
4 PRI Unused
#3 was Windows XP. According to Karl's posting I should delete #2 because it was around 8MB. However I was confused because #2 was probably the DellUtility partition which I had noticed earlier in Windows. Also there was no indication of fat-32. From what I read I thought PC-DOS was on the #3 partition, though I didn't know how. I was confused.
Then I displayed the help via F1. It indicated that "B" will toggle the Boot flag. I moved the cursor to #3 partition, typed B and an asterisk showed up next to #3. Ahhh... from playing around with other disk partition programs long ago, there was always an indication of which was the boot partition. I saved this setting and rebooted.
It worked!!! Windows XP started up.
So the trick is, on a system with Ghost 2003 that works, create a bootable CD (I used a CD where I backed up DellUility). Then with either a flash drive or another CD, burn the Ranish partition program. Run the partition program, find the Windows partition and mark it Bootable.
Hope my experience helps someone. Though it took a while, your posts helped me.
Regards,
Bruce
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snoopy81
Posts: 1
Joined: 11/11/2007
Status: offline
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RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives - 11/11/2007 16:54:23
quote:
.......
So, short summary: To normally boot Windows again, after Norton Ghost 2003 has made a virtual partition that doesn't recognize SATA discs,
1. download Ranish Partition Manager
........
6. run part.exe (type in the command line "A:\part.exe")
7. find partition from the list that has FAT-16 file system and ~8MB size and delete it.
8. reboot
Had also some problem like this, but I was far mor lucky than you, because I already new about ranish Partition manager, and had a ready boot disk with it....
My system is:
AZUZ P5B, 1 SATA disk with 2x NTFS partitions (C:\OS) & E:\, 1xPATA disk (D:\), 2x DVDs (1PATA+1SATA)
Note the strange chipsetting in P5Bs using JMicron over Intel SATA to support PATA or RAID.
Symptoms:
After clean install, I tryed the famous Norton Ghost2003, and was struk in this unfamous virtual partition.
Only my D: (PATA hd) was accessible and both SATA partitions disapeared !
Using Part, I re-activated my main partition but notice than Part is limited in HD size ...
I could boot again on C:\ but my E:\ had vanished....
Note: I didn't have a FAT16 8MB partition, Ghost only rewrote my MBR, and I guess the virtual patition was the file create in root of my 1st partion, while the new MBR's job was to handle all this...
Finally PartitionMagic 8 was able to salvage my E:\ partition.
Running Ghost from floppy with "/noide" switch proved OK...
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K.Muhaisen
Posts: 1
Joined: 12/12/2008
Status: offline
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RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives - 12/12/2008 23:59:38
hello everyone
I have just saw this great topic and here is what I have to share
If you do the mistake which is (running norton ghost 2003+SATA)
Don't Download any software...
Don't Format your hard driver...
1- Get any Win98 bootable CD/DISK ..
2- Choose to run the PC with CD-ROM Support
3- Type FDISK
4- Choose option #3 (Delete Partition)
5- Delete the FAT 16 Partition
6- Click ESC to get back to the main menu
7- Choose option #2 (Set Active Partition)
8- Choose the C Drive ( the drive that was C before Ghost taking the C over)
9 You are done
Sure, anyone used FDISK before will see this reply is longer than what it should be, but its just to make it easier for anyone who didnt use it before
Good Luck everyone
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zenman_nl
Posts: 1
Joined: 12/13/2008
Status: offline
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RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives - 12/13/2008 11:52:33
Yes, yes, yes! After reading all of the above I finally read the part about FDISK. Beautifull simple solution. It works like a charm ! Thank you K.Muhaisen!
My tip for a free bootable CD with fdisk tools on it: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html
Good luck solving this f%^&#ing problem, caused by Norton Ghost 2003!
Zenman
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