NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (Full Version)

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jaybee -> NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (5/10/2005 17:08:09)

Do not like each other.

If you get a new machine with a SATA drive do not under any circumstances install and run Norton Ghost.

Ghost will lock the machine up AFTER it has set itself up as the C:\ drive. You cannot boot back into Windows. You'll get the instruction to run ghreboot.exe to break out of the Ghost virtual drive but you can't because of the drive incompatibility. You can't run it from the CD as that doesn't get found.

The only way round it is to boot from a bootable floppy with ghreboot downloaded from the Norton web site BUT.......

If you have a nice shiny new machine with a SATA drive....... pretty good chance you have no floppy drive.

I was lucky as my CD is removable and my partner happened to have a compatible floppy drive, otherwise I'd have been  royally screwed.

There is some info stating that you should upgrade to the latest version of Ghost but when I tried it told me that I had the latest version.

Don't risk it.

Great slimming method though. I reckon I lost ten pounds this afternoon. [:@]



void@rogers.com -> RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (5/21/2005 23:39:05)

Hah!  Thats silly.  I had the same problem but i dont think it was because it was a SATA drive.   It had worked previously without any problems.  Just one day it decided when i told it to reboot my computer into the norton virtual dos partition to do some imaging, it would no longer boot back to windows.    I managed to get it back, with a combination of using recovery console boot disk, deleting the norton virtual partition file and rebuilding the boot files on the C: drive.

I suggest in the future do what I do:   Create a norton floppy boot disk or a CD boot disk and run your imaging/ghosting operations from there.  This way you do not disturb the windows boot partition.




jaybee -> RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (5/22/2005 7:43:26)

Well if it's silly then I suggest you tell Symantec, Dell, HP and around 120 other people I've found who are having problems, only to be told by Norton and Dell support that it's down to the Software not liking the SATA drive.



void@rogers.com -> RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (5/22/2005 20:43:09)

ok relax.  I'm just saying norton ghost 2003 is not unreliable just because of that.  Its best to boot from a floppy.  At least i have done it that way even before they introduced a windows interface to it.   so i'm saying if u wanna use ghost 2003 then do that.   by the way it seems that norton ghost 2003 is the most stable and relible version out of all of their versions... even better then their newest one V 9.0

Just check out the extensive Norton Ghost guides at http://ghost.radified.com/

there are some comments there too as to why ghost 2003 is tho most stable version... mainly because its the very last one that offered a true dos version of ghost.



BobbyDouglas -> RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (5/22/2005 22:02:27)

I don't understand your claim... Are you saying Norton Ghost works fine with SATA drives?

I am sure if that is the case, jaybee could easily back her point up with facts showing links of people with same problems. I would never trust Norton Ghost or a similar product for a backup/restore. It just never makes me feel safe. If I want security, I will run raid.



void@rogers.com -> RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (5/22/2005 22:29:54)

Yes thats what i'm saying that it does work with SATA drives.   Boot from floppy and run ghost from there.   Norton 2003 includes a wizard that lets you create a bootable floppy with ghost on it.  If you just tell it to run ghost and just reboot from windows then it messes with the boot files on the hard drive.  and you dont wanna do that, because just like murphy's law says, anything that COULD go wrong WILL go wrong.   so the slightest bug or mistake with that will cause the OS hard drive unbootable.

That is why i said boot from floppy and it works beautifully.

About RAID.  Yes you can do that, but its not very good to run on a hard drive that has your OS installed on it.   At least I haven't had good experience with that, it just complicates matters.    I DO however run a separate set of disks on RAID witch i use purely for storing files and programs etc...   i do not install my operating system on the RAID set.

Instead I use Ghost to make an image of my hard drive that has my operating system installed on it.  and yes i do use an SATA drive for my operating system drive.  I then store that image on my RAID set.  that way my ghost image of my OS will not get destroyed if that hard drive fails.



Reflect -> RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (5/23/2005 10:27:26)

I Googled and also talked with a few tech friends just now on this for you. They confirmed what I found via Google...

http://www.digit-life.com/forum/0005/000061-2.html

The above is the fix for the partitions. Ghost just made itself the active partition. The above also goes over how to setup ghosting a SATA drive.

Take care,

Brian



jaybee -> RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (5/23/2005 12:23:38)

Thanks Brian. I would try it but when you only have to one machine with that set up, and it's the machine you use for your work, testing out stuff that could kill the whole thing stone dead isn't really on.

I've bookmarked the page and I'll give it a go when I have no design work on the go. Until then, I'm just running a real-time backup to an external USB drive.



perropicante -> RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (1/21/2006 20:11:00)

Just thought I should share this recent success I've had with creating an image of my drive with my Dimension 8400.

I've had big problems using Ghost 2003 to image the drive because of SATA. When I finally got it to work, here's what I had done.

1. I used the instructions on this page (http://www.djdenham.com/8400%20Special.htm) to put my drive's controller in ATA mode
2. I installed windows fresh, without any additional RAID drivers (eg, no pressing of the F6 key during install)
3. I formatted my entire disk, and partitionned it into 4, 30GB C:\, 20GB D:\ (Ghost), 10GB Games, the rest, data
4. I installed Ghost 2003.
5. I scheduled a backup image with Ghost 2003 from C:\ to D:\, with the following changes from the default configuration:
- Did NOT check for any USB support, nor firewire
- Added the ghost commandline parameter "-noide" (without the quotes)
6. Restarted my computer, and enjoyed the automated creation of my backup image.

By using the same config for Ghost as in #5, I was able to restore the image without problem. Works like a charm now

I hope this helps those experiencing similar problems.



TSurakmaat -> RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (11/8/2006 22:11:50)

hi, here's what i do to use Ghost (2003) on my machine (Asus P4P800 mobo, 2 Sata 150's (160GB and 500GB), XP Pro):

1) create a diskette with Ghost on it. any Ghost ERD will work fine.
2) make sure you *only* use "-noide" (without the quotes) on the GHOST.EXE line
3) when prompted to write a Ghost ID on each drive, i always click "No".
4) after that, it should work fine. does for me.

i had some horrible problems with Ghost using P-ATA drives, where Ghost would "install" itself into the middle of the first P-ATA drive's partition. i believe this was due to the P-ATA drives being the tertiary and quadrenary IDE ports in my mobo's controller setup (the Sata's were primary and secondary).

note that with this install there are no special configuration tweaks, like making the Sata's look like P-ATA, etc. it's all vanilla.

and thanks, perropicante, for the -noide idea!

hth
TSurakmaat



jaybee -> RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (11/9/2006 5:54:07)

Thanks for that but I now use Acronis, much better. [:D]



suziezuzie -> RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (12/10/2006 15:48:19)

I just ran into this problem with a new HP I bought my son, jamming on the re boot to DOS using Norton Ghost 2003. How do I create a CD disk since it seems that Norton only gives an option to create a A: floppy? THere are two lines: command line with the ghost.exe on it and parameters underneath. Do I place -noide in the parameters line? All I want to do is place an image of C: on F: for recovery. Thank you. Mark



Phil_H -> RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (12/29/2006 7:47:29)

Just been through this whole thing and thanks for the kick start Jaybee.
Ghreboot would not work, even when d/l from Symantec.
Very easy solution in the end...get a copy of Partition Magic! Boot from CD. Delete the offending partition created by Ghost and make the original "c" drive active again. Piece of cake!



rondhamalam -> RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (1/12/2007 3:19:08)

I read about making a boot CD from a floppy boot image using Nero and simulation. Look for it in Google, or I will comeback if I find it again.




jaybee -> RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (1/12/2007 5:53:53)

quote:

Ghreboot would not work, even when d/l from Symantec.
Doesn't do a lot for your nerves does it. [:D]

Glad you found a solution but there is an easier way. It's called Acronis!



delta925 -> RE: NORTON GHOST 2003 and SATA Drives (1/26/2007 19:14:24)

As I always have done I want to back up the hard drive on a new PC to CD/DVD in case of failure or major virus infection. I have always used a Win98SE bootable floppy with Ghost 2003.

The new PC has SATA hard drive and IDE DVD writer - no floppy. To get around the lack of a floppy I have made a USB flash memory pen bootable in Win98SE.

When I first booted Ghost simply froze (yes mobo is Intel 865 based). I altered autoexec.bat with "-noide". Ghost then loads but of course IDE DVD writer is not accessible.

Has anyone any bright ideas to either make this work or a downloadable freeware application to use in place of Ghost 2003?



steiner -> RE: NORTON GHOST 2003 and SATA Drives (3/20/2007 14:21:01)

Hi Jaybee, found this forum via Google and just wanted to say I share your pain! Just went through exactly the same thing last niight. Installed Ghost 2003 on a new Dell (sadly) with 2 Sata drives. The process reaches the DOS screen but all I got was a static hourglass and a progress bar going nowhere. Trouble was - this was a work PC that wasn't supposed to have Ghost on it. Ouch! This has been a VERY embaressing day!

The tech guys managed to save my bacon by doing a similar operation as mentioned above. They had to remove the HD and slave it to a bit of hardware called Magic Bridge (Partition Magic would've been easier). Anyway, whoever said Ghost 2003 works with Sata should also add 'with major bloody RISKS'!

I was thinking about trying to update Ghost and try again but once burned... Is Acronis 'really' better? Can it be '''reliably''' used on a box without a floppy drive and ONLY USB mouse and keyboard?

It's imperative that I'm able to create images and (as with Ghost 2003) test the integrity of that image and my computers ability to 'see' the image and the boot disk.

Thanks in advance,
Steiner



jaybee -> RE: NORTON GHOST 2003 and SATA Drives (3/20/2007 14:56:34)

Hi and welcome to Outfront.

There is nothing quite like the sick feeling in your stomach you get from Ghost as you realise you're halfway through and stuck without a leg to stand on. [:D]

I've been using Acronis with no problems. I have an external USB drive and it all goes on there. Had to switch to a new machine a while ago so I just took a complete image of the original, unplugged the USB, plugged in to the new one and it went with no problems.

The only thing you need to be aware of is it has some powerful options and if you pick the wrong one it won't screw everything up but you may end up doing more than you need so read the docs thoroughly.

Clone disk does precisely that. If you just want regular backups make sure you use the Backup option with incrementals. Really fast, runs in the background with no fuss.



steiner -> RE: NORTON GHOST 2003 and SATA Drives (3/20/2007 15:36:40)

Thanks for the feedback Jaybee. Can I impose on you for a bit more clarification?

Re. the USB only mouse and keyboard - will they be recognised in an emergency?

Also, is it possible to read from a CD recovery disk instead of a floppy?

Thanks again



jaybee -> RE: NORTON GHOST 2003 and SATA Drives (3/20/2007 17:00:28)

Talking to my other half, I didn't do the first bit as he was using the machine but Acronis allows you to create a bootable recovery CD with all the drivers you need.

That was the problem with Norton, no CD drivers so floppy was the only option. No floppy drive...... screwed.



rws70 -> RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (3/22/2007 20:34:02)

Hi,

To use norton ghost with sata hard drives I do this:

1. Boot to a dos prompt using win98 boot disk, remove the floppy

2. Put in a floppy with ghost.exe on it

3. At the A:\ prompt, type in: ghost.exe /noide (there is a space between exe and /noide)


And ghost runs fine!

Or you can boot to a dos prompt with a cdrom and put ghost.exe on the cdrom or on a second cdrom.

The bottom line is: add /noide after ghost.exe (get it? as in No IDE drives) works with SCSI too ...


Hope that helps
RWS



jaybee -> RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (3/22/2007 20:36:56)

Well that's fine if you know about it beforehand but when you've started the process, got as far as the virtual drive replacing your C: drive and then it refuses to play ball, you're a bit stuffed.



lp.descamps -> RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (3/23/2007 8:48:13)

Hi,

I've been working on ghost for a while and came up with a pretty system.
the idea was:
-choose from a menu (in boot.ini) to run a recovery or winxp
-run the recovery using grub and freedos
-then resize the main partition using pqmagic and create a backup partion where i put the image created with ghost.
if you fancy to know more or to get the tool let me know where to put it



kevins -> RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (7/2/2007 8:10:14)

Some months later, but because this topic has a good google ranking I hope many people will fix there problem with ghost:

In the bios go to Advaned and set your RAID to IDE.
Then ghost will work because your CD-, DVD- or combodrive will be seen as an IDE device :)

If you are realy using RAID then do not change this :)

Good luck!



karlislielais -> RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (7/10/2007 12:08:52)

Hi,
here's my expierence. Day before yesterday I did THE mistake: Ghost+SATA. I decided to make three system partitions instead of my one, so I could install Ubuntu, WinXP and WinVista to them, but to do so, I needed to connect HDD to my other PC (with SATA HDD and WinXP on it) so I could format and repartition it with PartMagic. So I did and after that I used Norton Ghost 2003 (AAA! MISTAKE!) to put my winxp.gho image file (I'd made earlier) to WinXP partition. Ghost asked for reboot and he got it, but after that the DOS Ghost just freezed and nothing happened. I restarted the PC, but it couldn't boot Windows OS. WTF?? After two days of struggling (remember - I had formatted my HDD, but my winXP installation cd was lost, all I had - Linux Ubuntu LiveCD) against the evil Ghost I finally made it. This is how:
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

Hope, that this will help someone, because I had to search all the internet for 2 days to finally understand what to do!
-Karlis



jaybee -> RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (7/10/2007 15:07:09)

Yes you're correct. It creates a virtual drive which is all very well if it doesn't crash.

When you're trying to reboot a locked up machine a virtual drive is about as useful as a chocolate teapot.



spin -> RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (7/27/2007 2:50:45)

has anyone tried using norton ghost on sata drives with OS windows 2003?

The machine seems to hang during the ghost floppy disk bootup process.




jzurek -> RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (8/25/2007 11:10:44)

Just bought a new PC having the SATA architecture for both the HD and the DVD writer. I have had no problems backing up my C: partition to the D: partition (all under NTFS) using Ghost 2003 when starting ghost under Windows. Works just fine and makes a perfect restore.

However, when booting from a Ghost boot floppy, I cannot create a Ghost image to the DVD, Ghost does not see the drive. But booting from the floppy and then restoring the C: ghost image (located on the D: partition back to C: ALSO works fine, which surprised me a bit because Ghost seems to "see" the sata HD and is even able to write to it.

So with this knowledge, it would actually be possible to restore from a complete disaster, even if all partitions have been lost. What one would have to do is the following:

- When installing the PC for the first time, partition the HD in at least two partitions
- Install WindowsXP and all your programs
- Install Ghost 2003
- Using 2003, make a Ghost backup from C: to the D: partition
- Under Windows, save the Ghost backup file(s) that now reside on D: to a removable media (DVD in most cases)

Now assume a disaster where all partitions are lost. Recover as follows:
- Partition the lost drive again in at least two partitions
- re-install Windows XP, do not necessarily activate XP
- Install GhostXP under WindowsXP as before
- Copy the saved Ghost image files from the DVD to the D: partition
- Start Ghost under WindowsXP and recover the C: partition again using the image you just loaded from the DVD to the D: partition
- Restart your PC - All is as it was before you made the backup.

Some might call this cumbersome. But I like Ghost 2003 so much that one would have to pry it from my cold dead hands before I would go to another image backup/restore program. Ghost has saved me from problems MANY times. I am currently test-driving Acronis and I can't say the first impressions are good; for instance I found the way it recognizes (or the lack thereof) clean DVDs downright primitive. But I'll keep an open mind, as I realize that Ghost 2003 is nearing its end-of-life. Too bad Symantec doesn't just make an upgrade available that can handle SATA DVD media; should be pretty simple for them to do...



Larry M. -> RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (8/25/2007 16:58:30)

quote:

I am currently test-driving Acronis


You may wish to read (with an open mind of course):

http://www.frontpagewebmaster.com/m-366785/tm.htm



Larry M. -> RE: NORTON GHOST and SATA Drives (8/25/2007 19:33:02)

quote:

for instance I found the way it recognizes (or the lack thereof) clean DVDs downright primitive


I've read and re-read this and can't figure out what it has to do with Acronis [:(] A compressed Windows operating system C:\ drive volume including files generates 35-50 GB so the only logical storage vehicle for the backup is another hard drive - usually external.

To activate the restore function Acronis boots off a CD, then processes the proprietary .tib files to another designated drive, usually the new or reformatted C:\ drive.



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