Want to make a ghost image of backup and then have it boot to recover via boot.ini

[Hawk88]

Ok, I want to make a ghost 2003 image, put it on a second partition or drive, have a selection come up when I start the computer to select either the os or to recover. When you select recover, I want it to automatically ghost the drive. Guess I will need to put it on a seperate drive or it will wipe the original unless there is a parameter in ghost to only wipe the first partition. Is this possible? That way when the system gets bogged down, it is real simple for someone to restore it (and yes I know it will be real easy for them to accidently restore it). TIA!!!!

BTW: its my first post.

 

[Vigilante]

Hello and welcome!

Of course you can put your recovery image on a 2nd partition and restore the first. This is how Compaq and HP and E-Machine and all of them do it!

But I have never actually done this before so I can't be much help.

The way it works is that BOTH partitions are bootable, and you select which one to boot to via the "boot menu". This does involve the boot.ini file.

Problem is I don't know how to go about turning your Ghost image into a bootable partition. I thought that Ghost had the option to place the image on another partition and do this for you? I come across PCs with this dual-partition setup that are years old, and it used Ghost to restore with. So I would assume it has a built-in function to handle this for you. You might dig deeper into the program.

cheers

 

[Hawk88]

I will check into it. Thanks for the reply. I know ghost has the option to make a bootable cd/dvd that does it.

 

[Hawk88]

Nope, dont see any options available to make it bootable to another partition. Any suggestions??!!

 

[Hawk88]

Anyone, I could really use some help?

 

[Vigilante]

Okay I'll keep looking into it.
It isn't a terribly hard process. Just need the right steps. Though do you already HAVE a 2nd partition or do we need to make a 2nd partition? Cause then you'll also need Partition Magic or a similar program to actually create the partition. Once it's created we can make it bootable and hook it into your boot loader.

This page explains there is a place to backup TO a partition. That would be the first step once you actually have the partition ready to back up to.
http://www.pcin.net/help/software/ghost2003.php

Also read this page:
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPOR...sf&view=docid&dtype=&prod=&ver=&osv=&osv_lvl=

It explains that Ghost can create a "virtual partition" which is "files on your hard drive", i.e., you backup partition. I would look into that. Because they say this gets rid of the need for a bootable floppy to run ghost. SO then, you make this bootable virtual ghost partition to your 2nd partition, along with your backup image stored there, and that should be it. When you start the computer and have the option to boot this virtual drive, you can restore from there.

Hope that maybe leads you somewhere.

If you search in google, try a search like "ghost 2003 bootable partition image" or something like that.

cheers

 

[Hawk88]

I have the 2nd partition already. I was trying to get away with not installing ghost on the machine I am doing this on, but if I have to oh well. I made a ghost boot cd with usb support and made the image to a usb hdd. For some reason it made a 2gb image and a 1.7 spanned image. Oh well I will install on the machine that I want to do this on and see how it goes with the virtual partition and let you know. Thanks again V.

 

[Vigilante]

It's not really "installing ghost", but rather installing the boot files that are needed to start the backup/recovery process. I don't think there is a way to have your backup image just, install itself. I would think, just guessing, that SOME type of Ghost software has to be loaded in order to format and extract and load a backup image for a restore operation. I don't think the backup image can do this of itself.

But anyhoo, I'm curious as to what you end up doing...

 

[Liquidlen]

A Ghost image file is not an executable, the computer will never recognize it as a O/S. You will always have to utilize the Ghost application to place the image on the disk , before the O/S that is in there(.gho file) can interact with the computer.