Optorite / Norton Ghost Problem

[jsbarney]

I've been reviewing this site for a while but this is my first post so forgive me if i've missed anything.

I recently purchased an Optorite DD0201 +- RW drive. So far it seems to work fine burning from nero. But one of the main reasons I purchased it was to burn HD backups with Norton Ghost to DVD-RW.

So far I have tried DVD-R [RitekG3] and RW [RitekW01] with Ghost 2003 and have gotten the same error each time. "12030, Error 3 Closing CD/DVD" It burns a whole DVD then says it can't close the disk and cancels the operation.

I have an Athalon XP 1700, with 512mb ram, 30 & 60 Gb 7200rpm hard drives. On the second IDE controller channel I have set the Optorite RW drive as the master and a standard 16x DVD drive as slave. I have updated to bios, the motherboard chipset, and Windows XP. I have also flashed the drive to the newest firmware 2.50. All with no success.

Has anyone had success with the Optorite DD0201 burning with Norton Ghost 2003. If so, could you give me the specifics of how it works for you.
Ie drive firmware, type of media, ide controller setup, any special settings in Ghost, etc.

Again , I hope I haven't missed anything. I would certanly appreciate any help you could give.

PS. On a side note. I recieved an order of Ritek G4 DVD-R's, and a few other brands from Meritline. They all seem to be unformatted. Is it normal for them to come unformatted? One person says yes others have said no. What say you all. Thanks again!!

[tcj911t]

jsbarney -

I bought an Optorite DD0203 burner last October and also was unable to burn directly to a DVD from Ghost 2003. I don't think your problem is with the media you are using. I sent several emails to Symantec tech support and was basically told that the DD0203 drive is not "officially" supported (see bottom of post for the Symantec reply). Since the DD0201 is very close to the DD0203, my guess is it is not supported either. I spent a little time troubleshooting and was eventually successful using Ghost 2003 to save drive images to another partition and then burn that image to a DVD. Even better, I was able to write a bootable DVD that contained the Ghost executable and my desired drive image and ended up with a pretty good backup restore solution that all fits on one DVD. I was hoping that the DD0203 drive would be added to the list of supported drives in the future, but the last time I checked, it wasn't. Too bad since there are quite a few manufacturers that use the Optorite drive (I/O Magic, Digital Research, etc.).

Good Luck

Tom


REPLY FROM SYMANTEC.....

Welcome to Symantec's Online Technical Support.

>CD burner make: Optorite
>CD burner model: DD0203

>I know my DVD burner (Optorite DD203) is not officially supported,
>but it is so close to working, I would really like to get it to work.

Unfortunately your DVD burner is not on our list of supported DVD
burners. I have provided a link to this document for your convenience.

Title: 'Ghost 2003 compatibility with CD-R, CD-RW, and DVD drives'
Document ID: 2002030414141625
Web URL:
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/docid/2002030414141625?Open&src=w


If this DVD burner is not in the list of supported drives that we have
tested with, this does not mean that it will not work with Ghost. It
does mean that we have not tested with this drive and are not going to
support cloning images to this drive.

Title: 'How to troubleshoot problems writing to CD-R and CD-RW drives'
Document ID: 2000101912131625
Web URL:
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/docid/2000101912131625&src=w

************************************************** **************

If you still have problems getting Ghost to work with your CD burner
you can use the alternative solution below.

Please follow the directions below on how to create an image and then
burn it to a CDR burner.

1) Ghost must create an image of the drive or partition.
2) Store it on a spare drive or partition.
Reference the document 'Burning a Ghost Image to a CD'.
3) Then by using the software (like EZ CD creator or Nero) with
your CD burner, you should be able copy that image to the CD.
4) Remember you must be able to read this image from DOS.

Title: 'Burning a Ghost image file to a CD'
Document ID: 1998123107455525
Web URL:
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/docid/1998123107455525&src=w


Best Regards,

Mike Laughlin
Symantec Online Technical Support

[Gozar_]

s fair I know Northon Ghost don't support dvd's

I tryed to back up a harddisk to another harddisk using crompressing image to another harddisk (image file) I then burned it onto a dvd-rw. but Norton Ghost reportet an eror in the image. I tryed with both - and + dvdrw. ( had to clon 16 computers) Nothing dvd worked, Only burning it directely from Norton Ghost with multi spanning volumes cd-r worked.

[jsbarney]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for the replies. But at least in my case it does seem to be a media issue. I've tried so many things I don't know where to start so I'll just tell you what works for me.

I recieved an e-mail from Optorite support with some possible solutions. Of course none of them worked but at the end the tech mentioned that he had success burning DVD+RW's. I had been using -RW's. After reeding Norton's supported drives list i noticed that several of their supported drives do not suport -RW. So yesterday I picked up a 10 pk of Memorex +RW from Office Max for $19.99 and tried them out. So far they work great!! I have only had two hiccups along the way.

#1 - Once you've burned a Ghost backup on a fresh DVD-RW do not try to erase it woth Nero before you update it. Something hapens when Nero erases it and in my case it would not close the disk again. It wasn't the same error as I started with. It just would lock up at the end of the burn and the disk would just keep spinning. What you can do is when you are ready to update your backup just start the Norton backup as usual and Norton will tell you "This disk is not empty. Do you want to over write it?" Just say yeas and everything works fiine.

#2 - The other is just a minor inconvenience. When you finish a backup and return to windows the Optorite will not recognise the Ghost files on the DVD. It will look like the disk is unformatted.
"Free Space 0 bytes"
"Total Space 0 bytes"
But I put it into my standard 16x DVD-Rom and it reads the files perfectly. Which means that if you did need to restore it you would probably have to restore it from the DVD-Rom as well.

As far as my IDE controller question went. I have tried the Optorite as the master and teh slave on the secondary channel and it seems to work fine both ways.

So that's all for now. Again thanks for your feedback I'm sure I'll need it again.