Norton Ghost Question

[p_l]

When you restore from a Ghost image, does the target drive/partition need to be completely empty, or only enough room on it for the restore operation? And, I suppose this is important too, does the restore operation overwrite whatever's already on the target drive/partition, or write beside it, leaving whatever data's already there intact?

[reboot]

The target drive doesn't matter, as long as it's large enough to hold the extracted image.
Ghost writes the drive, byte by byte, so it doesn't care if there's anything on the drive or not, it'll be wiped out completely.

[p_l]

It's the 60 GB master with my OS that is failing. I'm planning to restore the image to what is currently my second drive (160GB), which has lots of data on it, but plenty of room left over for my Ghost image. That drive would become my main OS drive, having moved it over to become the master.

Does the image restore process overwrite the whole drive, or just a partition?

If just a partition, chould I make a new partion on it now, in advance, and restore the image to that new partition?

Could I then merge the two partitions?

[Solarjetman]

Does the image restore process overwrite the whole drive, or just a partition?

If just a partition, chould I make a new partion on it now, in advance, and restore the image to that new partition?

Could I then merge the two partitions?

1) Ghost will overwrite either the whole partition or the whole drive depending if your image file is a partition or a drive.

2) yes, you can make a new partition on your 160GB drive without removing the data if you use more advanced tools like PartitionMagic. you can't do it with FDisk.

3) Best you could do is copy the files to the new partition from the old one. Maybe partition Magice could do that, not sure

[reboot]

If your 160 had another partition, ghost will write the image to it, without disturbing the other partition.
Yes, partition magic will merge the two, but why would you want to?
Far better to have 2 or 3 partitions on a drive that size, than all one.
Much less fragmentation, more organization, faster defrags...

[p_l]

If your 160 had another partition, ghost will write the image to it, without disturbing the other partition.

So this would work?

If just a partition, could I make a new partition on it now, in advance, and restore the image to that new partition?

I wouldn't lose what's on my original partition?

Yes, partition magic will merge the two, but why would you want to?
Far better to have 2 or 3 partitions on a drive that size, than all one.
Much less fragmentation, more organization, faster defrags...

Good point.

[p_l]

I did the unthinkable and

[reboot]

Heh. Don't be intimidated by Ghost.
If you KNOW you have a destination partition, and you KNOW you want to write an image to it, then you can do it.
Hint: With multiple hard drives, just unplug the one you want to keep safe. Name the partitions something unique, not "disk-1_part-1" or somesuch.
Write the image you want to save, onto CDR, not the hard drive.
Boot using the bootdisk you made (you did make one, right?).
Always select image -> partition, or partition -> partition, NEVER select partition -> drive, unless you are ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE you want to wipe out the WHOLE DRIVE.

I regularily write an image to a different drive, of my major OS boot partition. After trial runs of 20 or 30 applications, and probalby as many uninstalls, or manual ripping the crap out of the registry (try this with Symantec/Norton, it'll take you all day, and you still won't get it all), I ghost back my boot partition. All fresh, with my settings and programs just the way I like it. Sure saves reinstalling windows and all the device drivers and personal settings, and everything, and invariably, you forget the address book, or saved emails, or some program you just can't live without, but forgot where you got it.

[ViRaL1]

It also helps to pay attention to the drive / partition sizes. ALSO, if you make an image as opposed to going disk-to-disk, run a check in Ghost before you wipe everything on either drive (this includes restoring the image).

[p_l]

I'm back from the brink.









I used a Ghost image from last November when my machine was just purring, and thanks to careful back-ups of Favorites, cookies, Address Book, OE emails, and of course all my media files, then a whole lot of updating for virus definitions, spyware definitions and Windows Updates, everything is running fine now, with all my data and settings intact.


Thanks, ViRaL1, Solarjetman and reboot; thanks for help. I'm sure it's not the first time Ghost saves someone's bacon, and your advice helped everything go more smoothly.


The only disappointment is that now I'll have to return the unopened box sitting beside me since Thursday evening, because now I can't justify the need for it with my Minister of Finance.