Question about restoring C drive from Ghost image

[jimdagys]

I used Ghost 2003 program to image my C drive and put the image on the D drive. Someone else later used the computer and put a newer version of Windows xp on the C drive and then also put a Ghost image on the D drive. So the D drive has 2 Ghost images (one older image that I put on, and one newer image that somebody else put on.) The newer version of Windows got a virus, so I wanted to restore the C drive from the newer image using the 1MB Ghost 2003 software that I have on CD. However, when I tried to do that, I got an error message something like I was using the wrong version of Ghost. I was able to restore the C drive with the older Ghost image using the 1 MB Ghost 2003 software.
But I want to restore the C drive using the newer image.
My question is: Why can't I use the 1MB Ghost 2003 software to restore from the newer image?
Is it necessary to get a newer version of Ghost?
Presently I have the 1MB Ghost 2003 on CD and I am using DOS to navigate to the 1MB Ghost program on the CD and am starting the Ghost program in this way, and navigating to the Ghost images on the D drive.

[Hooter Honker]

Are the C & D drives partitions on the same physical hard drive?

[jimdagys]

Yes they are. There is only 1 hard drive. Both restore images are located on the D drive, but I am only successful to restore from the older image. I want to restore from the newer image, but get an error message when I try to restore from the newer image.

[Bjs]

Well the error indicated to you that the newer image was created using either an earlier or later version of the product ... it is possible that the last image was generated by ghost 2003 which had updates applied which changed the version number string.


About nortons ghost 2003 updates

[jimdagys]

Since I was not the person who put on the newer image, I have no idea what version of Ghost was used. (Could be Ghost 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, etc.). I only know that I used version 2003.775 to make the older image. The above Norton website mentions version 2003.789 and 2003.793. Does that mean that if I get version 2003.793 (latest one mentioned), it should be able to allow me to restore from the newer image?

[jimdagys]

Success. I found another Ghost.exe. This one is 1.82MB (instead of 1MB) and when I ran it from DOS, it said 2006 (instead of 2003). Using this newer Ghost.exe, I was able to restore the C drive using the newer image on the D drive.

[edDV]

Success. I found another Ghost.exe. This one is 1.82MB (instead of 1MB) and when I ran it from DOS, it said 2006 (instead of 2003). Using this newer Ghost.exe, I was able to restore the C drive using the newer image on the D drive.

One would hope the latest version would cover legacy. If not why save images?

The way companies are folding, it seems Open Source has at least equivalent predictable longevity*. It seems we now need to back images with more than one program.


*Symantec acquired Powerquest but Ghost won't restore legacy Drive Image files so I stopped using anything Symantec. The kicker was when Partition Magic 8 wasn't upgraded for Vista. That was when Symantec saw my last upgrade dollar. Open source is better but not ideal. Seems like a real company needs to address the problem.

I must maintain and old XP machine just to restore Drive Image files. Partition management is now done open source including NTFS. I was sad to see Partition Manager go to scrap but not Symantec.

[jimdagys]

In the Ghost package that I got, there are a huge number of files (besides the needed Ghost.exe), of which I have no idea what they do. I am curious what is Ghost32.exe? (see red circle in screenshot) What is the purpose of Ghost32.exe? What would happen if I tried to run it from DOS?

[edDV]

Ghost.exe is supposed to restore your image file. The rest are disk utilities needed to prepare the drive for image restore.

[jimdagys]

OK. I restored the C drive by 2 different methods.
1) I copied Ghost.exe to the D drive, then used DOS to execute Ghost.exe on the D drive, which started up the Ghost program
2) I just inserted the CD (with all the above files burned onto the CD as an image), and the computer immediately booted into Ghost.

However, on another computer ( just for experiment to see if I could get into Ghost) method 2 would not work. The computer was set to boot from CD, but I couldn't boot into the Ghost program. On that computer, I had to use method 1 to get into Ghost

[TJohns]

Ghost32 is a Windows console version (i.e. command prompt style) of the DOS Ghost you're using. As long as you don't want to backup/restore the active partition (C: drive) you can use it just like the DOS one.

If you grab the UBCD4W (Ultimate Boot CD for Windows) you can make a bootable disk that actually RUNS Windows off the CD and add this GHOST32 tool that will then allow you to process the C: drive as well (since the CD becomes the active Windows folder)

GhostExp (Ghost Explorer) is a Windows tool that allows you to "open" a Ghost images you've saved, and extract individual files/folders without doing a full restore - often helpful!

Trev

[stiltman]

The added benefit of using Ghost32 from a WinPXE disc, is that it supports 1TB partions where images are stored. AKA ghost images on a external 1TB hard drive.