Norton Ghost problem.

[Eric the Grey 0]

I used Norton Ghost 8 to backup my main HD prior to installing SP2 for XP. Everything seem to go find, and SP2 causes some problems, so I decided to back it out.

 

Unfortunately, Ghost saved the images to CDR, and 5 of the set of 30 images had problems and cannot be read from the CDR's. I never thought there would be an issue, since I have never had a problem while burning to it.

 

So, the downside is, the entire contents of my C drive are gone, and apparently unaccessable because Ghost will not open up the individual .GHO files unless they are ALL available.

 

So my question is, is there any possible way to open up and extract files from the remaining image files? If so, how?

 

I've tried using the Ghost Explorer, but with no success. I can only open the very first image, and nothing more.

 

I would dearly love to restore my "My Documents" folder since there are a lot of files there, that cannot be recreated or replaced and my previous (pkzipped) backup of that folder seems to have dropped off the face of the earth.

 

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

 

Eric the Grey

[dennygee02 0]

try booting up and using f8, highlight "Last Known Good Configuration" and that should roll you back to before you installed SP2. ...1 otherthing dont ever be the first to install a new SP from MS. Wait to hear if it screwed up other computers first. If you havent heard any horror stories after a week and a half after its release its probably ok to install.

[dennygee02 0]

try booting up and using f8, highlight "Last Known Good Configuration" and that should roll you back to before you installed SP2. ...1 otherthing dont ever be the first to install a new SP from MS. Wait to hear if it screwed up other computers first. If you havent heard any horror stories after a week and a half after its release its probably ok to install.

[dennygee02 0]

try booting up and using f8, highlight "Last Known Good Configuration" and that should roll you back to before you installed SP2. ...1 otherthing dont ever be the first to install a new SP from MS. Wait to hear if it screwed up other computers first. If you havent heard any horror stories after a week and a half after its release its probably ok to install.

[packman 0]

You have my sympathy, Eric. I know what it's like to lose important data in that way. (Not that I've ever had any problems with Ghost 2003 - touch wood - but I once did with Drive Image).

 

Regardless of what happens now, might I suggest that in future not only ought you to do full backups of your root drive but also copy to a CD or DVD all your personal files (like My Docs).

 

What I do is partition my hard drive several ways, one partition being reserved for just documents and drivers and utilities, copied across from the root drive (drag n' drop). I also periodically copy these to a separate DVD. This way, if Ghost ever goes belly-up and I can't restore, all will not be lost. As soon as I could re-format the root drive and reinstall Windows, all those personal files from the other partition could then be rapidly copied back. Even if that partition got wiped, I'd still have the DVD copies.

 

Backup, in my experience, needs to be multi-faceted.

[Eric the Grey 0]

Ok. Two things.

 

First off, SP2 cannot be rolled back using last known, or uninstall, OR by rolling back to a previous check point. I know, I tried.

 

I am working on a fresh install of XP. Formatted and re-installed.

 

What I'm hoping to find, is a link to some resource, or program, that will allow me to extract items from ghost images, even if I do not have all of them available.

 

Thanks again.

 

 

Eric the Grey

[adamvjackson 0]

Ghost Explorer can open/extract file(s) from your images, it is installed when you install Norton Ghost 2003.

[Eric the Grey 0]

From my first post: "I've tried using the Ghost Explorer, but with no success. I can only open the very first image, and nothing more."

 

Ghost Explorer will not open up all the archives, only the first one or two. I need something that will read all the good ones, regardless of the missing ones.

 

I've used the -corrupt and -ignoreindex options, and it still will not open up all the files.

 

 

Eric the Grey

[adamvjackson 0]

Gosh, sorry about that, that's what I get for not reading carefully. I'll have a look around and see what I can find.

[Eric the Grey 0]

s'Ok. It's not like I haven't done the same.

 

Thanks for looking though.

 

 

Eric the Grey

[AlexGMH 0]

If you have any other computer available, try to copy all the 30 .gho discs on the available hard drive. Norton Ghost Explorer is very "moody" and "stubborn" if doesn't have all the discs visible simultaneously. So, if you have like only 2 discs and 2 CD-ROM drives is OK to load a disc in each. But with the 30 of them you need to copy all of them to a hdd and after that try to open the image with Ghost Explorer.

 

Good Luck.

[AlexGMH 0]

It's me again. Did you try to recover the 5 problem CDs? You can use isobuster: http://www.smart-projects.net/isobuster/ which worked great for me.

[DosFreak 2]

Are the images actually bad? Try coping the contents of the CD to your HD. If they copy from the CD to the HD succesfully then the image should be good.

[Eric the Grey 0]

Originally posted by AlexGMH:

Quote:

It's me again. Did you try to recover the 5 problem CDs? You can use isobuster: http://www.smart-projects.net/isobuster/ which worked great for me.

 

Well, I tried this, and it did pull the images off, but with errors in tact. No luck running Ghost Explorer after that either.

 

Quote:

Are the images actually bad? Try coping the contents of the CD to your HD. If they copy from the CD to the HD succesfully then the image should be good.

 

If I try to copy from the CDR, I get: "Cannot copy CDR00005: Data Error (cyclic redundancy check)."

 

I don't suppose there is an answer to my delima. Thanks for the advice anyway people.

 

 

Eric the Grey

[adamvjackson 0]

Assuming that you receive the CRC error from Windows Explorer when trying to copy the ghost image, it's likely a bad burn/bad CD.

 

Very unfortunate, and I can sympathasize...

[packman 0]

Another lesson learnt, perhaps - that one should always get the backup software to check the integrity of the backup before it's assumed that the backup is completed and can be put away.

[FlyingPenguin 0]

I never burn Ghost images directly. Frankly I don't trust Norton to burn them properly.

 

I prefer to save the images to another hard drive or partition (for clients I carry around a spare 80Gb drive just for this reason), and I use the following Ghost command line parameters to force Ghost to split all images into 699Mb files so that they can easily be burned later:

 

ghost.exe -split=699 -auto

 

When I do burn the image files later, I burn them using Nero and always use the verify option to insure the integrity of the data on the CDs (or DVDs).

 

 

[rharris270 0]

There may yet be hope for your files, if not for the GHOST images. Installing SP-2 maeks big changes to Windows XP, but it should NOT have bothered your personal files. In fact, the hard drive is probably OK and easily readbale, assuming that it had no defects before installing SP-2.

 

So, instead of messing with the GHOST images, think about ways to read the internal hard drive directly and then recover your files. Potential options include:

 

1. XP recovery console run form the XP CDROM. Unfortunately, even if this reads the hard drive, it may refuse to copy files off of it, depending on certain registry settings made while XP was running. But, maybe you can get into safe mode and chnages those:

 

Instead, just run REGEDIT and change two things that appear on the same page:

 

Start --> Run --> Regedit

 

Navigate to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Setup\RecoveryConsole

 

Set the DWORD SecurityLevel value to 1

 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Setup\ RecoveryConsole

 

Set the DWORD SetCommand value to 1

 

2. A KNOPPIX ISO file burned to CD can be used to boot the PC into LINUX. Supposedly the latest version has limited abilitites to read/copy NTFS, and full abilities for FAT32.

 

3. Use an old-fashioned DOS boot disk. If needed, Add free read/copy NTFS drivers from www.sysinternals.com. Of course, you must have some place to copy the files to, and that place must be DOS-compatible. If necessary, temporarily add a second internal hard drive formatted as FAT32.

 

4. Remove the old hard drive, with XP SP-2 and files on it. Place it in a USB 2.0 enclosure, available online or in major PC store for under $100. Now, plug the enclosure into another PC that supports USB 2.0 (Any PC running XP will do.) Copy the files to the new PC.

 

[rharris270 0]

I forgot to mention the obvious: You could do a "repair" installation of XP. This differs from a normal installation in that it does NOT format the drive, and does not destroy your data. However, a repair will undo all XP updates, taking you back to XP (original) or XP (SP-1), depending on what is on your XP CDROM. Note that it may not be possible to do a "repair", if you have an OEM CDROM. But, it might be worth investigating the options. Here are some links about repairing XP:

 

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341

 

http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm

 

http://www.extremetech.com/print_article/0,3998,a=23979,00.asp

 

[DavidHP 0]

Greetings,

 

I know your frustration with the Ghost images. I have had several go bad. And Symantec seems clueless as to how to fix the problems with corrupt images.

 

There is a program that you can use to 'see' your Windows XP NTFS system tho. It is called BartPE. Here is the URL:

 

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

 

This program will allow you to download and ISO image and create a boot CD. The boot cd IS Windows. So it will read and write NTFS file systems.

 

(I have tried Knoppix and it works to 'see' the drive but since it is Linux you will surely corrupt your hard drive by using it to write to the file system.)

 

I know this is several months after you had the problem so you have probably restored the hard drive by now. But this CD is invaluable for the future. It will not do anything about the corrupt Ghost images. But it wil allow you to see the Windows files when your computer won't boot unless the hard drive refuses to spin.

 

Also, there are some 'plugins' available for this that will allow you to run Ghost 8 from the CD but you should have a registered version of Ghost to install that.

 

Hope this helps someone.

 

David

[Tomay 0]

It may not help, but try to read the gost discs on a different machine (cd-rom). It may (or may not) work.

 

Good luck

[BillyG. 0]

I would have much rather preferred the option for differential backups vs incremental but that's all they offered so...

 

Because of this, by time the third night of backups was completed, I was too afraid something like your situation could happen to me so:

 

I opted to make the software perform a FULL backup nightly and the incremental one (it forces you to schedule at least one, weird!) is scheduled an hour after the full one is scheduled (to allow the full to finish first). Then when I get up the next day (or whenever), I just delete the previous FULL backup (and the incremental one that is there once a week) and run a quick defrag on the external HD that this image backup is restored to.

 

None of this solves your problem obviously but it does prevent it from happening to anybody else.

 

FYI: I'm using the latest Ghost, 9.0 (in case there is any difference from scheduling parameters with earlier versions).

 

G/L.

[BillyG. 0]

speaking of Ghost... I had a chance to try a system recovery with my full image file from last night and (drum roll please!!) IT WORKED GREAT. I went thru System Recovery (F10 at bootup) with the Ghost CD in the drive and followed the directions.

 

One weird thing though, it had my backup external HD as D:\ (which is really my OEM HD second partition), not F:\ (which is my new external Ghost 9.0 image backup HD) like it should have been. It was kinda hokey but it did work once I realized how to point the Ghost software to the image file that I wanted it to use.

 

Been going strong for 3 hours (with a reboot immediately after the image restore).

 

G/L.