Ghost Solution Suite

I just installed Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 on Windows XP machines and a Windows 7 machine.  I want to make bootable copies of these computers in case either something physically happens to the computers, and they need to be replaced or something happens to the hard drives.  I want to put the backups on external hard drives and not have to manage them from the console, since if something happens to one computer, it's likely to affect all of them.  Essentially, I want to be able to plug the external drive into a new machine and recreate the old one.  Can someone walk me through how this is done?  I'm not an IT person, I'm just responsible for these computers, and through my university, I ended up with Symantec Ghost instead of Norton Ghost.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

David

1. You will need to make sure to run live update in the ghost console so that you have build  11.5.1.2266.
2. You will need to possibly update your mass storage drivers in the ghost boot wizard. You will need windows vista drivers for the ghost boot disk (search these forums for updateing drivers if you bood up with ghost and can't see your hard drive.
3. Using the ghost boot wizard you will make a windows pe boot disk with the default selections.  You can either make a bootable cd or a bootable usb drive (if you create a bootable usb drive it will format the drive so make sure you don't have any thing important on the drive) 
4. Boot with the ghost boot cd that you have created (or usb boot disk) and make sure that the external hard drive is plugged in first.
5. once ghost launches click ok and then drill down as follows.
   * Local >
   * Disk >
   * To Image >
6. Select your drive that is needing to be backed up (not disk 80 as it will include all drives including the external drive, also make sure you are not selecting the external drive) Select OK  (if you internal drive isn't listed then the drivers for the SATA or RAID controller are not loaded and you will need to add them to the boot wizard and create a new boot disk)
7. In the "File name to copy image to"  screen select the drive you would like to save your image to and then the folder and give the image a name.   I wold recomend not using numbers and keeping it under 8 characters in the name if you would like to date things then name the folder the date or make that long but for the image name keep that simple.
8. Select the level of compression and you are ready to create an image to the external drive.

Do you have any IBM or Lenovo systems?   They do a few things differently than the rest of the industry and you will need to make some changes in how you use ghost if you use them.

Hope that helps.  If you run into any issues along the way let us know.
cheers,

All of the computers are Dell.  I have a few questions for clarification:

Re #1: How do I check what build I have?

Re #2: I'm not using any Vista machines, why would I need Vista drivers?

Re #3: Can I use the drive I'm going to use to store the disc image for the Ghost boot disk or should I have a CD or USB drive that is only used for the boot disk?  Also, if I made a USB boot disk and want use it for something else later, how do I remove Ghost from it?

Re #4: Is it critical to boot from the Ghost boot disk rather than just running ghost32.exe after booting normally?

Re: #6: If my system has multiple hard drives, how do I select them all?  Will this copy all registry information, programs, etc?

Finally, to restore the system once I've made an image, what would I do?

Thanks for your help!

David

Re #1: How do I check what build I have?  Open the ghost console and go to help and about.   Also you can run the update by going to help and live update.

Re #2: I'm not using any Vista machines, why would I need Vista drivers? Ghost boot disks are vista and since you are booting to the ghost os not the machine's boot CD.

Re #3: Can I use the drive I'm going to use to store the disc image for the Ghost boot disk or should I have a CD or USB drive that is only used for the boot disk?  Also, if I made a USB boot disk and want use it for something else later, how do I remove Ghost from it?  I have a external drive set up to boot and I store images on it.   the down side is if you need to update you drives you have to use the ghost boot wizard to updated the drivers and it will again format the usb drive.    At this point I have all the drivers for all the current systems and then some that I thought were prudent but I don't currently have systems for so I am not likely to need to update my drivers at this point.   As a new users expect to update your drivers every new system you have until you have gotten the most common ones updated.       If you use a usb disk like a thumb drive you can just delete the files and it would be basicly ready for your next use but to fully remove the boot files and so on I think you would need to format it.  

Re #4: Is it critical to boot from the Ghost boot disk rather than just running ghost32.exe after booting normally? Yes and no.   If you run the ghost32.exe then you are taking a hot image and depending on who you talk to that will or won't work and is or isn't supported.   I have had problems in the past but i have imaged a lot of machines so it is expected that I would have times when even if it is supported it didn't work.  

Re: #6: If my system has multiple hard drives, how do I select them all?  Will this copy all registry information, programs, etc?  If you have multiple hard drive or partitions?  Partitions is easy when you clone a drive it gets all partitions on that drive.    When you have multiple drives that is easy but you can't store the image on a local usb drive.    When you are inside of ghost you will see drive 80  drive 80 is all hard drives.       The issue is if you have 2 internal drives and your external drive then drive 80 will take an image of all 3 drives.      You would either need to do multipe drive to image operations or go accross the network so that only the drives you want backed up are part of the 80 collection of drive.

Cheers,

How do I check to see if the backup has copied correctly?

Thanks again,

David

The only reliable way is to try restoring it. If you have a spare hard disk for your test system you could swap hard disks before restoring and see if it all boots OK.

By the way, are these machines part of a domain, or are they standalone machines?

They are standalone.

There is an image check that can be done but I am with Ed the only reliable way is to restore the image and boot up.    

There is a reason that tools like Backup Exec System Recovery are able to sell for the kind of money they do.  Because they are intended to take reliable backups of server that have hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of data stored on them and be reliable. 

Ghost is a awsome tool like a Swiss army knife it can do all kinds of things.   But it's primary goal is image deployment not system back ups.  (I love ghost don't think I am dogging on it just pointing out the differance in back up caliber) It was built as a deployment tool and rocks at deployment and happens to use the same technoligy to make system backups but doesn't have the same levels of quality assuance built into the image integrity as a dedicated back up tool.    

cheers,

On some of the machines (all XP), when I try to boot from USB it tells me "Selected boot device not available".  How do I fix this problem?  I tried doing the WindowsPE - 512 boot disk instead of the WindowsPE boot disk to include more drivers, but I had the same error.

Thanks,

David

so this is right at boot?  no Windows loading then an error?   There are different technoligies in usb drives.  Once I did the research on them but I don't recall now,  any way some computers will not boot from certain usb drives.   The other thing can be is the usb boot disk seen in the list of bootable devices?   

Update the bios in case it is some thing that the manufacturer has already resolved and then also try a different brand or kind of usb drive.  I have had the best luck with my silver 1 gig sandisk cruzer mini.   I got it while I was at my other job 8 years ago and it has been through the cloths washer and the dryer at least 2 times now and it still works in every thing I have ever plugged it into.   I have since had larger sandisk drives that don't work on certain systems and or didn't survive the wash.

http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-SDCZ2-1024-A10-Cruzer-Retail-Package/dp/B0001FV3C8/ref=sr_1_103?ie=UTF8&qid=1333746432&sr=8-103

cheers,  

It is not in the list of bootable devices, and it's not working with either a USB flash drive or a WD external hard drive.  Should I just burn CD's?  Is that more reliable?

Thanks,

David

Both the computer I backed up successfully and the ones that aren't working have the same BIOS version Dell A11 8/4/2008. SMBIOS Version 2.5.

If they have the same bios, same chips set and same usb drive what else is different?  Based on the ones that work you know the drive is fine (or at least compatible with those systems) and we know that that model of system is fine (or at least the configureation of that system is fine)  and since they all have the same bios version what setting in the bios, or what alternate configureation is in place on those systems that is causing an other wise bootable drive to not boot on the other systems.

If you are open to experimenting you could reset the bios defaults on one of the boxes or set 2 side by side and compare each setting.   Just have to figure out what is different.

cheers,

I'm not sure what the difference is, but all the computers were able to boot from CD's, so putting the Ghost boot disk on CD was an effective solution.  Thanks again for all your help.

-David