Ghost Solution Suite

On Panasonic CF-31 Toughbook with Windows 7 64-bit SP1, booted up from DVD with bootable Symantec Ghost 11.5.1 disk.  Created Ghost image of Toughbook hard drive (resulting in 2 DVDs), and tested image on a Ghost restore ("from image") successfully.  The Toughbook is delivered to the customer with this Ghost image on two DVDs, along with a bootable DVD containing Ghost 11.5.1.  They plan to use Ghost to restore the OS if needed.  This is non-negotiable for them.  Therefore, in case replacement disks are ever needed, we plan to store the contents of the Ghost image DVDs on a hard drive, to be used to create new DVDs.  We copied the .gho files from the DVDs onto a PC (keeping them separated into "Disk 1" and "Disk 2").  Then we burned the .gho files onto two new DVDs and attempted a Ghost restore from these DVDs onto a Toughbook.  We immediately get the error "The current disk is not the first in the set".  It definitely IS the first disk.  Tried to do a "Check Image File" with Ghost, same error.  Also tried making .iso copies of the two image DVDs, then burned the .iso's to new DVDs and attempted a restore.  Same error.  How do we store the Ghost image on a hard drive so that we can burn usable DVDs when needed?

Thanks.

Did you try a restore from the original DVDs to this Toughbook?  If they have become defective in any way, then whatever copies were made of them will also be defective.

When creating the original DVDs, did you burn them direct from Ghost, or some other way?  Are the DVDs in UDF format perchance?

Finally, if you cannot get this to work, I would suggest making a new Ghost image but this time use a network connection or a local USB connected hard disk to store the images in the form of multiple GHO/GHS files which you can later just save to DVD. This then avoids any chance that the Ghost program is writing any hidden data which is not transferred during a copy or via an ISO route.

Thank you for taking the time to respond.

As I stated in my original post, I successfully restored using the original DVDs -- they are not defective.

I burned the original DVDs direct from Ghost -- I am not aware of any other method to burn a Ghost image.

An ISO image is an exact "bit copy" of a disk, so even "hidden" data would be transferred.

Making a new Ghost image onto a hard drive will create a single GHO file (in this case, about 9 Gb in size), not multiple files.  So I wouldn't then be able to "just save to DVD".

So the question remains -- how do I backup a Ghost image (i.e., multiple GHO files on two DVDs) to a hard drive so I can later burn the files to new DVDs and have them recognized as a valid Ghost image by the Ghost software?

Thanks.

Well we have an interesting development in my little saga.  When I burned new DVDs of my Ghost image, I simply used Windows' built-in utilities.  Multiple attempts all resulted in failure.  But then I got to thinking about all the troubles I've had over the years with Windows-related things, and decided just for kicks to download a third-party copy utility.  I chose CDBurnerXP, burned my new DVDs, and the Ghost restore worked like a champ.  I couldn't begin to imagine why Windows would mess up such a basic function, but I seem to have solved my problem merely by avoiding Windows' own copy utility.

Interesting development indeed.  I have always used third party utilities for burning DVDs with a read after write check. However, do not exclude the possibility that the DVD media might be less than perfect. I have seen instances of rewriteable DVDs that had visible defects in the writeable surface before burning was attempted. As a consequence, I now check DVD blanks under a good light to see if there are any "holes" in the coating.

Finally, ISO does not give 100% imaging of DVDs or CDs as there are many copy protection systems that are not faithfully reproduced by making ISO images.  I just wondered if there might be something similar in use in Ghost DVDs to handle the numbering.  Anyway, at least all is now working for you.