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Drive Numbers reported by Ghost32.exe in WinPE

Updated: 21 May 2010 | 7 comments
Vlad-ASTIS's picture
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Hi Everyone,
 
I need help!
 
I have a HP nc8000. The nc8000 has a fixed drive and a removeable multibay drive. In the fixed drive I have a 120GB Seagate HDD while in the multibay, I have a 60GB Western Digital HDD. When I boot into WinPE and load up the Ghost32 and do a check disk, Ghost lists Drive 1 as being the 60GB HDD and Drive 2 as the 120GB HDD.
 
I run the following command and things restored OK:
ghost.exe -fdsp -clone,mode=restore,src=x:\HDD1\cdr00001.gho,dst=2,szee -sure
ghost.exe -fdsp -clone,mode=restore,src=x:\HDD2\cdr00001.gho,dst=1,szee -sure
 
I then swapped the drives around, that is, I put the 60GB Western Digital HDD as the fixed drive and the 120GB Seagate HDD into the multibay drive. Again, when I boot into WinPE and load up the Ghost32 and do a check disk, Ghost lists Drive 1 as being the 60GB HDD and Drive 2 as the 120GB HDD (the same as with the other configuration above).
 
I ran the same commnad as above but this time the images were restored onto the wrong disks
ghost.exe -fdsp -clone,mode=restore,src=x:\HDD1\cdr00001.gho,dst=2,szee -sure
ghost.exe -fdsp -clone,mode=restore,src=x:\HDD2\cdr00001.gho,dst=1,szee -sure
 
This causes me a problem in that I'm trying to automatically restore a certain image onto the fixed drive (by the switch dst=n where n =1 or 2). My restore command line will work with one HDD configuration but not withthe other. 
 
Can you explain to me how Ghost assigns drives or help me with this issue please. 
 
Thanks in Advance.

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G-3Manticore's picture
08
Sep
2009
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Normally ghost assign the

Normally ghost assign the drive-number like the managment-tool (drive-management) on windows.
How are the HDDs connect to the mainboard? Do you have a floppy/Zip or CD/DVD-drive?
Do you have the latest version of ghost installed ?

greetings

alexander emmer

Eugene Manko's picture
08
Sep
2009
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Ghost numbers drivers based

Ghost numbers drivers based on the scheme similar to that os BIOS. It usually prefers OS drive numbering scheme, however in some cases it could be different between Winpe and DOS. Ghost will most likely pick "native os" scheme so that (like you said) it doesnt end up cloning over something you didnt want.

I am puzzled as to how it could clone over disk 1 when you chose disk 2. I am a ghost ex-developer and know that it is not possible if you pick 1 it will select the other. Perhaps something else is happening? You can stop ghost while it's cloning by pressing ctrl+c and it will create ghosterr.txt file. You can then post this file here. It will clearly list all drives, filesystems etc. as it sees them, including cloning process. Otherwise we would be just guessing.

Vlad-ASTIS's picture
08
Sep
2009
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 Hi G-3MantiCore and

 Hi G-3MantiCore and Eugene,
 
Thank you for responding and suggestions. I used Gdisk32.exe to run some tests and below are the results:
 
With 60GB HDD in the fixed bay and 120GB in the multibay:
Disk  Partitions  Cylinders  Heads  Sectors  Mbytes  Model
  1        3         7752     240      63   57231.6  FUJITSU MHV2060AH PL
  2        3        15505     240      63  114473.5  ST9120821A
 
With 120GB HDD in the fixed bay and 60GB in the multibay:
Disk  Partitions  Cylinders  Heads  Sectors  Mbytes  Model
  1        3         7752     240      63   57231.6  FUJITSU MHV2060AH PL
  2        3        15505     240      63  114473.5  ST9120821A
 
As you can see, swapping the HDDs makes no difference how Ghost see's the drives. The environment I'm operating in is specifically WinPE using Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 Boot Wizard and Ghost 11.5.
 
I'm at a loss. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
 
Thanks.
 
G-3Manticore's picture
09
Sep
2009
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Did you only try WinPE?

Did you only try WinPE? Otherwise try PC-DOS instead.

This "phenomenon" is quite interessting. At the moment I can't think about a solution. Give me some time, to think about it.

greetings

alexander emmer

Vlad-ASTIS's picture
09
Sep
2009
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Hi Alexander, I haven't tried

Hi Alexander,

I haven't tried it in the PC-DOS envirnoment. Originally, my ghosting scripts were targeted in the PC-DOS environment but because Symantec said they were no longer supporting PC-DOS I was forced to move to WinPE (I have to put up with the larger boot image, 145MB as opposed to 1.44MB and start up time of 2min as opposed to 2 sec).

Interestingly, when using a windows 98 boot disk, the following results were obtained using the fdisk /status command:

With 60GB HDD in the fixed bay and 120GB in the multibay:
Disk 1 - 60GB HDD
Disk 2 - 120GB HDD

With 120GB HDD in the fixed bay and 60GB in the multibay:
Disk 1 - 120GB HDD
Disk 2 - 60GB HDD

So it appears as though Windows is correctly identifying the disks.

G-3Manticore's picture
09
Sep
2009
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Interesting

I am looking forward to the point, when you use PC-DOS and the HDDs are displayed correctly. Since I am no programmer of NGSS, I can't say, why WinPE has problems with displaying the right HDD-order (just in case, PC-DOS shows correctly).

Let me know, when you tested these things.

greetings

alexander emmer

Vlad-ASTIS's picture
09
Sep
2009
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Tried PC-DOS...   didn't run

Tried PC-DOS...
 
didn't run gdisk.exe but rather went into Ghost and performed a check disk. Results are as follows:
 
With 60GB HDD in the fixed bay and 120GB in the multibay:
Drive1 - 60GB HDD
Drive 2 - 120GB HDD
 
With 120GB HDD in the fixed bay and 60GB in the multibay:
Drive 1 - 120GB HDD
Drive 2 - 60GB HDD
 
So in PC-DOS, Ghost is able to correctly identify the disk drive locations.
 
I then booted into WinPE and performed a diskpart. Results are as follows:
 
With 60GB HDD in the fixed bay and 120GB in the multibay:
Disk 0 - 60GB HDD
Drive 1 - 120GB HDD
 
With 120GB HDD in the fixed bay and 60GB in the multibay:
Disk 0 - 120GB HDD
Disk 1 - 60GB HDD
 
But again, performing a check disk within ghost incorrectly assigns Drive 2 as the 120GB HDD on each occasion.