Ghost Solution Suite

Hello,

My task is to create an image of my hard drive (HDD) partition and verify that image against the HDD partition. As I understand, for such verification, I need to create a CRC file for one of the either image file or HDD partition and then verify the CRC file against the other of the two.

Let's say that starting ghost.exe with switch "-fcr" , I create, with GUI interface, an image of my hard drive partition. Then, file "ghost.crc" is also created. Does that file contains the CRC32 information for the hard drive partition or for the image file? In other words, should I then verify my "ghost.crc" against the image or against the HDD partition?

Thanks.
Alex.

Hi Alex,

Seeing as the image should be a full backup of the partition, the CRC value contained in ghost.crc file should match both the image and the partition. (This is if you perform the CRC check under DOS, not Ghost32 under WinPE)

To answer your question, to verify your image is an exact copy of the partition, you should compare ghost.crc against the partition.
You can do this by runing ghost -crc32,action=pverify,src=x:y,crcfile=ghost.crc:z
Where
ghost.crc is generated using -fcr switch,
x:y specifies the HDD partition and
z is the zth crc entry in the crc file.

Hope that helps

Chris

Chris,
thanks for your prompt reply. May I ask if you are absolutely positive about “-fcr” switch?

Symantec’s Knowledge Base reads:
“-FCR” -- creates a CRC file, Ghost.crc, while making an image file. This is the same CRC file that is created when using one of the create actions on the -CRC32 switch.
As I get it, “action=create” produces an CRC file from a disk, not from an image.


Syntax of the -CRC32 switch by type of action
The specific syntax for the src argument depends on which action is specified.
action=create
Create an ASCII CRC file from a disk.
-CRC32,ACTION=CREATE,SRC=<drive number>{,CRCFILE=<path and filename>}
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/docid/1998082609442125

Hi Alex,

I agree with your comments above.
You can probably do a couple of quick tests to know for sure your image and HDD contents are the same.

1) Run ghost image create operation with -fcr switch
2) Run CRC32 operation using action=create on the source disk/partition
3) Run CRC32 operation using action=dcreate on the image file created in step 1)

I would expect the CRCs generated in each of the above step to be exactly the same, which will then confirm the contents inside the image is exactly the same as the harddisk.

Cheers

Chris