Ghost Solution Suite

Hi all.

Is it possible to restore an image from a ghost boot CD/DVD that has the image of the pc also on the CD/DVD?

What i want to do is build say 10 pcs then insert the ghost boot CD/DVD with the image on the disk and nothing else.

So when ghost boots up it automatically finds the image and then restores the ghost image file.

Once the image has been restored we can reboot the pc and everything is on the pc that we need.

If so can anyone tell me how this is done?


Thanks in advance

Karl Thompson

Karl,

This is indeed possible. The following document describes getting the image and boot media on the same DVD:

How to use Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 to create a WinPE boot DVD with a Ghost image on the same disk.
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/on-technology.nsf/docid/2008070107532660

It doesn't explain the automation, but it is a start. To fully automate it, you would need to add a fully compete -clone switch. An example would be like this:

-clone,mode=restore,src=e:\image.gho,dst=1 -sure -quiet

The above clone switch was made with the assumption that the root drive for the media is e:\, which may or may not be the case. You will need to test this with a machine you want to restore to. The image file in the example is named image.gho, and the disk it is restoring to is disk 1. Note that in the example above, there are only two spaces.

I hope that helps!

Thank you,

Randy

OK this is the deal....

I have an image with the following files span out onto 3 DVD's:

Disk1 (bootable)
----------------------
1036.gho
10360001.ghs

Disk2
----------------------
10360002.ghs
10360003.ghs

Disk3
----------------------
10360004.ghs

I'm using winimage to create the bootable file to tack onto the DVD using these switches

ghost.exe -clone,mode=restore,src=f:\1036.gho,dst=1 -sure - quiet -fx

Prior to 11.5 everything worked fine, it would boot up and start the restore, now it ask for all the files before it started the restore, which can be a pain in the butt if you 3 to 5 dvd's. Is there something new about 11.5 that allows the restore to start without checking the image files?

Do you have all the updates applied to Ghost? There are three LiveUpdates thart should be ran. I believe that they will resolve this. Also, the issue could be with identifying spanned image files due to your naming convention. Ghost works best when  you use eight character filenames containing only letters. Numerical filenames often result in issues.
 

Hi Randall,

I will give this a try and come back with my finding.

Thanks again.

Karl Thompson.

I updated the GSS 2.5 and still no change <Span Volume [2] Done (1660)>

Our procedure is basically as follows:
1. Install 2.5
2. Update 2.5 with all the live updates from the internet
3. Create a Win PE boot CD using the boot wizard with no user files added
4. Use the Win PE boot CD on the target machine to create an image on a new blank DVD which will contain only the image -- note that if the image is too big (probably this means too big to fit on the DVD along with Win PE but it's hard to tell for sure) then the final burn to a PE image DVD won't work.
5. Go back to the machine that has 2.5 and copy the image files from the DVD to the 2.5 computer
6. Run the boot wizard again and this time use the files from the DVD as supplementary user files on the boot disk and use a blank DVD instead of a blank CD
7. The result is a DVD with PE and the image which can function as a software delivery disk.

It does work, but if you have the unpatched 2.5 or if the image is too big you'll just get a cryptic error message about not being able to write the disk. This should really work better but it does work. Send me an email if you have further questions.