Ghost Solution Suite

Hello,

I want to be able to make a recovery partition with Symantec Ghost 11.5, on any laptop or Desktop PC.

If its on a Dell or HP for example can i use the recovery key that normally certain manufacturers use to recovery computers to scratch if i make a freshly installed PC with a symantec ghost recovery partition instead.

Thanks in advance

James

Making a recovery partition is not that difficult and googling on this topic yields many different solutions.

Trying to implement the recovery key technique used by certain manufacturers is not so simple, as their method mostly requires the involvement of the BIOS and/or a piece of boot manager code somewhere on the hard disk that interacts with the function key used for system recovery.

For "standalone" system recovery, your hardware needs to be able to boot into a separate operating environment, which can then run the recovery utility (in this case Ghost) to re-image the target partition from an image stored on the recovery partition.

I did some experimentation with dual boot systems, as part of some work with WinPE, and you will find it documented here: Adventures with WinPE Symantec Connect

In my test system, I could boot either WinPE or the main XP operating system using Window's own boot management (xp would boot by default after 2 seconds delay). If WinPE boot was chosen, I then had access to a command line from which I could launch Ghost32.exe (in my case Ghost 8.3) and use it to create or deploy images. Since Ghost operations can be scripted, it is quite simple to come up with a menu that gives users the ability to restore a previously created image.

Does this work for standalone as well or is this just network based, i want to be able to use it for home PC's like if you hit the recovery button or how ever i would activate the recovery and it runs ghost and restores an image from a freshly installed PC with all the software on i installed with it.

Thanks

James

Symantec Ghost is designed to provide imaging over a network as well as other bootable solutions.

The WinPE method I documented is entirely stand alone, using a boot manager rather than relying on a function key. Depending on the relative sizes of the partitions you create, you could reimage the entire working partition at regular intervals, just bear in mind that a 200Gb operating system partition is going to need at least 100Gb of image storage, and more likely, up to 150Gb of image storage, as many file types commonly used today (eg JPG, MP3, MPG) are already highly compressed, so are unlikely to be capable of any significant recompression by Ghost or any other imaging utility.  I personally found that operating system images made with ImageX were smaller than the equivalent Ghost images, as imagex explicitly excludes swap files and various other "transient" files from the image, since these are recreated at boot time anyway. However, the difference in size gets progressively smaller as the image size increases, as the compression techniques used are pretty similar.  Also consider that imaging 200Gb of data is going to take a long time.

What I would urge you to consider, however, is that there are two separate events that can create a need to restore a partition image. The most common is an event such as a virus infection which causes substantial data corruption, or which cannot be removed cleanly. The slightly less common is a total hard disk failure. Clearly having a recovery partition on a failed hard disk makes any chance of recovery microscopic, especially where the failure is due to a head crash rather than just component failure.

Thus for maximal data security and the highest chance of recovery, your image should either be stored externally to your machine, or the image should be backed up from the recovery partition to external storage.

Okey dokey,

So you recon the Dualboot might be the best way to do it??

So do i need to do the first step Creating the Windows PE ISO image - 32 bit then just go straight to the Dualboot section?

Thanks

James

You need to have the necessary files to create the WinPE boot, with the boot.wim being the key. I preferred to go for the full configuration with all the add-ons but you can choose what bits you add in according to your requirements. Once you have the boot files - create the ISO and burn a CD so that you can check it all works OK. After that, you can go to the dual boot section. The article was written with WinPE dual booting to XP, but I see no reason why the same methodology cannot be used for other operating systems.

All good info,  Here is a link with some alternate steps that may or may not be useful depending on your environment requirements.   If you are doing new builds this may make sense.   If you are working to make backups of your existing system Ed's plan may be better.

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=HOWTO42277&actp=search&viewlocale=en_US&searchid=1300388033562

cheers.

Right i've got as far as Creating the Windows PE ISO image - 32 bit, step 9 and it gives me an error for copying the Winpe.wim file to the iso\source folder and i get an Data Error (cyclic Redundancy error), using the command line in the Windows PE Tools Command Prompt, the harddrive had a check disk before i started as well.

I've also tried to copying it manually from one folder to the other and i get the same error.

Any suggestions??

James

You need to be running with an administrator account to perform these steps. If you are running as admin already, then what O/S are you working on?  I used XP when I tested this process, but if using Vista or Win 7, try turning the UAC off temporarily.

If none of that works, I would recommend trying it on a different machine.

Well its freshly installed Windows XP machine with all the software i need on it already and i'm using the admin account................ I'm just wondering, when i installed the windows XP and it asks for a username i put teacher because its for a primary school, is that still full administrator?

James

Right I've got past that copying error now, i deleted the asp.net machine account restarted but had to start this whole process again because it messed up. So I'm now at the Creating a dual boot XP/WinPE workstation.n 

It says to copy files boot.wim, boot.sdi, bootmgr and BOOTSECT.EXE from the USB root to the dualboot folder, i can't find that bootsect.exe from the Bootable USB i made.

And i've opened a notepad document and copied and pasted the code into that and saved it as BCD.vbs thats fine, just don't know what to do about Bootsect.exe file

James

Do you have your Explorer settings configured to show hidden files?

yeah it wasnt there :-(

James

Did you also create a bootable CD ?  Check that for the bootsect.exe file.  Not sure why you are having issues with finding this file. Does your USB device boot into WinPE successfully?  Did you download the V2 version of WinPE?

I have zipped and attached bootsect.exe from my USB key just in case...

Attachment(s)

BOOTSECT.zip   35 KB 1 version

Yeh it wasnt on there either and i've downloaded anything in the article that was required as well.......... USB booted successfully.

Now that i've got this Bootsect.exe file thank you very much :-), i'm now on the step 12;

12.     Change to the C:\BOOT folder and type: BOOTSECT.EXE /NT60 ALL /force
(note that there is no / for the ALL command) This changes the boot sector format to Vista compatible to allow the boot manager to operate correctly.

on the WinPE directory X:\ (which is C: drive obviously) i typed cd boot to get to the folder and the typed the command BOOTSECT.EXE /NT60 ALL /force and it said the Bootsect.exe is not recognized

I'm so close :-)

James

Just copy bootsect.exe into the BOOT folder.

Its in there but it doesn't recognize it as being there if ya see what i mean, if i boot in windows as normal its there.

I've tried deleting the BOOT folder and re-creating it and copying the files manually from the dualboot folder off my USB pen.............. rebooted with the pen into WinPE and i type cd\ to get back to the C:\ drive or this case the X:\ Drive, i typed in the command dir to look at the directories and it doesn't appear, tried cd boot command and i couldn't get on it.

So i remade it by typing md C:\boot and then used the command line to copy the files from the USB pen to the Boot folder on C:

Still the same error.

James

I just noticed this in your previous posting:

on the WinPE directory X:\ (which is C: drive obviously)......

This is incorrect. WinPE runs entirely from memory and creates a RAM disk on X: from which to run.

The C:\ drive is the actual hard disk in your machine.

I'm not sure where you are going wrong apart from that....

I've just realised the Link you've posted up is the wrong version to what you've stated, so i've downloaded the right and i'm going to give it another go from scratch.

James

Thank you for reporting that the link in my article was no longer correct.

I have now updated it (yet again) to the current location of the V2 download I used. It seems that Microsoft change their webpage addresses at random intervals, so inevitably such links do expire and need updating.

As you will have observed from the download size, the correct version is more than 300 Mb larger than the older version you downloaded, so I hope you have a better experience with the new download. It is also possible that the bootsect.exe file I attached was not compatible with your version, but hopefully you will have the correct version of code now.

Thats ok :-), bloody microsoft, yeh the size was 1.34GB compared to 300MB haha

I'll let you know how i get on this time :-)

Thanks

James

Hello,

Sorry i'm still getting stuck at the simplest bit from step 7 to 12 in the making of the dual boot.

Before i booted i made sure i had deleted the Boot folder on the C: Drive so i dont get any conflictions. So I booted the laptop with the USB pen to WinPE;

This is my step by what i did;

1. onced booted up to X:\windows\system32\ - i typed cd\ so it changed to just X:\
2. i then typed MD C:\boot to create a folder.
3. Used the command copy E:\DualBoot\*.* C:\BOOT, which copied no problem.
4. I then removed the USB pen and made sure i was in the Boot folder by typing CD boot
5. Now on C:\boot\ i typed BOOTSECT.EXE /NT60 ALL /force

An Error came up saying "BOOTSECT.EXE" is not recognized and i used the same bootsect.exe file that you kindly posted up for.

Thanks

James

sorry step 5 isn't C:\boot it's X:\boot, i can't get on C:\boot throught WinPE it only X: which you mentioned that it runs from RAM so what how do i get on C: if its ran from the RAM, am i just being stupid

James

I don't think you are being stupid, as you are working with an unfamiliar product and so a learning curve is inevitable.

If you cannot change directory to C:\, are you even able to see the C: drive from WinPE ?  If not, then the reason for this is that you don't have a suitable driver loaded for your hard disk system. WinPE 2.0 has basic SATA support built in, but of course there have been a plethora of SATA chipsets released since then, including some that support SATA 6, so an inability to read the C: drive from WinPE will require you to add a Vista 32 bit driver for your SATA chipset. (WinPE 2 is based on the Vista kernel so needs Vista drivers).

My article describes how to add drivers to an offline image, but if you grab the WinPE documentation from the WAIK installation, it will also tell you how you can load drivers dynamically from the command line. The drivers need to be in the form of an INF file, with at least a SYS file, and sometimes a DLL and CAT file as well. Drivers supplied in EXE format need to be unpacked.  Once you have verified the correct driver, you can integrate it into your WinPE image using the offline method.

Hope this helps....

Yeh i remembered from making a ghost boot disk and having to Add drivers in the WinPE drivers section that were vista 32Bit drivers because its based on Vista isnt it.

Can i get Drivers for an IDE harddrive or do this only work on SATA drives, is it all in the chipset driver?? because i'm sure i added a chipset driver but dont know if that helps.

Thanks

James

I think i've come to a dead end with this for the laptop i'm using, it has a ATA hard drive but i cant find any drivers for the chipset for Vista 32bit. I've been playing with a laptop from a primary school so i might need to wait until i get a laptop that supports vista drivers.

I'm still not being able to browse the C:\, when i type in cd C:\ it just goes back to X:\ which is the RAM as you mentioned isnt it?

When i add the drivers and i've unmounted the image do i need to run the command line copy c:\winpe_x86\winpe.wim c:\winpe_x86\ISO\sources\boot.wim from step 9 in the Creating the Windows PE ISO image  - 32bit or does that not matter.

Really sorry if i've been wasting your time

Thanks

James

WinPE should normally have no problem working with ATA hard drives as the parallel ATA disk interface has been pretty much standard for a good many years and is supported natively by all windows operating systems.  

However, if you have faithfully recorded your command line entries then you are making a basic error, as you cannot change drives using CD - CD means Change Directory.

So if you are at the X: prompt, just type C: followed by return and this should take you to the C: drive. Once on the C: drive you can use CD to change to another directory.  If you just type CD C:\ at the X: prompt - nothing will happen as the command is meaningless.

When you mount the WIM file and add drivers, then unmount the image so that the changes are committed, you have generated an updated WIM file. This new WIM now needs to be copied to your boot device - ie if you are using a USB boot device, you need to replace the existing boot.wim, whereas if you are creating an ISO file you need to update the source for the ISO file generation step.

It's ok i've done it i thought i had tried that obivously not, Whoops :-P.

So i've got the dualboot done now, HORRAY and i've ran the WinPE partition but how do i run the Ghost32.exe once the WinPE has loaded.

I know how to do it when i've made a Ghost Boot Disk but i cant find how to get it to run on this WinPE.

Thanks

James

When WinPE starts up, it runs a CMD file from the system32 folder - you can see it on the command line during boot and I think it is wininit.cmd.  (It might be wininit.bat - I can't recall precisely)

What I normally do is to add a line into this file to call a batch file (eg GO.BAT) in the root of the WinPE drive - if you know the drive letter is fixed then its easy, otherwise you can just write some lines of batch code that search for your GO.BAT on each possible drive letter and run the first encountered. If you want something unique, you could name the file XYZYX.bat or whatever takes your fancy. Editing wininit.cmd requires you to mount the boot.wim for editing and then save and commit the changes.

Then you can edit the GO.bat to run any Ghost commands you fancy, and since the file is external to the boot.wim file, you don't need to go through the mount/edit/commit/dismount process each time you want to change anything.