Ghost Solution Suite

I recently downloaded the test version of Ghost Solution Suite and created a boot CD with the wizzard.  When I boot with that CD on the above laptop it doesn't recognize my hard drives.  This machine is setup to use Intel Rapid Storage Technology and has a 32 gig SSD which is used to improve performance.  What do I need to do to get Ghost to backup my hard drive to an external harddrive?

...moved to the correct forum!

Is this a DOS boot CD or a WinPE boot CD?  If DOS, chances are that it cannot see any devices that are SATA based as DOS has no SATA support. Try WinPE.

The boot CD is PC DOS and it works fine on other machines with SATA hard drives. I'm really leaning toward the Intel Rapid Storage Technology which comes with the Dell. If someone has had success Ghosting a Dell 7520 or other similar machine with this feature please share your experiences. Thanks.

PCDOS success with SATA depends on whether the bios offers any IDE compatibility settings. Have you checked if this option is available on your 7520?

More and more vendors are not supporting PCDOS so what works for older hardware will stop working with new hardware, and sooner or later you will have to start using WinPE.  That is what Microsoft have been using for Vista Windows 7 and Windows 8 as part of their automated installation processes, and there are valid technical reasons for this.

PCDOS also lacks support for USB devices - how are you connecting external drives for backup currently?

On older machines with SATA internal drives I can access USB external drives. But I have a desktop that has a USB keyboard and I can either access the keyboard or the external USB drives based on settings for the Ghost boot CD (this is an older version of Ghost 11.0) but that's not too functional. So I back that machine up to an internal hard drive. The Dell 7520 doesn't see the internal hard drive or the USB drives. Thanks. I will try WinPE when my sister gives me the 7520 back.

Just remember to use Vista 32 bit drivers for WinPE, as the version included in Ghost is based on the Vista kernel.

Thanks EdT. I got my hands on the 7520 today and tried a WinPE-512 Ghost Boot disk with all the drivers available, but it didn't recognize the internal drive. It never got to a point if it saw the external. The only drivers I could find on the Dell site were for Win7 and Win8 64 bit. So instead of chasing around for drivers and spending the time to build boot images I tried the Linux Pre-OS. AND it worked!!!!! I could see the internal HDD, the external HDDs and even the 32 gig SSD. And it did a back up just fine. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. As far as making Ghost backups on the 7520, I consider this case closed! Then, I installed another hard drive in the laptop to restore to (a disaster test) and my next issue is what the proper answers are for the Intel Rapid Storage Technology menu. This menu comes up before the BIOS when you change drives. If anyone knows what to answer I'd appreciate. You need to enter CNTL-I to enter and there are only 6 items on the menu. Seems simple, but I have no experience with this and had to give the PC back in working order this afternoon.

Can you not interrogate the Intel settings for the existing storage before you change it?  Is there nothing in the 7520 documentation that would guide you?

Although you have a solution with the Linux pre-OS, should you wish to try WinPE again at a later date, check which chipsets are being used in your target machine, and look on the chip vendor's website for Vista drivers. This is often more successful than checking the DELL website.

Did a lot of searching and found the link below. I'm not sure if it's fact or opinion, but I'll try it with the 7520 and WINPE the next time I get my hands on it. I may also post the linux solution there and see what he says about that. With the linux solution I did not have to disable the Intel Rapid Storage feature to make a backup and that makes me just a little bit nervous if it is 100% correct, i.e. are the mirrored SSD and HDD completely in sync when you do a clean Windows shutdown. I'd hope so, but I'll be completely happy when I can do a successful restore to a physically different HDD, http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1347208804 There is a link in there to Dell documentation too. That's a bit confusing however with all the similar names Intel invented. Again thanks!

Sounds like someone has had a similar problem and found a solution. I guess the only way to validate your Linux setup is to image the SSD and restore to another SSD.  I personally avoid any hot imaging solutions as I find that static imaging is the most reliable.  If Ghost 3 ever makes it out of development, then perhaps it will include support for all the new technologies that have emerged in the past few years. Time will tell!