Ghost Solution Suite

Hi

I have a system where I use Ghost solutions to restore an XP Embedded image to a SATA SSD. When the SSD is 'new' out of the packet, this fails so when I reboot onto the newly imaged disk, it sits with a flashing cursor and refuses to boot.... However, if I try again on this disk and re-image a second time (with same image off same USB stick), the restore succeeds and I can boot up.

I've tried wiping all partition information off a 'used' SSD and I can't replicate this behaviour other than opening a fresh SSD from the manufacturer.

Any ideas what is causing this problem? Hope someone can help!

Andy

Now confirmed I can repeat by using diskpart and the 'clean all' commmand on the SSD followed by a reboot before booting on my Win PE Ghost USB.

So why does Ghost not like a perfectly clean SSD?

Please define exactly how you are imaging the SSD, as Ghost has many different imaging options. I doubt we will get an accurate technical answer as the development team for Ghost was disbanded many years ago. Since SSDs manage their storage areas totally differently to magnetic storage, as they need to even out write operations over the whole storage array to maximise life, this may have an impact on the operation of Ghost if the imaging options you choose somehow interfere with the SSD management logic.

Have you tried following your "clean all" command with a create partition primary command?

The disk geometry is the cause for the issue.There are two solutions,

1.To perform disk wipe prior to image restore (or)

2.Re-create image with -IB parameter ,so that diskwipe is not required.

Hi

Thanks for your help so far, unfortunatly it hasn't worked yet.

Today I have tried the following:

Create new partition and making it active using diskpart this works - but only if I reboot before re-imaging with Ghost.

Create partition and format it still doesn't work without reboot.

fixmbr - with a standard XP MBR and an MBR copied off a working SSD. Before or after re-image makes no difference.

I've recreated an image with the IB parameter set - it was 'default'. I use the WinPE based utility created by 'Ghost Boot Wizard' to take and restore the images - in the menu's you can find the IB option - to take the whole boot track. Again this fails in the same way.

So it seems at the moment, the only way is for me to add script code to add a partition and then reboot if the disk is blank/new.

All very strange! As you've said, disk internals on an SSD are very 'different'!

Andy