Ghost Solution Suite

Hi: I'm trying to create an image from a Dell laptop that's a 64bit Win7 OS which has a 512GB SSD drvie and at or about 100MB i recieve an usage error 29088 (Not enuogh space on destination drive. Spanning not supported) Spanning is enabled. any ideas or thoughts on why this is happening or how to handle? Thanks! momonow

It would help to know which version of Ghost you are using, and whether you are booting to DOS or WinPE.

Have you checked that the destination has been correctly selected?

If you are using DOS, then this is highly likely to fail with a 512Gb SSD, as this will inevitably use a SATA interface which DOS has no support for.

With Windows 7, there are two partitions to be imaged. The first Win 7 partition is the hidden "system" partition which is typically 100 Mb in size, and the second Win 7 partition is the one that is visible as the C:\ drive and contains the majority of the system files.  Often, using the -ib switch can help as it preserves the boot sector format.  It is odd that the error comes in at around 100Mb as this happens to be the size of the hidden partition, which is mostly empty, so are you trying to create an image there, instead of on the desired backup device?

This means that there is not enough space on the destination drive to store the image.

EDT, version of ghost is 11.5.1.2266 and I'm using DOS by booting from a flash drive and yes I do have my destination which is to the server.

My destination drive has 2TB of free space,

Are you trying to create a single GHO file?  This will not work as DOS cannot handle files greater than 2Gb, and Ghost will not attempt to create files greater than 2Gb on a network share as it cannot detect the file system being used, and not all file systems support files greater than 2Gb.

Therefore make sure you have spanning enabled, and MAKE SURE that you are actually mapped to the correct drive. Go to the DOS prompt and check the available space reported on the network disk.

Finally, how big is the source data?  I recall a posting from a couple of years ago, where the user reported that Ghost running on DOS would not create an image greater than about 24Gb.

It's really time for you to try WinPE as DOS is just too ancient to work properly with modern hardware

Hi EdT: Thanks for for assistance. No, i'm not trying to make a single .GHO image. But after reading more of the post you mentioned that i think i may have figured out what why i'm getting the out of space to destination message. i do have 12 diffrent images on this server and not 1 is more then 24GB and that would explain why i was being prompted with this error.Yes, it maybe time to start moving over to WinPE, but do you think there's a way to increase the size of what Ghost can handle? meaning can i can increase it more than 24GB? Or could it be the size of the drives that i'm using on the laptops? I thing i did notice that the laptops that come with 500GB drives are the ones causing Ghost to give this error. on the other laptops that have 250GB for example are fine.

The report of their being an apparent limit of around 24Gb in the size of image under DOS was a once off posting in the last two years or so, and there is no other information to substantiate this, or suggest any particular scenarios which may affect this.  This may be down to few users continuing to use DOS for imaging with big drives.

Please bear in mind that DOS uses CHS addressing, and therefore the maximum size of hard disk it can technically access is around 132Gb. Service Pack 1 on XP actually introduced an updated disk handler which could handle bigger disks, and companies like Promise released firmware updates for their disk controllers to support 48 bit addressing as the DOS 32 bit limit caused problems with accessibility of bigger disks.  Also, since DOS does not support SATA, which is now the de-facto standard for desktop and laptop hard disks, and SSDs, you are reliant on the BIOS having a compatibility setting which allows SATA hard disks to emulate the old IDE AT standard, but of course some limitation still exist.  Clearly there are many variables which can affect the ability to use DOS to image larger disks, including the system bios and the hardware, so it is nigh on impossible to give you any guidance as to whether a workaround is possible or not. All modern drives use LBA addressing, and even that has started to run out of speed on really big drives, hence you will find that 2Tb and larger drives are now "advanced format" drives which write 4Kb sectors instead of 512b sectors. This is pretty much transparent to modern operating systems but some hardware may need updates to efficiently handle advanced format drives.

Ghost also has issues with UEFI bioses so UEFI should be turned off before imaging.

Overall therefore, moving to WinPE is the way forward - you are going to run into more and more problems with DOS and do you really need the hassle?  Your version of Ghost does support the creation of WinPE boot media, or if you prefer to roll your own to get familiar with the process, you can follow this article:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/readyadventures-winpe

Since WinPE supports USB natively, it allows you to create a bootable USB drive and use that locally for storing or loading images which is often quicker and easier than using a network connection. WinPE does need drivers added for specific hardware, but this is not difficult, and you can always test candidate drivers by loading them from the command line.  The following articles provide more information:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/do-i-have-correct-driver-winpe

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH110134&profileURL=https%3A%2F%2Fsymaccount-profile.symantec.com%2FSSO%2Findex.jsp%3FssoID%3D1379325844236H648XIOBo89QYnlyyqy8JBXy4XpzTOpCi8Nmu