Ghost Solution Suite

I have a drive image from a 250GB disk that was created with Ghost32.exe from Ghost Corporate Edition v8.0 that was run from a BartPE CD. The disk was not full, and the image spans six .GHx files. The original disk went  missing, so I purchased a replacement and tried to restore from the image.

The restore goes to 98 or 99% and quits. The header of the Ghosterr.txt file follows:

*********************************
Date   : Fri Feb 01 21:11:20 2008
Error Number: (25058)
Message: Unable to locate enough contiguous free space to load run.  Increase the destination partition size or run Ghost with -NTC- switch.

Version: 8.0.0.984 (Oct  3 2003, Build=984)
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
Command line arguments: -clone,mode=restore,src=e:\ghost\tardis-ii\hd250.gho,dst=3 -NTC-
*********************************
I have run Ghost32 from the graphical interface in Windows, from the BartPE CD and from the command line with a text file containing the line following "Command line arguments" above. (The -NTC- switch was on a separate line in the file.)

I have tried restoring to drives of 80, 250 and 300GB, all with the same result. The manual suggests that the drive may not have been defragmented before creating the image. I usually do, but may not have in this case. Anyway, it's a little late for that now. I need to know how I can successfully restore this image to a disk. Besides the older Corporate version, we also have the current GSS with a service agreement, if that is of any help.

Thanks in advance for your help. - Ben

Hi Ben,

Could you try using the switch -NTExact ?

This will try to organize the target disk exactly same as source disk.

Krish

I tried, but this is the message I got:

Date   : Thu Feb 07 19:04:26 2008
Error Number: (10100)
Message: Invalid switch: NTExact

I don't find the NTExact switch in the users guide; is it from a newer version than the one I have? I thought the -NTC- switch I was using was supposed to do the same thing as the exact switch's function. Please provide the syntax if you think I did anything wrong.

Thanks.

Ben

Hi Ben,

There were many improvements to Ghost since 8.0, which was released in 2003. Since you have the new version, could you try with the new version?

I can't remember when, but looks like we added the -ntexact in a later release.

Krish

I will try restoring from a newer Ghost version and let you know how it goes. I understand that the file format/extension changed from version 9 forward. Will the Solution Suite read the .ghx files properly, or will I have to convert them first?

The adventure continues...

Ben

Ok, I tried using Ghost v9.0, but it told me that it doesn't support .gho files. There isn't a command line executable that I can find (like Ghost32.exe in the corporate version), so I'm not sure how to proceed. I can use version 8's Ghost Explorer and its version 9 equivalent to browse the image, I just can't restore it to a disk. I even exported it to another disk and then tried to restore from that, but it quit at 99%, as usual.

If you have any other suggestions, I'm all ears.

Thanks,
Ben

Hi Ben,

Looks like what you tried is the consumer version. Ghost Consumer version is a different product based on a entirely different technology (please visit www.ghost.com for a details comparison).

The new version of enterprise version (Symantec Ghost, not Norton Ghost) is GSS 2.x which contains Ghost version 11.x.

If you have an agreement, probably you are eligible for this version. Have you got them already?

Krish

Message Edited by Oscar NL on 02-29-2008 01:21 AM

Message Edited by Oscar NL on 02-29-2008 11:12 PM

Hi Oscar,

This is part of ongoing confusion between Norton Ghost and Symantec Ghost. Norton Ghost is the Consumer product and Symantec Ghost is the product for business environments.

Norton Ghost is based on BackupExec system recovery cloning engine while Symantec Ghost uses the classic Ghost engine. The last consumer version to use classic Ghost engine was Norton Ghost 2003. After that, all the consumer Ghost products are based on BESR.

You can find the differences of the products if you visit www.ghost.com.

There are couple of posts here explaining the version tree, if I simply state it,

Ghost 8.0, 8.2, 8.3, 11.0, 11.0.1, 11.0.2 and upcoming 11.5 are business version of Ghost and they are backward compatible.

Ghost 9.0, 10.0, 12.0 and 14.0 are based on BESR and they are not compatible with business version of Ghost.

It is my fault too, if I could reply to your previous message you would not have gone through the upgrade.

Krish

Message Edited by Oscar NL on 03-02-2008 04:33 AM

Message Edited by Oscar NL on 03-02-2008 04:35 AM

Message Edited by Oscar NL on 03-02-2008 04:35 AM

Hi Oscar,

The way you start Ghost is correct. If you start it with

  Ghost -ntc-

it will use -nct- switch. One other thing you can check is if there is a Ghost.ini file in the startup disk. This is used to store the settings you check with options in Ghost. Though it is unlikely, there could be a conflicting switch in ghost.ini. Trying the operation after renaming the file could be useful.

You say it worked before without a problem. Did it work with the same image? In that case, could you try restoring it to a partition of the same size, instead of increasing it? I'm wondering if the problem is actually destination being larger. I haven't seen this situation with current verisons but at 8.0 time, hard disks used to be smaller.

Let me know what happens.

Krish

Message Edited by Oscar NL on 03-03-2008 10:29 AM

Hi Oscar,

I am little unclear on this. Do you use Ghost 8 or Ghost 2003? You can't run Ghost 8 from Windows directly, but 2003 can. Could you please confirm?

Krish

Gee, look what I started. Oscar, I feel your pain. Krish, thanks for the clarification on the Norton/Symantec product lines. I think the logic behind it is flawed, but at least I understand it better. As an update, I was never able to restore the image that prompted my original post, but luckily I found the missing hard drive that the original image was created from. Of course, in the meantime I purchased another 250GB replacement drive and had mostly finished  creating a new system.

So, while my story has a more or less happy ending, I'm leery of running into the same problem in the future. I will monitor this thread to see if Oscar is able to restore the image.

Good luck.

Ben

My problem was with Ghost 8.0, but I tried version 9, which didn't work due to the compatibility issues illuminated by Krish. Since I have located the original drive, I can recreate an image file, but it still bothers me that it occurred in the first place. By the way, restoring to different size disks, smaller or larger, produced the same result. I have also used Ghost on drives that weren't defragmented, but never ran into this situation before. I'm still hoping for a resolution before it happens again, which, as we all know, will occur at the worst possible time. Press on.

Ben

Hi Oscar,

What was the OS you had in this image? Is it somehting prior to XPSP2?

I just remembered that large disk support (>128GB) was added in XPSP2. If it is a eirlier version, could you try restoring to a smaller partition?

Ghost 2003 (and 8.0) are getting old too :-)

Krish

Hi Oscar,

Searching the new shows this could happen due to variety of reasons, including hardware changes. However, I don't think it is hardware related since the following KB article suggests copying it form XP CD. If you have an image of the freshly installed XP, it would be ideal.

Could you try following the steps given in this Microsoft KB article?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822800

(I know that you already tried replacing the driver, but in case if there is a difference in this process.)

Krish

i am trying to restore a laptop that i created a 7 part image. i am using the same Norton 12.0 disk that i created the image(on external usb hard drive) with to restore with. the laptop came back from HP with a new proceesor in it(could this be causing the problem)?
i am getting an ERROR ED800012: the internal structure of the image file (CRC Check) is invalid, damaged or unsupported.
help help help!
thanks,
G

Hi 'G',

Since Ghost12 uses a different cloning engine, we are not in a position to help you much. Best place to ask this question is the Backup Exec System Recovery forum, since they use the same engine.

https://forums.symantec.com/syment/board?board.id=111

Krish

I've been using Ghost 2003 successfully for a while to backup/restore complete disc images.  I've now got a new PC with a 500GB SATA hard disc and am finding the same problems as other posters on this forum.  I get nearly to the end of the restore only to come across error 25058.  I've tried to defrag and to use the

-ntc- switch, but neither of these has any effect.

 

In my naivety, I bought the latest and greatest ghost14, only to find, as has been reported here, that it won't do the job I wanted.  Is there any solution - maybe an upgrade of ghost 2003 ?

 

Thanks in advance

I never did resolve the issue with Ghost, and I switched to using Acronis which has worked well for us.  There is also a free imaging software that is supposed to be good as well called PING (PartImage Is Not Ghost).

 

Good Luck!

Kenn

Thanks Kenn.  I'll give PING a try