Ghost Solution Suite

Am using RestoreGhost.exe from the Norton Ghost 10.0 retail install/system recovery disk in an attempt to restore a legacy Ghost 2003-created '.gho' image to a disk for one of NASA's legacy machines.
 
Have noticed that this image passes integrity/validity checks within Ghost 2003 just fine without complaint (numerous times), but will NOT restore to any kind of fixed disk, be it IDE, SCSI or SATA for that matter.
 
Restoration process gets about 10-11% of the way through and then the process dies.
 
Tried a restore of this image using (DOS-based) Ghost 2003 natively with the same result.
 
Doesn't matter if the image is on optical media (spanned over 8 writable CDs) or on an external USB fixed disk (.gho span files copied from the CDs to the fixed disk), the result is the same; it passes an image validity verification test and fails to restore to any fixed disk.

Can anybody assist here? Is there any interest in working with this legacy format to restore legacy machines so that they can be re-archived using more modern tools?

Thanks...

Have included the text of the GHOSTERR.TXT file in the hope that it may be of value here...

Thanks, again...

*********************************
Date   : Wed Feb 17 16:54:55 2010
Error Number: (36000)
Message: A GeneralException occurred
Version: 8.2.0.1115 (Jul 30 2004, Build=1115)
OS Version: Professional  (Build 3790)
Command line arguments:
Active Switches :
       AutoName
PathName            : 2999 Unnamed MFT Table entry
DumpFile            : 1:1\Archives\MetOps\LEADS Weather\NOAAPort Prime\Ghost2003Based\CDR00001.GHO
DumpPos             : 415018066
Last LFO Buffersize : 16777216
Last LFO Path       :
  Full Path         : 1:1\Archives\MetOps\LEADS Weather\NOAAPort Prime\Ghost2003Based\CDR00001.GHO
  Disk:Partition    : 1:1
  Drive Letter      : G:\
Last LFO Filesystem : Native
FlagImplode         : 0
FlagExplode         : 2

Operation Details :
  Total size.........7545
  MB copied..........800
  MB remaining.......6745
  Percent complete...10%
  Speed..............95MB/min
  Time elapsed.......8:24  
  Time remaining.....1:10:43

Processor exception
Generated at HardExceptionHandlerWin32.cpp:264

Program Call Stack
NTFSReadAttribute
getAttributeListEntry
ReadAttributeFromExtentMFT
ReadAttributeFromBaseMFT
attributeCompressed
loadAttribute
loadAttributes
loadMFTRec
loadMFT
loadVol
LoadNTFSPartition
ProcessNTFSPartition
CopyPartition
ProcessAllPartitions
CopyAllPartitions
CopyFileToDisk
CopyMainline
AttemptOperation
sub_main
main

Call Stack
Address            Frame              Logical Addr              Module
0x000000007c82f583 0x000000000012f670 RtlGetLastWin32Error+0x00000000000000c0
0x000000007c82ff8a 0x000000000012f758 RtlAllocateHeap+0x000000000000058d
0x0000000000418fd0 0x000000000012f794 0x0001:0x0000000000017fd0 X:\I386\Shell\Ghost\RestoreGhost.exe
0x00000000004d6a56 0x000000000012f808 0x0001:0x00000000000d5a56 X:\I386\Shell\Ghost\RestoreGhost.exe
0x00000000004aae7f 0x000000000012f870 0x0001:0x00000000000a9e7f X:\I386\Shell\Ghost\RestoreGhost.exe
0x00000000004aafe5 0x000000000012f8ac 0x0001:0x00000000000a9fe5 X:\I386\Shell\Ghost\RestoreGhost.exe
0x00000000004ab08b 0x000000000012f8e0 0x0001:0x00000000000aa08b X:\I386\Shell\Ghost\RestoreGhost.exe
0x00000000004ac5d0 0x000000000012f920 0x0001:0x00000000000ab5d0 X:\I386\Shell\Ghost\RestoreGhost.exe
0x00000000004b0539 0x000000000012f994 0x0001:0x00000000000af539 X:\I386\Shell\Ghost\RestoreGhost.exe
0x00000000004b0d65 0x000000000012f9e8 0x0001:0x00000000000afd65 X:\I386\Shell\Ghost\RestoreGhost.exe
0x00000000004b1866 0x000000000012fa2c 0x0001:0x00000000000b0866 X:\I386\Shell\Ghost\RestoreGhost.exe
0x00000000004b1da2 0x000000000012fa68 0x0001:0x00000000000b0da2 X:\I386\Shell\Ghost\RestoreGhost.exe
0x00000000004b1f98 0x000000000012fa90 0x0001:0x00000000000b0f98 X:\I386\Shell\Ghost\RestoreGhost.exe
0x000000000048e474 0x000000000012fb00 0x0001:0x000000000008d474 X:\I386\Shell\Ghost\RestoreGhost.exe
0x000000000048ff17 0x000000000012fb28 0x0001:0x000000000008ef17 X:\I386\Shell\Ghost\RestoreGhost.exe
0x000000000045a3dd 0x000000000012fb54 0x0001:0x00000000000593dd X:\I386\Shell\Ghost\RestoreGhost.exe
0x000000000045a5f7 0x000000000012fb78 0x0001:0x00000000000595f7 X:\I386\Shell\Ghost\RestoreGhost.exe
0x000000000045b774 0x000000000012fba4 0x0001:0x000000000005a774 X:\I386\Shell\Ghost\RestoreGhost.exe
0x000000000045c7d4 0x000000000012fcb8 0x0001:0x000000000005b7d4 X:\I386\Shell\Ghost\RestoreGhost.exe
0x0000000000402256 0x000000000012fcd8 0x0001:0x0000000000001256 X:\I386\Shell\Ghost\RestoreGhost.exe
0x00000000004023a5 0x000000000012fcf8 0x0001:0x00000000000013a5 X:\I386\Shell\Ghost\RestoreGhost.exe
0x000000000040552a 0x000000000012fdf0 0x0001:0x000000000000452a X:\I386\Shell\Ghost\RestoreGhost.exe
0x0000000000405b60 0x000000000012fee4 0x0001:0x0000000000004b60 X:\I386\Shell\Ghost\RestoreGhost.exe
0x0000000000419c91 0x000000000012ffc0 0x0001:0x0000000000018c91 X:\I386\Shell\Ghost\RestoreGhost.exe
0x0000000077e523cd 0x000000000012fff0 IsProcessorFeaturePresent+0x000000000000009e
End Call Stack

Exception code: 0xc0000005 ACCESS_VIOLATION
Registers:
EAX=0x0080e508 CS=0x001b EIP=0x00000000 EFLGS=0x00010246
EBX=0x00790000 SS=0x0023 ESP=0x0012fff8 EBP=0x00000000
ECX=0x00000000 DS=0x0023 ESI=0x0080e500 FS=0x003b
EDX=0x00000000 ES=0x0023 EDI=0x0080e018 GS=0x0000

Start heap available: 365961216
Cur   heap available: 348020736
Total Memory:         535887872

Conventional Memory
Inital Conventional Memory Size = 0
Current Conventional Memory Size = 0
Allocated
  33500 ghost.cpp:1268
Free
  32768 AlignBufferedImageFileDevice.cpp:83

Fat details:

NTFS details:
----------------

NTFS Global Flags:
----------------
  contiguousWrite=1 forceDiskClusterMapping=0
  inhibitCHKDSK=1 ignoreBadLog=0 ignoreCHKDSKBit=0
  enable_cache=0 xfrbuflen=32768
  last_attr_type = 0
  loadExact = 0
----------------
 =======================================================
 NTFS volume 0:
 ----------------
 initialised..............1
 read cached..............N
 Selective caching........N
 flags....................Volume OK
 drive....................0x02
 part order...............0
 version..................0x0400
 volsize..................78156161
 blocksize................512
 clusterfactor............8
 clustersize..............4096
 mftrecordsize............1024
 indexrecordsize..........4096
 indexclustperrecord......1
 bootSectorCopyOffset.....78156161
 pagefileSys..............4294967295
 bootIni..................3515
 volumeLabel..............[]
 sectorsInUse.............20694912
 totalNonCopiedBytes......0
 bytesToCopy..............0
 bitmapClusters...........894
 bitmapUsedBytes..........3661816
 estimatedClusters........894
 estimatedUsedBytes.......3661816
 clustersizeShift.........12
 blocksizeShift...........9
 mftrecordsizeShift.......10
 indexrecordsizeShift.....12
 totalRootMftRecs.........113227
 clustermap failover......N
 Boot sector details
  name....................[NTFS    ]
  blocksize...............512
  clusterfactor...........8
  reservedSectorsUnused...0
  mediaType...............0xf8
  secPerTrack.............63
  numHeads................255
  hiddenSectors...........63
  volsize_lo..............78156161
  volsize_hi..............0
  mftcluster.(lo).........786432
  mftcluster.(hi).........0
  mftmirrorcluster.(lo)...16
  mftmirrorcluster.(hi)...0
  clustersPerMFTRecord....246
  clustersPerIndexBuffer..1

  ---------------------------------------------------
  Cluster Allocation Map
  ---------------------------------------------------
  Start:         0 Length:    497459 Next:    497459
       Gap:    288973
  Start:    786432 Length:   1221203 Next:   2007635
       Gap:   7761885
  Start:   9769520 Length:         0 Next:   9769520

 =======================================================

Disk Info :
  remote.............0
  drive..............0
  sectors_used.......234356157
  estimated_used.....15452961
  pemax..............1
  Version............760

 # Ord Boot Id Ext First    Num      Last     Used     NTFS
 0   0   80 7  No  00000063 234356157 234356220 20694912 Yes

Disk Info :
  remote.............0
  drive..............2
  sectors_used.......78156225
  estimated_used.....0
  pemax..............1
  Version............0

 # Ord Boot Id Ext First    Num      Last     Used     NTFS
 0   0   80 7  No  00000063 78156162 78156225 20694912 Yes

Fixed Drives

Drive 0 Seagate Portable 0130 2GH1WW72
ASPI
Total Sectors            488397168
Bytes per Sector         512
MB                       238475
Successful IO Count      0

WinNT (Active)
Total Sectors            488397168
Bytes per Sector         512
MB                       238475
Cylinders                238475
Heads                    64
Sectors per Track        32
Successful IO Count      58

Drive 1 WDC WD400BB-32DKA0 WD-WMAHN1011884
WinNT (Active)
Total Sectors            78165360
Bytes per Sector         512
MB                       38166
Cylinders                4865
Heads                    255
Sectors per Track        63
Successful IO Count      27

Drive 2 ST340016A 3HS7LW30
WinNT (Active)
Total Sectors            78165360
Bytes per Sector         512
MB                       38166
Cylinders                4865
Heads                    255
Sectors per Track        63
Successful IO Count      27542

Floppy Drives

Drive 0 GENERIC FLOPPY DRIVE
WinNT (Active)
Total Sectors            2880
Bytes per Sector         512
MB                       1
Cylinders                80
Heads                    2
Sectors per Track        18
Successful IO Count      1

Remote Drives
AsyncIo : 0
Image Devices

Key[1]   1:1
Key[2]   G:
Path     G:
Desc     G: 1:1 [SysArchives]
Type     NTFS
Disk     0
Offset   63

Key[1]   2:1
Key[2]   C:
Path     C:
Desc     C: 2:1 []
Type     NTFS
Disk     1
Offset   63

Key[1]   A:
Path     A:
Desc     A:
Type     Floppy

Key[1]   E:
Path     E:
Desc     E: [GHOST_001]
Type     CD

Key[1]   X:
Path     X:
Desc     X: [NORTONGHOST10.0]
Type     CD

Key[1]   Z:
Path     Z:
Desc     Z: [MS-RAMDRIVE]
Type     Disk

*********************************
 

Although the image itself is structurally valid, the source NTFS filesystem contains a data arrangement that is triggering a bug in the restore system, which we fixed in later editions of the genuine Ghost product in Ghost Solution Suite once NTFS filesystems started appearing with this structure.

You really need to purchase the current product, which is still actively supported (whereas consumer "Norton Ghost 10" is several years past the end of its support life), and contains all the tools you need to restore this image successfully (including doing things such as deploy GHO images directly to VMDK files for conversion to VMWare and many other helpful things) - see http://www.symantec.com/business/ghost-solution-suite

Nigel

Thank you for the rapid response on my inquiry...

Am doing some comparison between the business-oriented Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 and the consumer-oriented Ghost 15.

First, an observation of the overall Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 product, and then a question...

From Symantec's white paper "Systems Management: Best Practices for Optimization of PC Life-Cycle Configuration Mangement" it appears that there are three components of Ghost Solution Suite 2.5.
 
First is the 'Client' component which I believe is for working with individual 'end-point' workstations/machines.
Second is  the 'Server' component which I believe is for the centralized storage of system images which can be deployed concurrently to multiple machines.
Third is the 'Console' component which I believe offers a means of initiating remote control/management of images of centrally managed (Active Directory?) connected machines.

Do all of the components of Solution Suite need to be installed for the product to be able to recover/restore a legacy '.gho' image file or can I get by with just the installation of the 'Client' component on a lab machine which will be used as part of the drive restoration effort?

Now on to additional questions about the Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 'Client' component vs. the consumer Ghost 15 product, and more...

First...

Am I correct to understand that the current Symantec product, Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 continues to support the ability to recover legacy machines with system images in the 'gho' format (from Ghost 2003 and earlier) whereas the consumer version Ghost 15 does not?

(I have read in some other discussion forums that some believe that the "RestoreGhost.exe" app (maybe it's now called "Ghost32.exe") is no longer included with consumer Ghost 15, and the omission of this stand-alone app may started with consumer Ghost 12?)

Second...

Am I correct to understand that Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 includes an updated version of the stand-alone "RestoreGhost.exe" app (maybe it's now called "Ghost32.exe"...) as a part of the 'Client' component of the Ghost Solution Suite or, is support for the '.gho'-images 'baked-in' to the main Solution Suite 'Client' app so that you can do virtual machine support with VMDK files? (As you mentioned above, am presuming that any updated version of Ghost32.exe includes the fix for the NTFS file systems, no?)

Next...

If support for '.gho'-format images within the 'Client' component of Solution Suite continues to be stand-alone, would it be possible to run this app as part of a system recovery environment such as the Windows pre-boot/loader-oriented world which is included as a part of the bootable consumer Ghost 10.0 distribution/installation disk?

Thanks...

BTW...

Are you, or were you part of the original team from New Zealand that came up with the original DOS-oriented Ghost tool and the ('.gho' archive image format) some years past before the PowerQuest acquisition and the change of the Ghost internal engine and file formats from the original over to PowerQuest-based structure and formats?

Just curious...

The managed aspects of Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 are all the same - although of course they have improved in capability greatly - as what we have shipped in every business version of Ghost ever released under Symantec's ownership, starting with Ghost Enterprise 6.0 (in 1999); we created the console-managed environment when we were acquired by Symantec to provide a centrally managed alternative to using the stand-alone tool components (Ghost, Gdisk, and all the others) to broaden Ghost's appeal to the kinds of larger business customers Symantec was able to bring to use Ghost.

The managed environment largely began by automating the process of using the stand-alone tools, and as we have extended the system we've generally made sure that new things we add for the console's benefit also can be used stand-alone. However, most of the large number of tools the business product had were never available in the "Norton Ghost" editions since those were very strictly licensed to be used with a single PC only, whereas the much larger business Ghost toolchain needed many more capabilities to deal with the multiple-PC deployment it was licensed for.

> [...does...] Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 includes an updated version of the stand-alone "RestoreGhost.exe" app (maybe it's now called "Ghost32.exe"...)

Yes, although the right way to view it is that the business versions *continue* to include Ghost32.exe - RestoreGhost.exe was just a renamed version of the Ghost32.exe component of Ghost Enterprise which the ex-PowerQuest team borrowed from our group after they took over our *consumer* brand and applied to the ex-PowerQuest V2i product. Ghost32.exe was a part of (and has continued to be a part of) the genuine business editions of Ghost which have been developed and sold throughout, either as Ghost Enterprise or Ghost Solution Suite.

Since the V2i-based toolchain was never suited for multi-machine deployment, however, the original genuine Ghost product has always been the only answer for that and so the Ghost toolchain has not only stayed available through Ghost Enterprise and later Ghost Solution Suite, but as well it is also now used in Symantec's high-end PC management suite via Altiris Deployment Solution.

In terms of recovery environments, the Ghost Solution Suite product continues (as always) to include a recovery environment builder (the Ghost Boot Wizard) which these days constructs Windows PE, DOS and Linux boot environments on a range of output media (floppy, USB key, CD/DVD), which can be used separately from the managed environment to runs the tools outside the deployed OS's.

As for me personally, I have indeed been involved with Ghost since before Symantec acquired it; at first just peripherally, as I provided technical advice to some entrepreneurs (Gray Treadwell and Graeme Lodge) in New Zealand who provided seed funding for Binary Research, and around 1997 as Binary Research was growing fast and Gray Treadwell took a more active management role in Binary Research he moved me to that company to fill in some gaps. I have continued with Ghost in a development role ever since.

Nigel,

Thank you, again for a rapid reply and the extended assistance you're providing. (Been away from the office/lab for a couple of days...)

I have purchased a copy of the Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 media/license from one of the Symantec affiliated retailers and will be receiving it shortly.

First, I think a few words of background on our computing environment here at NASA Wallops Flight Facility, "for context", might be helpful.

I make lots of "house calls" out to individual end-point machines within the launch range to create system archives and do system restores.
 
Although the majority of our science-oriented machines are connected to a physical network, they are not under a data-center management tool (read: connected to and participating in an Active Directory and Domain Controller-driven networked environment.)
 
In fact, some of the machines I look after are true, stand-alone systems that are not connected to any network at all.

Because of this, I'm mostly familiar with the "stand-alone components" of Ghost from the earlier DOS-based days and not so much, yet, with the "managed" aspects of Ghost. (I presuming the "managed" aspects of Ghost to be mainly inside the "Server" and "Console" areas.)

As such, I have a couple questions about definitions and organization of the new Ghost Solution Suite I'll be receiving, being that most of my time has been with the legacy, pre-PowerQuest-acquisiton Ghost product.

By "Ghost Toolchain" am I correct to understand that this is the collection of tools within the business Ghost product that are available for centeralized "Console/'managed-aspect' use in a multi-deployment/seat-managed environment", rather than the traditional single-computer stand-alone tools contained in the consumer-oriented form of Ghost?

It would almost seem that "Ghost Toolchain" also refers to the use of the features/ability of the legacy Ghost product architecture to work with multi-machine deployment, no?

(It's interesting to read how the transition from the legacy Ghost backup/restore core engine (Ghost32.exe) over to the PowerQuest-derived backup/restore 'V2i' engine evolved and then continued to evolve into what Symantec is offering now... Moreover, it's encouraging to read that an updated version of the legacy Ghost32.exe (with the old-school restore engine that can handle '.gho'-format archives) is included on the Ghost Solution Suite 2.3 distribution media.)

As a summary, it would appear that there have been THREE eras in product history.

First is the traditional Ghost backup/restore engine product (with the '.gho' format archive files) which had its origin with the Binary Research folks (and continues to be supported within Ghost Solution Suite.)

Next is the former 'Drive Image' backup/restore engine product (with the 'V2i' toolchain) which had its origin with the PowerQuest folks and apparently didn't really work all that well in multi-machine environments, though I guess elements of the 'V2i' toolchain may be evident within the current Ghost Solution Suite, no?

Finally, you have current Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 product which, I believe, contains a significant amount of the multi-machine deployment features drawn in from the earlier world of Ghost and maybe elements brought in from the PowerQuest Drive Image 'V2i' environment, too. (It's interesting to note that there are elements of these traditional Ghost multi-machine deployment features in your high-end Altris Deployment solution, too.)

To begin to bring all this to a conclusion, it would appear that what I need to do upon the arrival of my copy of Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 is to use the "Recovery Environment Builder" tool to create a Windows PE-based boot disk with Ghost32.exe included upon it so that I can run the copy of Ghost32.exe outside a managed environment to get that one machine restored.

Am curious if there is a version of the legacy, stand-alone, component tool version of "Ghost32.exe" which will execute within a MS DOS boot-environment?

At present, my understanding of "Ghost32.exe" is that you've got to run it in either of the Windows PE environment or as a "stand-alone-tool" component of the "Client" environment once you have the full Windows OS loaded and running.

Looking forward to receiving my copy of Ghost Solution Suite 2.5, installing/configuring it, learning more about its ability to support end-point machines and getting that one legacy machine restored.

Then we'll call all of this a success...

Backatcha...


BTW... On a related note...
 
I have seen some advertising materials for the consumer-oriented Ghost-15 version that state that Ghost-15 can now do "cold backup/archive creation", as you could in the old days of the MS DOS-oriented versions of Ghost.

If so, I'm sure that any 'cold archive' created today will not be in the legacy '.gho' format of years past, but rather, in some kind of newer Ghost archive image format, no?

If I recall correctly, the ability to create 'cold archives' went away with Ghost 9.0 and perhaps continued on through Ghost-14 which meant that with these versions of Ghost the product had to be first installed on the machine and then activated PRIOR to any attempt to create any kind of archive image.
 
I guess you could restore an earlier 'V2i'-based (DriveImage format) archive or a '.gho'-based (legacy Ghost format) archive with these recent versions of consumer Ghost, but not create new ones in the Windows PE environment, no?

Is the return of the ability to create a 'cold archive' in response to consumer user requests?

Just curious...








 

Just to clarify, the notion we work to in Ghost of a "tool-chain" is a common one in the software industry, which is that the software we provide is a collection of tools. Each individual tool does a specific job, and can be used perfectly well by itself, but are intended to be used one after another in sequence (the "chain" part), will accomplish a larger goal than any individual tool. 

The management console works to a model of orchestrating that chain of separate, independently available tools, rather than a "tight integration" model where the components that do the jobs lose their individual identity and are not usable separately from the management system.

> As a summary, it would appear that there have been THREE eras in product history

You shouldn't call them "eras", because none of these things are distinct in time; the genuine Ghost product line is "legacy" only in the sense that it is the oldest, but it has been continually developed throughout and was never "replaced" by the PowerQuest products except in the single-user, single-PC-only consumer backup space. Similarly, the management tools were introduced in Ghost Enterprise 6.0 in 1999, as a complement to rather than a replacement for the business edition of the Ghost tools, and the tools and management platform have been co-evolving ever since.

> interesting to note that there are elements of these traditional Ghost multi-machine deployment features in your high-end Altris Deployment solution

Not so much elements as the *same*. Altiris Deployment Solution uses the exact same tool executables we build for Ghost Solution Suite, merely underneath the control of the Altiris management platform instead of the one included in Ghost Solution Suite.

> use the "Recovery Environment Builder" tool to create a Windows PE-based boot disk with Ghost32.exe included upon it

The building tool in question is called the Ghost Boot Wizard and has been a part of all the genuine Ghost business editions - having begun life as the "Multicast Assistant" which built DOS boot disks with the network drivers needed for Ghost's feature of network distribution of images. It became the Ghost Boot Wizard in Ghost Enterprise 6.0 when it was extended to build .GHO images and other things needed by the management platform.

>  component tool version of "Ghost32.exe" which will execute within a MS DOS boot-environment?

There are versions of basically all the tools which operate on MS-DOS, Windows PE and Linux. The exception is the DeployAnywhere tool, which in current editions only runs under Windows PE and the Linux edition of the Ghost executable in GSS2.5 does not write directly to optical disks.

> If I recall correctly, the ability to create 'cold archives' went away with Ghost 9.0

It didn't really "go away" as such; the PowerQuest V2i code line was written before PowerQuest's acquisition by Symantec to *only* run in Windows and to *only* use Volume Snapshot techniques. A standalone imaging capability never existed in that product, and so was not available in the "Norton Ghost" product line after that brand was applied to the V2i product rather than the genuine Ghost product. It was only relatively recently added to the full business version of that code line (sold as "Backup Exec System Recovery"), from which the consumer version has inherited the capability.

Whatever disk imaging facilities exist in "Norton Ghost 15", the output image will, as you conjectured, be a V2i-based format; the genuine Ghost products in Ghost Solution Suite can read V2i images in Windows PE (and can also both read and write VMWare VMDK disks on all platforms), but the V2i-based products cannot work with .GHO-format images, either to capture or restore them.

Nigel,

I guess some of my observations are based upon the transition from the earlier-days of the MS DOS-based 'Genuine Ghost' (versions 8.0 and earlier...) over to the PowerQuest 'V2i' derived world beginning with Ghost 9.0.

A couple things I particularly liked about the earlier Ghost versions was the ability to do the 'cold archives', i.e., create an archive of a machine without already having installed the product, and the ability to be able to 'browse' for images to restore from in that same DOS-based environment.

Being able to do the 'cold archives' in the earlier DOS-based Ghost world and then not being able to do them in the WinPE-based world of Ghost 9/10 because of the different underpinnings/architectural requirements of the 'V2i'-based app gave me pause.

In a way it's useful and helpful that you write about something called 'Genuine Ghost' product and about something called 'V2i' product as a way of distinguishing between two parallel worlds that are now somewhat co-mingled.

Sooo, I guess consumer Ghost-15 is pretty much the continuance of the 'V2i' approach which originated with PowerQuest and has had some tweaking and maybe a few extra 'managed-aspect' capabilities added over the years.
 
If I understand correctly,  the ability of consumer Ghost-15 to now be able to do 'cold archives' is a carry-over from the Backup Exec System Recovery, which itself, only recently acquired the ability to do 'cold archves', no?
 
Is Backup Exec System Recover also a 'V2i'-based backup-restore engine solution?

On the other hand, 'Genuine Ghost', I believe, is based upon and is a continuance of the work that started back-in-the-day with Binary Research.
 
As such, it appears to have evolved since the acquision by Symantec and continues to grow to this day with the availability of Ghost Solution Suite.

To bring it all together, Ghost Solution Suite, based upon the original 'Genuine Ghost' engine, is a much more capabile product than consumer Ghost-15, which is a re-branded 'V2i'-derived product from the PowerQuest days.

The more limited, 'consumer Ghost-15' no longer has any awareness of, nor can handle, '.gho' legacy 'Genuine Ghost' format archives, whereas Ghost Solution Suite can.

In comparison, the more capable Ghost Solution Suite continues to have an awareness of and can handle '.gho' legacy 'Genuine Ghost' format archives, in part because it's based upon the 'Genuine Ghost' engine and has, as an extra bonus, the ability to work with the 'V2i'-based stuff, too, not to mention all of the expanded 'managed-aspect' features.

My copy of Ghost Solution Suite should be arriving today. Eagerly anticipating installing it and exercising its features.

Thank you, again.

It's more than your have seen things from the consumer product perspective; Ghost was always (even in the Binary Research days) a more significant business product than a consumer one, since so many businesses have to manage provisioning significant numbers of computers for their employees as part of their IT departments. The genuine Ghost to V2i transition *only* occurred in the consumer product, because it was positioned to *take backups* and V2i had an advantage over Ghost in being able take small incremental backups. In the Ghost business product we've kept on doing what we always did throughout, using the same codebase, as provisioning new machines en masse in large numbers is something Ghost is especially suited to.

> Is Backup Exec System Recovery also a 'V2i'-based backup-restore engine solution?

It's the business version of the same core codebase - it was previously also sold as "LiveState Recovery" and was called "V2i Protector Server Edition" during the PowerQuest days.

Nigel,

Finally got the machine-in-question restored to healthy operating condition using the updated version of Ghost32 contained in the new version of Ghost Solution Suite.
 
Was able to successfully create a boot CD with the WinPE environment on it and restore to an IDE drive and then clone that IDE drive over to a SATA drive once the full Windows environment was booted.
 
Eventually I'll  figure out how to create an 'enhanced' WinPE boot disk that includes RAID drivers so that I can eliminate that extra drive duplication step that was needed since I wasn't able to restore directly to a SATA disk connected to a RAID controller from the .gho system image file.

It would seem that learning about new tools and techniques seems to be an never-ending, on-going, process in this line of work...

Thank you again for your generous and extended assistance...

I guess this last addition to this chain will pretty much tie-up any loose ends which may remain. As time goes on I'll be delving into more and more features of the powerful data availability and assurance tools contained within the Ghost Solution Suite collection. Thank you again for all your insightful help...