[Ham-Computers] Re: Backup OS -- Thanks

[Rolly (W7DGX) and Sandra Goodspeed]

Thanks again. I did not know all the features of Ghost. I will go looking after the holidays. I believe Ghost will solve both my problems in one shot.

        Rolly  W7DGX


"Hsu, Aaron" wrote:

> Hi Rolly,
>
> Funny...I was just about to e-mail you to see how everything was going and I read your recent post on the reflector.
>
> Symantec's GHOST is a GREAT program.  It's widely used and very simple.  With GHOST, you can backup a drive as an image (aka create a single, LARGE "image" file of all the files on your HD), backup a partition as an image (creates an image file of just one HD partition, or clone a drive (drive to drive copy).  If you really want to, you can even do a "forensic" image or copy (true sector-by-sector).  Luckily, by default, GHOST only does file-by-file copies - otherwise, we'd be waiting forever to copy those new 120GB drives!  You can image via drive to drive, drive to network drive/share, or via parallel ports (and I think the newest versions support USB to USB).  You can even GHOST different drive sizes - GHOST will warn you if the destination drive is smaller.  As long as the amount of actual data is less than the destination capacity, this won't be a problem.
>
> Using GHOST is easy.  Start GHOST, select Local --> Disk/Partition --> To/From Disk/Image.  Then select the source and destination, whether or not to compress the image  (if creating an image) and that's it.  GHOST does the rest.
>
> There are more advanced options which are not available via the GUI.  You invoke these options via a command line option when starting GHOST.  For example, the "-Zx" parameter specifies the amount of compression where "x" is a number from 0 to 9, 9 being highest.  In the GUI, the "fast" compression is eqivalent to "-Z1" and the "high" compression is equivalent to "-Z2".  As you can see, the command line option allows several "higher" compression settings.  One of my favorite options is "-SPLIT=x".  This tells GHOST to create image files no larger than "x" MB's.  I usually use "-SPLIT=640 -AUTO" to have GHOST split the HD backup image into 640MB "chunks" that I can fit onto CD-R's.  The "-AUTO" just tells GHOST not to prompt me for certain things.  To get a list of all the command line options available in GHOST, just type "GHOST -?" and it will show you.
>
> Rolly, for what you want to accomplish (creating a mirror image backup), you would just have GHOST do a Drive to Drive copy.  When it's done, both drives will be bootable and will be identical as far as the OS is concerned (remember, it's not a sector-by-sector copy, so it's not physically identical unless you told GHOST to work in forensic mode).
>
> Currently, there are several different "flavors" of GHOST.  The "Personal Edition" is for home use and is what you want to get.  If I remember correctly, you have Norton's SystemWorks - if it's the "Professional" version, then you have GHOST P.E. (it's part of the NSW Pro).  If not, then run down to the local BestBuy/CompUSA/what-have-you and pick up a copy.  The other GHOST flavors are for small business and enterprise customers.
>
> 73,
>
>   - Aaron, NN6O
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rolly (W7DGX) and Sandra Goodspeed [mailto:rollyg@earthlink.net]
> Sent: Thursday, December 19, 2002 12:53 PM
> To: ham computer Reflector
> Subject: [Ham-Computers] Backup OS -- Thanks
>
> Backup OS on CD
>
> Thanks all for the response. So far the results are unanimous for Ghost.
>
> How does one transfer from one hard drive to the other. Can one be a
> master and the other a slave on the same hard drive interface?
>
> This program interests me. I shall look into it more. Sounds like
> exactly what I want.
>
> I had one hard drive fail. I bought another and tried to reload all my
> software. The major problem was getting the U.S. Robotics modem to
> install. Thanks to Aaron Hsu and his patience it was finally installed.
>
> The old hard drive was under warrantee, and was replaced. I now call it
> the new hard drive. Again, in spite of following rather detailed
> instructions that was used before, I cannot get the U.S. Robotics modem
> to install.
>
> So I have two hard drives that I would like to be identical. Since I
> cannot get the modem to install on the new hard drive, I was looking for
> an alternative method to get the complete system installed.
>
> My goal is to have the two drives be mirror images so if any drive
> failure occurs, I can recover faster. Hopefully the data on the other
> drive would only be a few days old.
>
> Again, thanks to all for your responses. Now does anybody know of a
> mirroring program?
>
>         Rolly W7DGX