Backup Software - Ghost 2003 SATA clusterfuck

Author

Ghost 2003 SATA clusterfuck

Chuck U. Farley

2006-03-05, 5:49 pm

Maybe this post will save someone the seven or eight hours this situation
just cost me. To make an exceedingly long story somewhat shorter here is
what happened.

A couple of months ago, I installed a new SATA drive to be my boot drive. I
Ghosted my old PATA drive to my secondary d: drive, took out my old PATA
boot drive, installed the new SATA drive and restored the image back to the
new drive with no problems. I image my drive every Friday to the secondary
d: drive. I've restored several different images back at various times for
all the reasons you usually do, i.e looking for old files or programs. I've
never had a problem... until this morning.

This morning, my DSL connection was down and stayed down for several hours,
which hasn't happened for the last 6 or 8 months. Knowing how Bellsouth is,
they make you jump through all sorts of rudimentary hoops before they will
even report a problem to Atlanta (yes, it's an Indian call center). Having
been though this routine a couple of times in the last two or three years, I
know the drill. So what I do is restore an image from 2004 that only has
Windows XP and no other programs on it so I can definitively tell them that
there is absolutely no chance of program conflicts, new drivers etc. This
has worked in the past and they will report the problem to Atlanta and
usually roll a truck. The problem is _never_ on my end, it's always a
Bellsouth problem.

Well, I did it this morning and sure enough the DSL line was still
non-functional. But... when I tried to restore the image from last Friday,
Ghost did something it's _never_ done before. It hung... totally. Not even a
three finger salute would get my system back. So, I did a hard re-boot but
had no system whatsoever. Nada, nothing, no chance to try a previously
working system, try system restore, ASR, nothing but a blinking cursor
Thinking something was wrong with the backup, I used the Ghost floppies to
try to restore back to the image from a week before Friday. Still no go. I
spent the next six XXXXing hours trying to get restore my system. I tried
restoring images from my secondary drive and DVD drives with no success. The
most frustrating error message was when trying to restore an image from
12/31/05, Ghost told me the disk wasn't created by Ghost.

I finally got a system back from a 12/04 image but when I checked my d:
drive, it wasn't visible in XP. Diskmgmt.msc recognized the disk but said it
was unallocated space. This drive had all my most recent Ghost images as
well as file backups from my most critical apps. I had no choice but to
format the drive so I could transfer last months images from a drive on my
wife's computer via our home network. When i tried to restore these images,
the system froze again! The only way I could get my XP system back was from
a year old DVD disk.

To try an shorten this long XXX post up some, here's the key:

YOU MUST DO A LIVE UPDATE ON OLDER GHOST 2003 S/W IN ORDER TO USE SATA
DRIVES. I had no idea the SATA drive addition was the problem until I
googled "Ghost 2003" and SATA. In addition, I think you can also use a
/noide or -FNI:gigi switch as well.

Luckily, I'm only out a months worth of work because I put images on my
wife's computer. Now, if anyone has any suggestions on how I can get my data
back from the newly formatted d: drive, I'm all ears.

And if anyone mentions TrueImage, I'll flame 'em. <g>

Mike Fields

2006-03-07, 8:46 pm

"Chuck U. Farley" <chuckufarley@dyslexia.com> wrote in message
news:0sJOf.5176$c76.4637@bignews4.bellsouth.net...
> Maybe this post will save someone the seven or eight hours this
> situation
> just cost me. To make an exceedingly long story somewhat shorter here
> is
> what happened.
>
[snipped]

> To try an shorten this long XXX post up some, here's the key:
>
> YOU MUST DO A LIVE UPDATE ON OLDER GHOST 2003 S/W IN ORDER TO USE SATA
> DRIVES. I had no idea the SATA drive addition was the problem until I
> googled "Ghost 2003" and SATA. In addition, I think you can also use a
> /noide or -FNI:gigi switch as well.
>
>
> Luckily, I'm only out a months worth of work because I put images on
> my
> wife's computer. Now, if anyone has any suggestions on how I can get
> my data
> back from the newly formatted d: drive, I'm all ears.
>
> And if anyone mentions TrueImage, I'll flame 'em. <g>
>

Well, TrueImage does work to create an image ... nothing
was said about a restore (you probably have to buy
"TrueRestore" to get that functionality). I too gave up
on Acronis after buying several versions. BING from
Terabyte is cute, small, inexpensive and works
reliably (what a new concept ... especially for backup
software).

mikey