# Norton Ghost 2003 - NOW GHOST 10!



## C. Matthew McMahon (Jun 15, 2006)

I have Ghost 2003. Its worked fine.

I have the new computer.

The extra hard drives I have are external, and they are connect via USB.

When you go into explorer to look at the drives, I have drives C through L.

C, K, and L are my hard drives. One internal, two external.

Here is the dilemma: when I try to Ghost the new computer, I tell it to back up to "K" the exeternal Maxtor USB drive connected directly to the back of the computer. I have it recognize and install USB drivers when it does its configuration, and it assigns a drive letter.
But - since the "other" drives "disappear" because they are smart cards, etc. the "K" drive becomes the "E" drive in PC DOS mode and I can't for the life of me figure out to tell the computer that the Maxtor Drive is really the "K" drive.

Does that make sense to you? 

Because the drive letters shift in a shutdown, the maxtor drive is no longer the K drive and the Ghost program freezes at PC DOS interface because it cannot locate the drive "K" to backup to.

Thoughts to remedy this?

I'm going to install a spare internal drive and I know that would fix it, but realistically, I'd rather use the USB external drive.

[Edited on 6-17-2006 by C. Matthew McMahon]


----------



## Semper Fidelis (Jun 15, 2006)

Matt,

First of all you shouldn't believe in Ghosts. I'll point you to a podcast by this old time radio pastor who probably has spoken out against such silly beliefs. 

I'm a bit confused by your problem. Is the PC-DOS interface freezing because it's looking for a K drive and cannot find one? Is it looking for the K drive because you're telling the program that the drive is on K? Or, rather, is it because you backed up on K in Windows and the PC-DOS interface assumes the backup must be on K?

Usually backups are drive independent. I'm surprised Ghost in PC-DOS mode is forcing you to a drive letter.


----------



## fredtgreco (Jun 15, 2006)

Matt,

Why don't you just go to the Disk Management in windows (or use a Norton or Acronis Disk management program if you have one) and change the drive letter designation of the smart cards to something like T and U? They change the "L" drive to an earlier designation.

That would mean that they would never cause a "drive letter bump" problem like you describe.


----------



## Semper Fidelis (Jun 15, 2006)

Matt,

Some Ghost tutorials here:

http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/ghost/ghost_2003_info_tutorial.html

By the way, are you trying to ghost an Operating system drive (C: drive) and then restore your OS into your new computer so you don't have to install the OS and the programs on the new computer? If so, I recommend against this.

I recommend, instead, backing up data that cannot be re-installed and just restoring that onto the new computer. If you are looking to ghost an entire drive however, I still don't see why you care that PC-DOS doesn't think your external is K. If it thinks it's E then just tell it to get the image file stored there. That is, unless, it's forcing you to look for K. 

I wish I wasn't so rusty in DOS but I could swear there is a config.sys or autoexec.bat command you can add to PC-DOS to force a drive letter.


----------



## C. Matthew McMahon (Jun 15, 2006)

Its the bump problem.

I'll try doing the Disk Management thing and see if that works.

Will that mess up the DVD Burner and DVD ROm? Will the computer "like" the DVDs being a higher letter or does that matter?

C = Operating system
D = Partition for HP backup files
E = DVD burner
F = DVD ROM
G-I = Smart Cards
K = Maxtor External
L = HP External


----------



## fredtgreco (Jun 15, 2006)

> _Originally posted by C. Matthew McMahon_
> Its the bump problem.
> 
> I'll try doing the Disk Management thing and see if that works.
> ...



It should not matter. But you do you have a "bump" problem with the DVD/CD drives also? If not, just put the HD ahead of the smart cards. That's what I do with the boys' Emachine.

There is another easy, better solution for all this: get Ghost 10!

Although, do you know if Ghost 2003 works with Vista? I'm told that Ghost 9 or 10 does not work with Vista, the main reason that I am not beta driving that.


----------



## Semper Fidelis (Jun 15, 2006)

The OS really doesn't care where the drives are. If you have any programs that are looking for those drives in those locations then you might have to tell them where you moved them logically. You can always move them, perform the backup and restore, and then move them back.


----------



## C. Matthew McMahon (Jun 15, 2006)

What does ghost 10 do?


----------



## fredtgreco (Jun 15, 2006)

> _Originally posted by C. Matthew McMahon_
> What does ghost 10 do?



Backups as often as you like, without exiting windows or even stopping the use of your computer. You can control manually how much CPU usage you want Ghost to use.


----------



## C. Matthew McMahon (Jun 15, 2006)

Wow - that sounds great. I'll get it.


----------



## fredtgreco (Jun 15, 2006)

> _Originally posted by C. Matthew McMahon_
> Wow - that sounds great. I'll get it.



It really is sweet. It is one of the nice new features that migrated me from Acronis. Right now, for example, I am backing up incremental changes to my data partition (D) that contains my mp3s and other data.

I have Norton set up to automatically backup every early Monday morning (1AM), and often it only takes 15 minutes to do the incremental backup.

Now all I need is a better external hard drive. Mine does not have a good fan - either it sounds like an airplane taking off, or I disconnect it, which means I only turn it on when I absolutely need it.


----------



## C. Matthew McMahon (Jun 15, 2006)

Fred,

Norton 2003 basically takes the drive and makes an image of it.

My "desire" is that every night (Late) I make a backup of C:.
I keep three days of backups and rotate them.
This has been invaluable because if I keep up with it, I only lose one day of work, or emails, etc.

I don't necessarily understand the "value" of incremental backups, except for just my data. What I do now is this - everything I do (Mp3, lectures, sermons, website work, etc.) is in a folder called "!Matthew". I use the "!" because it remains as the first folder in the lsit no matter what. I simply drag and drop that onto the drive and it backs up everything in a snap.

So, what you are telling me, is that Ghost makes and image of the whole drive EVEN when it is booted up and does not go to "PC DOS" mode at all? I can still keep working and have it do the same thing?


----------



## fredtgreco (Jun 15, 2006)

> _Originally posted by C. Matthew McMahon_
> Fred,
> 
> Norton 2003 basically takes the drive and makes an image of it.
> ...



That is my understanding. Incremental backups are excellent. Basically what it means is hat you take an image of the entire drive on Monday. You can set it to back up again at whatever interval - daily, hourly, weekly, monthly, etc. When it does the second backup, instead of doing an entire backup (and double the space) it just does an incremental backup. The files are like CDrive001 and then CDrive001_i001 and CDrive001_i002, etc. For my 100GB drive, the full backups are like 45 GB and the i001 (incremental) backups are like 20MB. It is only the changes since the last time. When you want to restore the whole thing, you can choose the restore date. It also has a file browser that you can access from the restore disk, so that if you deleted a file, you can go back and restore *just the file* without doing a complete overwrite of the disk.

I think it is incredibly flexible. I've already used it 3 or 4 times to completely restore the HD, and it takes like 1 or 2 hours.


----------



## C. Matthew McMahon (Jun 15, 2006)

One last question - 

So you do the HD image (40 gigs) and then the incremental (20 megs)

If you do the incremental daily, how does Ghost know which HD image AND incremental to restore? Does it replace each incremental or can you choose it?


----------



## panta dokimazete (Jun 15, 2006)

You could also look at getting a couple of gmail accounts (last I heard 2 GB free per account) - google allows the account to be used as a network drive too...might be handy for non-HW specific storage capability.

The backup for the worst case scenario...

-pax-

-JD


----------



## fredtgreco (Jun 15, 2006)

> _Originally posted by C. Matthew McMahon_
> One last question -
> 
> So you do the HD image (40 gigs) and then the incremental (20 megs)
> ...



You choose it. You put in the settings how many "Recovery Point Sets" and then "Storage Points" within each Recovery Point Set.


----------



## C. Matthew McMahon (Jun 15, 2006)

Very nice.

I bought it and am installing it....


----------



## fredtgreco (Jun 15, 2006)

> _Originally posted by C. Matthew McMahon_
> Very nice.
> 
> I bought it and am installing it....









Now what else can I convince Matt to buy??


----------



## C. Matthew McMahon (Jun 16, 2006)

I created a restore point, and backed up C + D last night. Today I'll set up an incremental backup.

So far, awesome!


----------



## C. Matthew McMahon (Jun 16, 2006)

Fred,

I am not getting something...

I creted a backup image of C + D last night. Worked great.

I am trying to create the "incremental one" but when I define a new backup for that, its greyed out, and it tells me:

"The recovery point set option is disabled because you have already assigned a selected drive to an existing recovery point set. You can only have one recovery point set defined for each drive."

I'm lost. I read the help, but it didn't help on this. I am not sure what I did wrong.

I'm still reading, but if you have suggestions, let me know. 

Do I have to delete the one I set up and start again with a new recovery point? Do I have to do that every time?


----------



## C. Matthew McMahon (Jun 16, 2006)

My bad. 

I figured it out.

I chose the second option, without first reading all the way through the "recommended" option. I had to delete the scheduled backup, and then recreate a new one. 

I totally understand now, and this is quite handy.

I have it set to back up tonight at 3:00am, and then incrementally back up every night at that time from henceforth, and then creaate a new complete recovery point once a month.

Oh, so handy.


----------



## fredtgreco (Jun 16, 2006)

You don't want to make a new backup. That would be setting a whole new (and duplicate) backup setting.

You want to do one of two things:

1. From the Main menu, choose "Back Up Now." That will give you the Back Up Now Window. From there simply double click on the "Recovery Point of ___" that you want to manually backup. It will start the backup procedure. In about 1 minute, Norton will be able to tell whether the changes are sufficient for a new Recovery Set, or whether a new increment will be enough. If the increment is enough, it will be done in like 5-15 minutes. If a new Set is needed, it might take an hour. You can keep working if you like.

2. You can select the Recovery Point, and then go to the menu Tasks-->Edit Schedule, and tell Norton how often you want it to automatically backup. I think you could have it backup every hour if you wanted (not sure why that would be necessary, but hey).

Does that work?


----------



## C. Matthew McMahon (Jun 17, 2006)

Yes. 

But I can't edit the one I made because I chose the option for "backing up everything every time."

I HAD to go back and redo it. That's OK though. I backed up again last night, deleted the other backup, and now its on incremental each night.

Very good program!

I love it that I can go directly to the drive with no PC DOS reboot.

I also just made my "boot disks" because I downloaded the program for $20 cheaper than most were selling the disks. And I also wanted to backup ASAP.

So I'm just about set.

Thanks for the advice Fred.


----------



## fredtgreco (Jun 17, 2006)

> _Originally posted by C. Matthew McMahon_
> Yes.
> 
> But I can't edit the one I made because I chose the option for "backing up everything every time."
> ...



You're welcome.

Now you need to download Office 2007!!


----------



## C. Matthew McMahon (Jun 17, 2006)

MMMMMM, bugs? 

I can't afford to be editing a book and lose it.


----------



## fredtgreco (Jun 17, 2006)

> _Originally posted by C. Matthew McMahon_
> MMMMMM, bugs?
> 
> I can't afford to be editing a book and lose it.



Bugs are not bad at all. A couple of occasional crashes, no data lost. But even so, that is what Ghost is for isn't it? 

The live preview version (see what the change will look like ot text before you make the change) is very nice


----------



## C. Matthew McMahon (Jun 17, 2006)

True.

I watched the video.

Very impressive. 

I like the ribbon.

I like the preview galleries.

I like the....

Ok, maybe I'll "look" into it, but I don't want to deal with a beta version.

When is it due out officially in a box?


----------



## fredtgreco (Jun 17, 2006)

> _Originally posted by C. Matthew McMahon_
> True.
> 
> I watched the video.
> ...



Next year I think.


----------

