atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Computers & Programming Computers, Software, Accessories clone or ghosting drives

I have been using ghost to clone my backup drives in the DOS and 2000 systems. I had not done this with NT. I have a system that needs the hard drive replaced, it has NT 4 on it with sp5.

I ran ghost and was able to get all the files over but it would not boot up. It looks like the ghost software no matter what options I use would not copy the MBR(master boot record) from the NT 4 software.( I also tried to install sp6 and it would not let me, it came back with soemthing like I was using high compression and needed the high compression sp6 file. This is a voicemail from Keyvoice, I have never seen this error on their machines before. any idea? Do you think this may be the reason why ghost will not copy the MBR)?

Does anybody know of a different software I can use to image this to another drive and get the MBR also.

I would also like the software to be able to create a bootable cd and image a drive from it. I would use this as a crash recovery cd for each machine I install.

Thanks in advance!

BD3c

I'm now using Symantec Ghost instead of Norton Ghost. Basically the same software just different licensing.

Anyway the point being I just recently ghosted three drives in an NT4 Service Pack 5 enviornment without issue. I'm not sure why you would be having problems but I can attest that the Symantec version does it without incident.

What version of Symantic were you using?

I got a friend who had the exact same problem. Then I turned him onto Acronis True Image. That's what I use to image the drives on some of my client's hard drive which happen to be running on NT and it's always worked for me. He tried it and said it worked for him with no problems.

Here is the best forum on Ghost that I have ever come across:

https://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi

Both the low rad and high rad forums discuss Ghost. There is also a free guide available that is very helpful. They mainly disuss the home version, but there is alot of info on the corp. edition as well.
As far as creating a bootable CD...they have a guide explaing how to do that too. I just went thru having to create some as my company no longer purchases systems with floppy drives, and the info I got from there was invaluable!

Hope this helps...good luck!
-Glenn

Sorry for the delay. It's Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 1.0. We purchased it about 6-8 months ago.

I wasn't running it across the network with the nice Solution Suite GUI. I simply copied the few files necessary to floppy and ghosted if that way. I also have Norton Ghost 9.0 that I think we used also for NT4 S5 ghosting as well but I can't remember for sure. We bought Norton first and purchased Symantec a few days later due to licensing fees.

BTW, SAMPSON, thanks for the Ghost site! :thumb:

I personally feel Acronis is the best. Though come to think of it ive never used on nt4.0. However, something else is going on if the MBR is not being compied.

Acronis.com

Have you tried simply booting into a DOS command prompt off of a microsoft disk and running "fdisk /mbr"? Don't know if this would work under the circumstances, might save some time and effort.

There is a /mbr switch in Ghost to re-write the master boot record.

Acronis (as stated above) is a better product.