How to use Norton Ghost

First of all, download bootdisk.exe (810 KB) and get yourself a 1.44 MB floppy. You don’t even need to format it, when the download is done, just run Bootdisk.exe and follow the on screen questions. After the bootdisk is written, copy the file ghost.exe from the directory where you have installed Ghost 6.x or Ghost Personal Edition to this bootdisk. If you have the Personal Edition of Ghost, after you have copied ghostpe.exe to the bootdisk, rename it to ghost.exe.

The bootdisk has the following menu:

• Boot computer with support for CD-ROM.
• Boot computer without support for CD-ROM.
• Backup/Restore partition/drive with Ghost.
• Restore partition/drive with Ghost from CD.

Restart your computer with the floppy in drive A, select “1. Boot computer with support for CD-ROM.” if everything goes right, you’ll get the following error message: FindCD was unable to detect a bootable CD. This is normal since we haven’t made a bootable Ghost CD yet. The trick is that you don’t get any other error messages. If everything works fine, we’re ready to create a Backup.

Creating Ghost Images

Ghost run’s only in FULL DOS MODE thus not from within a Windows DOS box, that’s why you have created the bootdisk in previous section.
There are many options to Backup partitions/drives with Ghost, like cloning partitions from HDD 1 to HDD 2, cloning drives HDD 1 to HDD 2 etc.
In the following example we will clone P-1 (partition 1) of HDD 1 (hard drive 1) to P-2 (partition 2) of HDD 1 (hard drive 1) using a splitted image, autoname and high compress them.
If you check out the autoexec.bat file of the bootdisk, you will find a line that starts the Ghost program it looks like this :

GHOST.EXE -split=640 – autoname -z9

What exactly does it means :

-split=640 : split the image in parts of 640 MB, so that they fit onto a CD-R/RW;
-autoname : automatically names the splitted parts of the image so that you don’t have to type the name anymore;
-z9 : this parameter tells ghost to high compress the image.

If you have version 6.5 of Ghost or later you will have to change the “-autoname” to “-auto” since the -autoname is used in Ghost PE (Personal Edition).

Now we’re ready to make a backup now…

Backup Partition 1 – Hard Drive 1 to an Image file on Partition 2 – Hard Drive 1

• Boot your computer with the Bootdisk in drive A: select menu item 3. Backup/Restore partition/drive with Ghost.
• You’ll see the driver loading for the mouse and see the line Loading Ghost…
• You’ll get to the welcome screen of Ghost, click OK.
• From the menu select : Local > Partition > To Image
• The dialog box Select local source drive by clicking on the drive number appears. This dialog box displays every disk, Ghost can find on the local machine. Select drive 1 and click OK
• The dialog box Select source partitions from basic drive: 1 appears. This dialog box displays every partition on the selected drive. Select partition 1 and click OK
• Click on the black arrow and select the destination partition, it will have drive letter D:
• NOTE: if you run WinNT/2000/XP and the source partition has been formatted with the NTFS file format then partition 2 will have drive letter C: this is normal, because DOS doesn’t recognize NTFS file formats.
• Click on drive D: you will now see the contents of partition 2.
• Make a new directory and hit this button name the directory Backup and hit enter.
• Click on the folder we’ve just created (Backup) and in the box “File name:” type Backup (this is the image’s filename). Now click the button Save. You’ll see a dialog box Proceed with partition dump?
• Check and double check the details before you click Yes. If you follow these guidelines, the details should look like this:
• Connection type: Local
• Source partition: Type: b [FAT32] [file system type), 20000 MB (size of partition in MB), 5000 MB (size in MB used on this partition), Windows (name of the partition)
• From local drive [1] 40000 MB (size of drive in MB)
• Destination file: Local file D:Backup.GHO (name of image file)
• Now click Yes. The dumping process starts…
• After the dump is completed, you’ll get the dialog box Dump completed, click continue > QUIT > Yes
• You’ve made a Backup from P-1 HDD-1 to an image file on P-2 HDD-1. The image file is located in the directory : D: and the name is : Backup.GHO
• Since we’ve had the Images split in parts of 640 MB the second file is Backup0001.GHS, the third one would be : Backup.GHS and so on, depending on how much data we had to backup on partition 1.

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Restoring Ghost Images

• Restoring Partition 1 – Hard Drive 1 from an Image file on Partition 2 – Hard Drive 1
• Boot your computer with the Bootdisk in drive A: select menu item 3. Backup/Restore partition/drive with Ghost.
• You’ll see the driver loading for the mouse and the line Loading Ghost…
• You’ll get to the welcome screen of Ghost, click OK.
• From the menu select : Local > Partition > From Image
• The dialog box File name to load image from appears. Click the black arrow and select the source drive where you have created the image (it should be D:) go to the folder where the image is located (it should be Backup) click on the image file (it should be Backup.GHO)
• The dialog box Select source partition from image file appears. Click 1 and hit OK
• The dialog box Select local destination drive by clicking on the drive number appears. Click 1 and hit OK
• The dialog box Select destination partition from basic drive:1 appears. Click 1 and hit OK
• IMPORTANT: Before you click Yes, check and double check the details.
• Connection type: Local
• Source partition: Type: b [FAT32] [file system type),10000 MB (partition size in MB), 3000 MB (used MB), Diskload (Ghost load command)
• From local file D:Backup.GHO (file and folder where the image is located), 640 MB (size of image file in MB)
• Destination file: Type: b [FAT32] [file system type), 20000 MB (size of partition in MB), 5000 MB (size in MB used on this partition), Windows (name of the partition), from local drive [1] 40000 MB (size of drive in MB)
• Now click Yes. The loading process starts…
• The split Images Backup0001.GHS and Backup0002.GHS will automatically be loaded.
• After the load is completed, you’ll get the dialog box Clone complete, take out the bootdisk and click reset computer.
• You’ve restored P-1 HDD-1 from an image file on P-2 HDD-1.
• The question dialog box Proceed with partition load? – Destination partition will be permanently overwritten. appears.

Restoring Partition or Drive from Bootable CD

• First you have to make a bootable CD, how-to do that is described in the next section (Creating a bootable Ghost CD).
• Boot your computer with the Ghost Bootable CD in your first CD player (the one who has been set to MASTER), select menu item 4. Restore partition/drive with Ghost from CD and hit enter.
• You’ll see the drivers loading for the CD players, the mouse and the line Loading Ghost…
• The Question dialog box Proceed with partition load? – Destination partition will be permanently overwritten. Appears.
• Click Yes. (If you had altered the batch file (rest.bat) with the parameter -sure, this question dialog box will not appear. Now Ghost is restoring the partition from the bootable CD.
• After the load is completed, you’ll get the dialog box Clone complete, take out the bootable CD and click reset computer.

Creating a bootable Ghost CD

On the bootdisk there’s a little batch file, called Rest.bat. This batch file, when it is burned onto a CD-R/RW with the program Ghost.exe and the image file Backup.GHO, loads Ghost and tell it to extract the file Backup.GHO to your hard drive (P1-HDD1). If you look at the batch you will see this line :

GHOST.EXE -clone,MODE=pload,SRC=%CDROM%Backup.GHO:1,DST=1:1

What exactly does it means:

-clone,MODE=pload : sets Ghost in restore mode;
SRC=%CDROMBKUP.GHO:1 : points to the location where the image is on the CD-ROM;
:1 : means partition 1 from the image file;
DST=1:1 : means hard drive 1 partition 1, in other words C:

If you have Ghost 6.5 or later, you could get a step further and eliminate the “Are you sure you want to continue” message and make Ghost restores fully automatically. Just add to the line the parameter -sure. The line will then look like this:

GHOST.EXE -clone,MODE=pload,SRC=%CDROM%Backup.GHO:1,DST=1:1 –sure

Let’s Burn the Bootable CD

You can use NERO to burn the Images, you can obtain Nero from Ahead Nero, but you could also use other burn software (like EasyCD Creator from Roxio), as long as it supports the making of bootable CD’s. Put the Bootdisk in drive A: and launch Nero, choose from the New Compilation menu: CD-ROM (Boot). If Nero starts with the Wizard, close it and choose New from the file menu.

• On the boot tab select Bootable logical drive (must fit on CD). In the drop down box select A:2 MB. Hit the new button.
• Now drag & drop Rest.bat, the Ghost executable Ghost.exe (from drive A:) and the image BKUP.GHO (from the folder D:). If your Images exists out of more parts, due to the split parameter, just place them on the next CD’s, these CD’s don’t need to be bootable, since Ghost will ask you to insert next medium when the first part is loaded and so on, till the load process is completed.

NOTE: rest.bat and ghost.exe must be in the root of the CD, otherwise FindCD can not identify the bootable Ghost CD. If you have the Ghost PE (Personal Edition), you must rename GHOSTPE.EXE to GHOST.EXE, because otherwise it won’t work.

If you are satisfied with the contents of the CD, then click from the file menu Write CD.

• Check the settings and hit the button Write. The bootdisk must be in drive A: and a blank CD-R/RW in the CD-writer.
• Now Nero is burning the Ghost bootable CD. If you followed all instructions the bootable CD should work fine. But you better try it first onto a CD-RW disk.

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