Will Ghost read from a USB external drive?

[Dave]

I'm going to replace the C drive in one of my computers and want to
create its image on an external USB drive to be written to the new
drive. When I boot the comp from the Ghost CD, will it be able to
"see" the USB drive?

 

[ghost4me]

What version of Ghost?

Ghost 2003 will need some additional DOS drivers probably.
Ghost 9 Recovery CD will probably recognize it fine.
Ghost 10 has some issues with external USB drives being recognized from
the Recovery CD.

In ALL cases you should test/verify the Recovery CD process after
creating you.

A great Ghost user-to-user forum for lots of information and support
is:

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general

 

[Dave]

What version of Ghost?

Ghost 2003 will need some additional DOS drivers probably.
Ghost 9 Recovery CD will probably recognize it fine.
Ghost 10 has some issues with external USB drives being recognized from
the Recovery CD.

In ALL cases you should test/verify the Recovery CD process after
creating you.

A great Ghost user-to-user forum for lots of information and support
is:

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general

I have ver. 9.0

Thanks very much for the info and the link.

Dave

 

[GhostMan]

A simple test scenario:

1. Format your USB external drive as NTFS (most of them come formatted
FAT32)
2. Run Ghost 9 and create the image on the USB external hard drive.
3. Boot from the Ghost 9 Recovery CD, and then do a sample restore of
one file or test folder from the external USB drive to your local
drive, to verify you can read and access the external USB drive.

 

[Dave]

A simple test scenario:

1. Format your USB external drive as NTFS (most of them come formatted
FAT32)
2. Run Ghost 9 and create the image on the USB external hard drive.
3. Boot from the Ghost 9 Recovery CD, and then do a sample restore of
one file or test folder from the external USB drive to your local
drive, to verify you can read and access the external USB drive.

This drive's a Maxtor in a USB enclosure, so it's already NTFS, but
yours is a great test. That's just what I'll do.

Thanks

 

[kony]

A simple test scenario:

1. Format your USB external drive as NTFS (most of them come formatted
FAT32)

Why would you want to do that?
All it'll do is limit the scenarios in which it can be
accessed, which is more problematic considering the
scenarios, that this is a drive that might be accessed when
windows isn't working.

Ghost can span images, there is no need to use NTFS, is
there? If not, it seems best to format it to FAT32, if it
had started out with NTFS.

 

[GhostMan]

In case you want to copy your image backup to DVD, it's helpful to get
past the 2gb max file limitation of FAT32. That's all assuming you're
using Windows XP, which Dave indicated by stating he had Ghost 9.

If not, then I agree with kony if you want DOS or Windows 98
compatability.

 

[kony]

In case you want to copy your image backup to DVD, it's helpful to get
past the 2gb max file limitation of FAT32. That's all assuming you're
using Windows XP, which Dave indicated by stating he had Ghost 9.

That's not an issue because Ghost can span images. You
merely designate a size the medium (& filesystem) can
accomodate... unless Ghost has recently removed this
feature?

If not, then I agree with kony if you want DOS or Windows 98
compatability.

I just don't see any possible benefit to NTFS filesystem
when the environment isn't one where NT is already running.
Being a system backup, it just seems prudent to not place
limitations on access unless one is quite certain there
would only be one access method... which is certainly
possible.

 

[Sjouke Burry]

In case you want to copy your image backup to DVD, it's helpful to get
past the 2gb max file limitation of FAT32. That's all assuming you're
using Windows XP, which Dave indicated by stating he had Ghost 9.

If not, then I agree with kony if you want DOS or Windows 98
compatability.

Hu?? 2GB is a limit for fat16 not for fat32. I have a fat32 partition
on my 2nd harddisk of 32Gb, thats the limit XP imposes.

 

[kony]

Hu?? 2GB is a limit for fat16 not for fat32. I have a fat32 partition
on my 2nd harddisk of 32Gb, thats the limit XP imposes.

Filesize limit.

If Ghost were making a single image file of a large
partition I'll easily be several GB in size, but with it set
to span this image file, it'll be put into consecutive files
that would (hypothetically even if not reasonably) fit onto
even a few thousand floppy disks.

 

[Bill Bradshaw]

Hu?? 2GB is a limit for fat16 not for fat32. I have a fat32 partition
on my 2nd harddisk of 32Gb, thats the limit XP imposes.

I believe the 32GB Fat32 limit is a limitation of the format program that
ships with WinXP. I believe somewhere Microsoft has a format replacement
program that overcomes this 32GB limitation. I have a 100GB Fat32 partition
on my internal hard drive that was created using Partition Magic. I have a
Fat32 120GB partition on my external USB drive that was created using
Partition Magic and works just fine. I use the partition on my external
hard drive as one of my backup partitions because it can be accessed with
Win98, etc.

 

[GhostMan]

Here is the Microsoft reference for Size Limitations

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/...Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/prkc_fil_tdrn.asp

which says:

Size Limitations in NTFS and FAT File Systems

Each file system supports a maximum volume size, file size, and number
of files per volume.

Because FAT16 and FAT32 volumes are limited to 4 GB and 32 GB
respectively, you must use NTFS to create volumes larger than 32 GB. If
you use FAT16 or FAT32 in computers that start multiple operating
systems, you must note the following size limitations:

FAT volumes smaller than 16 MB are formatted as FAT12.

FAT16 volumes larger than 2 GB are not accessible from computers
running MS-DOS, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, and many other
operating systems. This limitation occurs because these operating
systems do not support cluster sizes larger than 32 KB, which results
in the 2 GB limit.

In theory, FAT32 volumes can be about 8 terabytes; however, the maximum
FAT32 volume size that Windows XP Professional can format is 32 GB.
Therefore, you must use NTFS to format volumes larger than 32 GB.
However, Windows XP Professional can read and write to larger FAT32
volumes formatted by other operating systems.

If you create multidisk volumes such as spanned or striped volumes, the
amount of space used on each disk is applied to the total size of the
volume. Therefore, to create a multidisk volume that is larger than 32
GB, you must use NTFS.

 

[kony]

Here is the Microsoft reference for Size Limitations

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/...Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/prkc_fil_tdrn.asp

which says:

We can ignore this though, because we're not running XP in
these scenarios, nor are we depending on XP setup routine to
format a drive. If we were, the only part relevant is that
which I've not snipped out,

In theory, FAT32 volumes can be about 8 terabytes; however, the maximum
FAT32 volume size that Windows XP Professional can format is 32 GB.

But then they misleadingly write the following, which I'll
correct inline...

Therefore, you must

not must, "could"

use NTFS to format volumes larger than 32 GB.

OR use something other than Microsoft's deliberately
crippled XP routines to format over 32GB in FAT32.

However, Windows XP Professional can read and write to larger FAT32
volumes formatted by other operating systems.

If you create multidisk volumes such as spanned or striped volumes, the
amount of space used on each disk is applied to the total size of the
volume. Therefore, to create a multidisk volume that is larger than 32
GB, you must use NTFS.

Again, ONLY if you were depending on using Microsoft's
deliberately crippled software to do it.