Failure to create backup image by Ghost 2003

[Ray]

I tried to create backup image of my computer without success using Ghost
2003 and looking forward to any assistance from experienced members.

Hardware in use:-
1. Toshiba R150 NB
2. USB 1.1 bootable floppy drive
3. HP 8100 IDE CD Writer Plus + USB 2.0/1.1 to IDE adapter

Software in use:-
1. Standard bootable floppy disk created by Ghost 2003
Options selected: USB support - UHCI driver, assign DOS floppy
driver name and PC DOS

When I boot the disk, it ran smoothly and opened Ghost successfully.
However, when I selected Local->Disk->To Image and select local source
drive. In the Look in, there is only Disk 1 and A: Local drive and the CD
Writer did
not show up. Can someone advise the possible causes and fixes so I can go
forward.

I note that after I quitted Ghost, I pressed Ctrl + Alt + Del the system
rebooted to the CD Writer if I removed the bootable disk from the floppy
drive. It seems the CD Writer was successfully connected but just did not
appear.

Thanks,

Ray

 

[FingAZ]

I recommend trying a different backup utility- ive had nothing but problems
with norton ghost- failure of backups, refusing to even start backing up
etc- other than that have you check symantec's knowledge base?
www.symantec.com its somewhere on there

FingAZ

 

[Vanguard]

I tried to create backup image of my computer without success using
Ghost
2003 and looking forward to any assistance from experienced members.

Hardware in use:-
1. Toshiba R150 NB
2. USB 1.1 bootable floppy drive
3. HP 8100 IDE CD Writer Plus + USB 2.0/1.1 to IDE adapter

Software in use:-
1. Standard bootable floppy disk created by Ghost 2003
Options selected: USB support - UHCI driver, assign DOS floppy
driver name and PC DOS

When I boot the disk, it ran smoothly and opened Ghost successfully.
However, when I selected Local->Disk->To Image and select local source
drive. In the Look in, there is only Disk 1 and A: Local drive and
the CD Writer did
not show up. Can someone advise the possible causes and fixes so I
can go
forward.

I note that after I quitted Ghost, I pressed Ctrl + Alt + Del the
system
rebooted to the CD Writer if I removed the bootable disk from the
floppy
drive. It seems the CD Writer was successfully connected but just did
not
appear.

Thanks,

Ray

http://snipurl.com/bpyu

and there are more KB articles found by searching on "USB" at Symantec's
support site. Maybe one of them apply to you. The one I listed says
you can do cloning (it doesn't mention imaging) via USB.

I think Norton Ghost 2003 is the last version of Ghost. There is a
later version 9.0 but users have said that it is a rebranded copy of
DriveImage. Symantec bought Powerquest and got their DriveImage (and
PartitionMagic) products. You won't find DriveImage available for sale
at Symantec. So apparently Symantec has finally decided to dump their
Ghost product, buy a replacement for it (DriveImage), and rename that
replacement to the name of their old product.

 

[Duddits]

I tried to create backup image of my computer without success using Ghost
2003 and looking forward to any assistance from experienced members.

snip

IMNSHO, Ghost is a pos. I like/use Acronis True Image. Easy to use, and
faster than Ghost.
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/
regards

Dud

 

[Victor Smith]

I tried to create backup image of my computer without success using Ghost
2003 and looking forward to any assistance from experienced members.

Hardware in use:-
1. Toshiba R150 NB
2. USB 1.1 bootable floppy drive
3. HP 8100 IDE CD Writer Plus + USB 2.0/1.1 to IDE adapter

Software in use:-
1. Standard bootable floppy disk created by Ghost 2003
Options selected: USB support - UHCI driver, assign DOS floppy
driver name and PC DOS

When I boot the disk, it ran smoothly and opened Ghost successfully.
However, when I selected Local->Disk->To Image and select local source
drive. In the Look in, there is only Disk 1 and A: Local drive and the CD
Writer did
not show up. Can someone advise the possible causes and fixes so I can go
forward.

I note that after I quitted Ghost, I pressed Ctrl + Alt + Del the system
rebooted to the CD Writer if I removed the bootable disk from the floppy
drive. It seems the CD Writer was successfully connected but just did not
appear.

Thanks,

Ray

When I Ghosted to CD I recall that I had to set one of the HDD options
for Ghost to see my CD. Direct IDE or ASPI/SCSI, can't remember
which. You might give it a try. I just rebooted and looked at the
options, but couldn't determine what I did before because my Ghost
floppies don't have the CD drivers now.
Besides that, I recommend you ghost your image to another partition
and then burn the image file(s) if you must have them on CD.
You might have to use a CD spanning utility if the image files are too
big for a single CD.
Personally, with drives so cheap, I don't use CD's for backups any
more. I backup images to 2 separate drives.
While on this subject, here's some general backup advice.
This is what I do, but I'm open to better methods.
1. The C partition is exclusively for XP and *all* apps you don't
want to reinstall. Mine is 10gb, with 5gb used.
2. Downloads, setup programs (setup.exe's), banking data, docs, etc
are kept in a "backup" folder in a partition on a different drive.
3. A mirror "backup" directory is kept on a third drive. I use Power
Desk's file synchronizer to keep them identical.
4. When Ghosting the C partition I ghost to the second and third
drive. Each have a "C-Image" directory with subfolders named as date,
and maybe some description, like 20040905-SP2 for when SP2 was
installed, then Ghosted. Folders are your friend, as they both
describe and segregate data. When Ghost spans to a second image
at 2gb it uses the first 5 characters of the file name you gave it and
adds 001, so using my file naming scheme I end up with multiple GHS
files named 20040001.GHS when using 200401 thru 200409 as file
names. Might be a way around that naming, but since I use folders it
doesn't matter, so I use that naming convention.
Create your Ghost target folder on both target drives before you boot
to the Ghost floppy. Ghost to each directory. It is much faster than
copying one image to a second drive within XP.
5. Ghost whenever you decide to keep an app you have installed. If
some time has gone by, and some garbage might have accumulated in
XP, restore your previous image, reinstall the app, and Ghost
immediately.
6. Synchronize your "backup" folders any time you make changes to the
original. It's fast.
7. Restoring from an image. This is the greatest opportunity to lose
data. Quicken or other accounting apps with current data could be
overlaid, Mail client mailboxes could be overlaid. What I've done
is copied these type of apps to the other drive 'backups' directory
and changed the links so they run from there. Sorta kludgy, but it's
worked so far. Not for the novice, but easy enough. Doc and Settings
get copied to a different drive before restore, then copied back
afterwards.

Anyway, I'd like to hear other ideas. I've had XP running almost 3
years and never had to reinstall it or any app. I almost got burned
once by restoring an image without thinking about Quicken but luckily
the timing was right and I had a current backup on another drive. I
did lose some Agent e-mail, but now both of those are running from a
different drive. Still have a feeling I'm missing something. That's
a good thing.
With Ghost and cheap hard drives around, it's amazing to me to hear
all these stories like "I reinstalled XP, but that didn't work, so I
formatted again then reinstalled XP and all my apps but then I blah
blah.....reinstalled XP and all my apps...it's been 2 months now and
I'm going to try my 58th install of XP at sunrise...blah, blah.."
It takes 5 minutes to Ghost XP and all your apps, and 5 minutes to
restore.
Sooner or later I'll leave the P4T533-C mb behind, but I plan on
keeping XP and apps on the new one. That should be fun.
Googling around I found somebody had done this by deleting all devices
except the PCI Bus, then letting XP identify hardware.upon reboot.
Kind of like sourdough starter.
Anybody done this?

Thanks,

--Vic

 

[Peter Wilkins]

On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 00:59:53 GMT, Victor Smith

snip

It takes 5 minutes to Ghost XP and all your apps, and 5 minutes to
restore.

snip

Hi Vic,

I also use Ghost 2003 to image my boot drive C with XP and apps as you
do, but I wish I could get it done in 5 min like you say you do!!!

I don't get any change out of 45 minutes to image C:. It does have
19GB on it compared to your 10GB, but that's still more than twice as
long. It doesn't seem to make much difference whether I image to an
internal partition or to an external HDD using firewire or USB2.

I also use Dantz Retrospect for full and incremental images from
within windows, and incrementals get done in a few minutes, but a full
backup with Retrospect takes nearly as long as Ghost.

So what's your secret? Are you doing incremental backups with Ghost 9
rather than full images with Ghost 2003?

BTW, for later burning to CD/DVD, you can tell Ghost what size to span
(700M or 4.7G) instead of 2G, by using command line switches

 

[Victor Smith]

On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 00:59:53 GMT, Victor Smith

snip
snip

Hi Vic,

I also use Ghost 2003 to image my boot drive C with XP and apps as you
do, but I wish I could get it done in 5 min like you say you do!!!

I don't get any change out of 45 minutes to image C:. It does have
19GB on it compared to your 10GB, but that's still more than twice as
long. It doesn't seem to make much difference whether I image to an
internal partition or to an external HDD using firewire or USB2.

I also use Dantz Retrospect for full and incremental images from
within windows, and incrementals get done in a few minutes, but a full
backup with Retrospect takes nearly as long as Ghost.

So what's your secret? Are you doing incremental backups with Ghost 9
rather than full images with Ghost 2003?

BTW, for later burning to CD/DVD, you can tell Ghost what size to span
(700M or 4.7G) instead of 2G, by using command line switches

Peter,

I use the Ghost that came with System Works Pro 2003, only reason I
bought it. I don't use incrementals.
Since you've inadvertently made me doubt myself, I just Ghosted my C
to two drives, restoring myself to full sanity.
It was time anyway. Here's the rundown.
The only Ghost switch not defaulted is autoname.
I do *not* compress. I've seen that it slows down the imaging
considerably, even in "fast compress."
C is a ten gig partition on a new 250gig Maxtor 7200rpm.
Targets are an older 60 gig Maxtor and a fairly new 160gig Maxtor.
Both targets are 7200rpm.
C is on the mb (P4T533-c) primary ide channel.
One target is on the secondary ide channel, the other on a Promise
controller. I forgot which is which, which reminds me that while
I label all logical drives by disk and partition (eg Max250-1 (C,
Max250-2 (G ) when I install, it might help to get the controller in
the name too. The drives are hard to identify in the bays without
pulling them or disabling them. All are ATA 133.
Ghost stats are:
Source partition data: 5824 mb (both copies)
Copy to 160gb Max
MB copied: 4263
Elapsed time: 3:17 min
1298 mb per min

Copy to 60gb Max
MB copied: 4263
Elapsed time: 3:39 min
1167 mb per min

I recall putting the 60gb on the Promise but won't swear to it.
If I get the gumption to look, I'll pass it on if there's interest.
Note the difference in the source partition stat and the megs copied
stat. It might be a simple reporting issue, as both numbers are known
before the image begins, and don't change as it progresses.
But if I hadn't been restoring Ghost for years with no problems those
numbers might be scary.
I don't know enough about the Ghost data read/write process to
explain the differences. But it does bring to mind something else.
Ten or fifteen years ago I had a Connor tape backup drive. It took an
hour or so to backup 100mb or so of files, and about the same to put
them back.
But it put each file back in contiguous space. IOW, it defragged the
HD, albeit without any 'slack' or 'most used' bells and whistles seen
in modern defraggers. OTOH defrag itself had to run overnight versus
the couple hours of the tape backup/retore, and at that time probably
just defragged as the tape backup was doing. This benefit was never
advertised by Connor.
Something else that brings to mind is that I liked the Connor software
Windows version better than the DOS version.
So I knocked everything off Win 3.1 except file manager and Connor and
put it zipped on one floppy to use for restores. The autoexec.bat
would unzip needed DOS and Win 3.1 files onto a clean HD and bring
up Win 3.1 with all that was needed to restore from tape.
XP is surely a different animal.
As to your 19gb C partition, is that partition size or data size?
Like I said, I try not to keep data on the C, and don't currently have
big apps (Powerbuilder, Oracle, etc) besides the MS stuff.
I suspect your drives/controllers are slow relative to mine, or you
are compressing the images. All else being equal, even a 19gb Ghost
image would take a bit less than 15 minutes.
Not counting XP shutdown, DOS/Ghost boot, and XP startup, which in
themselves are for me as lengthy as the Ghost imaging.
BTW, pardon my rattling on. I do that sometimes.

--Vic

 

[thoss]

When Ghosting the C partition I ghost to the second and third
drive. Each have a "C-Image" directory with subfolders named as date,
and maybe some description, like 20040905-SP2 for when SP2 was
installed, then Ghosted.
snip
Anyway, I'd like to hear other ideas.

One suggestion is to get your dates down from 8 characters to 3, as YMD.
For Y, leave out the 200, and when we get to 2010 go on to A...Z, which
will keep you going until 2035. For M use 0...9 X Y Z (or ...9 A B C if
you prefer), for D use 0...9 A...U. So instead of 20040905 you would
have 495 (or 459 if your date uses the irrational US dating scheme).

 

[Peter Wilkins]

snip
Peter,

I use the Ghost that came with System Works Pro 2003, only reason I
bought it. I don't use incrementals.
Since you've inadvertently made me doubt myself, I just Ghosted my C
to two drives, restoring myself to full sanity.
It was time anyway. Here's the rundown.
The only Ghost switch not defaulted is autoname.
I do *not* compress. I've seen that it slows down the imaging
considerably, even in "fast compress."
C is a ten gig partition on a new 250gig Maxtor 7200rpm.
Targets are an older 60 gig Maxtor and a fairly new 160gig Maxtor.
Both targets are 7200rpm.
C is on the mb (P4T533-c) primary ide channel.
One target is on the secondary ide channel, the other on a Promise
controller. I forgot which is which, which reminds me that while
I label all logical drives by disk and partition (eg Max250-1 (C,
Max250-2 (G ) when I install, it might help to get the controller in
the name too. The drives are hard to identify in the bays without
pulling them or disabling them. All are ATA 133.
Ghost stats are:
Source partition data: 5824 mb (both copies)
Copy to 160gb Max
MB copied: 4263
Elapsed time: 3:17 min
1298 mb per min

Copy to 60gb Max
MB copied: 4263
Elapsed time: 3:39 min
1167 mb per min

snip

As to your 19gb C partition, is that partition size or data size?
Like I said, I try not to keep data on the C, and don't currently have
big apps (Powerbuilder, Oracle, etc) besides the MS stuff.
I suspect your drives/controllers are slow relative to mine, or you
are compressing the images. All else being equal, even a 19gb Ghost
image would take a bit less than 15 minutes.
Not counting XP shutdown, DOS/Ghost boot, and XP startup, which in
themselves are for me as lengthy as the Ghost imaging.
BTW, pardon my rattling on. I do that sometimes.

Hi Vic,

Wow! What a response! Thank you!

There are three main reasons for the speed differences: the first is
that I have been using maximum compression; the second is that my HDD
are slower than yours, and the third is that I always do an automatic
verify, which takes nearly as long as the actual backup, so almost
doubles the time.

I have been using max compression for years as I have been a bit disk
limited, but I now have an external 300GB USB2 drive which should take
care of that problem, at least for a few months

My boot partition is 45GB, of which 19GB is used: mostly OS and
programs but some data that is a bit inconvenient to move to or keep
on another partition. Using max compression (Z=9) I only get 4-500MB/M
compared to your 11-1200!

I just did an image to my external HDD, no compression no verify. It
still took 25 min, but speed increased to 650MB/M. I cant really
complain about that, as on checking my external HDD spec it says the
maximum USB2 transfer rate is only 480MB/M!

Thanks for the detail you provided, it gives me a benchmark to work
towards.

 

[Victor Smith]

One suggestion is to get your dates down from 8 characters to 3, as YMD.
For Y, leave out the 200, and when we get to 2010 go on to A...Z, which
will keep you going until 2035. For M use 0...9 X Y Z (or ...9 A B C if
you prefer), for D use 0...9 A...U. So instead of 20040905 you would
have 495 (or 459 if your date uses the irrational US dating scheme).

Thanks for the suggestion. So long as I can avoid the Y2K+35 Date
Squad, it'll work.

--Vic

 

[Victor Smith]

There are three main reasons for the speed differences: the first is
that I have been using maximum compression; the second is that my HDD
are slower than yours, and the third is that I always do an automatic
verify, which takes nearly as long as the actual backup, so almost
doubles the time.

Peter,

Has a verify ever found a problem? If so, what kind?
Since I back up twice, to different drives, I've forgone
verification. But I'm interested in what you've seen.
BTW, the speed of any type backup is affected not only by size,
but by number of files that must be indexed with an image that
is designed to be read.
As a point of reference, my C has 41,989 files.
One other note. All my partitions are NTFS, defaulted to
whatever is now the normal cluster size, probably 4k.
On the subject of speed, this has just occurred to me, and
at some point I will try it. Instead of creating images, which
with no compression are the size of the original data, and which must
be indexed, create a number of "backup" partitions on the non-C
drives. Then use partition to partition copying. I haven't done such
copying, but suspect it is faster than creating an image as the NTFS
equivalent of file allocation tables are simply copied over and no
indexing is required.
The downside here is estimating partition space requirements
correctly, and the clutter of having extra partitions, though renaming
them to the higher letters with XP should keep things fairly tidy.

--Vic

 

[Peter Wilkins]

Peter,

Has a verify ever found a problem? If so, what kind?

Now that you mention it, no, never. And I've been using Ghost of
various flavours for as long as I can remember.
I guess it's been a security blanket but probably not needed.
However, with my luck, if I stop using verify, the one time I need to
restore, the backup will be faulty!

I have one FAT32 partition on my external drive, just for Ghost images
to make restore easy if I can't boot, as it can be read directly from
DOS without any fancy tricks. The rest are all NTFS.

snip

On the subject of speed, this has just occurred to me, and
at some point I will try it. Instead of creating images, which
with no compression are the size of the original data, and which must
be indexed, create a number of "backup" partitions on the non-C
drives. Then use partition to partition copying.

I have read posts from one chap in the newsgroups (can't find a ref at
the moment) who manages quite a few computers and doesn't do images at
all - he uses Ghost to do clones, and says it's much faster and
quicker/easier to restore for the non-tech people running his systems.

 

[Peter Wilkins]

Since you've inadvertently made me doubt myself, I just Ghosted my C
to two drives, restoring myself to full sanity.
It was time anyway. Here's the rundown.

Ghost stats are:
Source partition data: 5824 mb (both copies)
Copy to 160gb Max
MB copied: 4263
Elapsed time: 3:17 min
1298 mb per min

Further to my earlier reply to your post, I did an image of C without
compression to another partition E on the same drive - I thought it
would be about the same as the image to the external USB2 HDD, which
took 24 min. It wasn't - it was much slower.

Copy to 35gb partition
MB copied: 22633 Total files: 78654
Elapsed time: 40:03 min
500-550 mb per min

I looked at my system to see if it was not correctly set up, but found
nothing wrong. I am very envious - I thought I had a fast laptop
(Toshiba Satellite P20) but the performance is snail-like compared to
yours.

So my procedure now will be to only do a Ghost image after I have made
major changes or additions to my system, or perhaps once a month, and
do daily automatic incremental backups in the background using
Retrospect. It backs up everything, even O/S files and files in use,
from windows, and after the first full backup, only backs up changed
files. I can keep working while it is backing up, and only notice if
it is backing up if I look at the animated icon in the system tray.

 

[Mr. Dan]

I tried to create backup image of my computer without success using Ghost
2003 and looking forward to any assistance from experienced members.

Hardware in use:-
1. Toshiba R150 NB
2. USB 1.1 bootable floppy drive
3. HP 8100 IDE CD Writer Plus + USB 2.0/1.1 to IDE adapter

Software in use:-
1. Standard bootable floppy disk created by Ghost 2003
Options selected: USB support - UHCI driver, assign DOS floppy
driver name and PC DOS

When I boot the disk, it ran smoothly and opened Ghost successfully.
However, when I selected Local->Disk->To Image and select local source
drive. In the Look in, there is only Disk 1 and A: Local drive and the CD
Writer did
not show up. Can someone advise the possible causes and fixes so I can go
forward.

I note that after I quitted Ghost, I pressed Ctrl + Alt + Del the system
rebooted to the CD Writer if I removed the bootable disk from the floppy
drive. It seems the CD Writer was successfully connected but just did not
appear.

Thanks,

Ray

Hi Ray,

I am rusty on Ghost 2003, because I've switched to TrueImage. I do
remember two ways you might be going wrong.

First, after you choose "local" is "disk" the only choice? Is there a
"partition" choice? If so, try it.

Second, Ghost 2003 is not good with USB. I found that while it could
work with a USB 1.0 CD burner, it couldn't if the burner was connected
through a card in my laptop. I found it was necessary to burn the
backup to another partition on the hard disk, and then burn that to a
CD-R.

I hope you find a way to make this work. Backing up an image is really
essential.

Good luck, Dan

 

[Panos Popadopalous]

Hi Victor!

I think you must have a much newer and better CD-RW Burner that the old HP
Burner that the original inquirer was using.

 

[lbrty4us]

I am rusty on Ghost 2003, because I've switched to TrueImage. I do
remember two ways you might be going wrong.

First, after you choose "local" is "disk" the only choice? Is there a
"partition" choice? If so, try it.

Second, Ghost 2003 is not good with USB. I found that while it could
work with a USB 1.0 CD burner, it couldn't if the burner was connected
through a card in my laptop. I found it was necessary to burn the
backup to another partition on the hard disk, and then burn that to a
CD-R.

Hope not too OT here: can you comment on actual performance w/Ghost &
TI?

Does either have any option to image data only?

Does either have an option to omit that MPT, so one may restore to
another size partition?

I just used IFW to replace a laptop 40gb HD having only 7gb XP
(NTFS)data. It created a 27gb image, failed twice well into it wasting
a day & a stack of media, and then took 6+ freaking hrs to successfully
burn RW media @4x. Took another 5hr to write it back. ;-) Easily the
slowest, most arcane & least productive SW experience in 20+ yrs of
computing. Naturally, it also put the (partitioned) new HD back to a
single partition (which I should've thought of but not in its docs).
Thank God I ignored the gospel to intall XP last & hadn't done the
other installs yet. ISTM image restoration to a machine that's since
been repartitioned with other OS as well will destroy them, unless the
other apps will do otherwise?

IMHO at any level of poverty, I'd pay retail for an imaging app that
works better.

Much TIA,
Frank

 

[Mr. Dan]

there

Hope not too OT here: can you comment on actual performance w/Ghost &
TI?

Does either have any option to image data only?

Does either have an option to omit that MPT, so one may restore to
another size partition?

I just used IFW to replace a laptop 40gb HD having only 7gb XP
(NTFS)data. It created a 27gb image, failed twice well into it wasting
a day & a stack of media, and then took 6+ freaking hrs to successfully
burn RW media @4x. Took another 5hr to write it back. ;-) Easily the
slowest, most arcane & least productive SW experience in 20+ yrs of
computing. Naturally, it also put the (partitioned) new HD back to a
single partition (which I should've thought of but not in its docs).
Thank God I ignored the gospel to intall XP last & hadn't done the
other installs yet. ISTM image restoration to a machine that's since
been repartitioned with other OS as well will destroy them, unless the
other apps will do otherwise?

IMHO at any level of poverty, I'd pay retail for an imaging app that
works better.

Much TIA,
Frank

Hi Frank,

I've had good luck with all the imaging programs I've used. I switched
to TrueImage from Ghost 2003 because I wanted to use removable media
connected through USB.

I'd day that the important point is to use imaging software. I don't
find that one is much better than another. I've had good luck with
Image for Dos and BootIt, too. The one requirement I have is that
software make an image from outside of Windows, which in my case means
DOS. I worry that if Windows is running, the imaging program can't
copy files that are in use.

When I've had trouble, I've found the forums devoted to imaging
programs are very helpful, but the manufacturers' support is pretty
bad.

Good luck, Dan

 

[Peter Wilkins]

I've had good luck with all the imaging programs I've used. I switched
to TrueImage from Ghost 2003 because I wanted to use removable media
connected through USB.

I use Ghost 2003 to image to an external USB2/Firewire HDD with no
problems. I believe there was a live update some months ago that
fixed problems Ghost had with USB removable drives. But it's my
second line backup - I use Dantz Retrospect as the primary.

 

[Peter Wilkins]

I use Ghost 2003 to image to an external USB2/Firewire HDD with no
problems. I believe there was a live update some months ago that
fixed problems Ghost had with USB removable drives. But it's my
second line backup - I use Dantz Retrospect as the primary.

And in response to (e-mail address removed) (Harry Avant)
who emailed on Wed, 12 Jan 2005 19:13:14 GMT
The following query:

Have you had any problems doing a restore with Retrospect? I have a
Maxtor 160 and when I had to do a restore due several of the files
didn't restore properly.

Hi Harry, I don't want to get into an email discussion, would rather
keep everything in the user group, so here's my reply.

I haven't yet had to do a full restore using Retrospect, and haven't
been game to try one just to see if it works, but I have done quite a
bit of restore testing - selective restoring of specific files and
folders (to alternative folders, not to replace the originals)
including from different dates, and so far everything has worked
perfectly.

The main gripe I have with Retrospect is that it is very time
consuming and klutzy to do a full restore if your main HDD crashes.
You have to reinstall WindowsXP on the target drive, reinstall SP2,
reinstall Retrospect, and only THEN can you restore the full system
backup from Retrospect, which promptly overwrites all the installation
you have just done! What a waste! My Windoze computer would let me
boot from my Maxtor Series II 300G external HDD if Retrospect would
cater for that, but it doesn't, although I believe it does with the
Mac.

Anyway, I'm not going to waste all that time reinstalling just to have
it overwritten, so I have a two stage recovery procedure to use if
anything goes seriously wrong. I have a FAT32 partition on my
external USB2/Firewire HDD and whenever I make any major changes to my
system, I do a Ghost 2003 system image to it. I do daily Retrospect
backups, incrementally.

If my main HDD crashes, I will use the Ghost image to restore my
system to where it was when I took the Ghost image, without having to
reinstall anything, then use the Retrospect backups to bring my system
up to date, at least to within the last 24 hrs.

I have had to do a couple of restores using Ghost (various versions)
and have not had a problem with them.