Ghost V10 fails incrementals - suddenly, my drive letters are GONE

[Guest]

This is an odd one folks.

Ghost has been working fine. I have two disks and 4 partitions (2 each); a
small system partition, a large data/program storage one, and then the other
disk is a "scratch" disk for video storage.

Anyway, I've had Ghost running incrementals nightly to my network without
event.

Until recently.

About a week ago, suddenly and without any idea why, Windows "lost" the
permanent drive letter assignments! Ghost says the disks are "unmounted" and
refuses to run incrementals on them any more.

Everything on the machine is working fine, except this. If I go into the
Disk Manager (either the windows version or the DOS command-line one) and try
to look at the volumes they're all there - without letters on them.
Attempting to assign letters fails (moving one of the existing volumes WORKS,
but the letter doesn't show up in the volume manager!)

What the heck is going on here? I can't figure out how to get out of this
one - and there's no incrementals for me until I do!

But - open "My Computer" - the letters are THERE!

Anyone got an idea here?

 

[Bill Drake]

Hi, Karl. Are you running Norton SystemWorks' System Doctor?

I have a problem here on a Client's machine when System Doctor
is running. When attempting to make a Ghost 10 backup, the
Drive Letters vanish and/or the system is unable to make a
volume shadow copy if System Doctor is running.

Shut Down System Doctor (or disable from automatic startup
and reboot) and then Ghost starts working again.

I have done extensive research on this problem and note the
following:

1. Problem occurs when a SATA RAID array is in use, using the
Intel Matrix Storage Driver version 5.1.0.1022 or 5.5.0.1035.

Note: Using the drivers themselves is not the issue. It is
configuring the system as *either* a RAID0 or RAID1
array which causes the problem to occur. Just using
both drives as single-drives with the RAID driver
installed works fine.

2. Problem occurs when Hyperthreading is enabled in motherboard
BIOS.

I am having this problem on an Asus P4P800 SE, with a Northwood
P4-2.8C CPU. This motherboard uses the Intel 865PE chipset and
the ICH5R controller for SATA access. Latest motherboard BIOS
is installed and has been configured for SATA RAID operation. WXP
has been F6-installed with the driver-floppy.

Interestingly, the problem does not occur with Ghost9 and Norton
SystemWorks 2005.


Hope this helps.



Best I can do for now. <tm>


Bill