Use Ghost to create a hidden restore partition?

[ICTNUT]

Hi all,

Being the first to admit never ever using ghost before, I now have the need to.

Our music PC's are stand alone and off netwrok and are in real need of rebuilding, I want to image the drive to a hidden partition so if anything goes bad I can simply go in and "Restore it".

Seeing as ghost seems to be the best thing for this and the fact that the school has a copy of it lying around I would like to know how you guys do it.

Answers on a postcard...........

[ricki]

Hi

Ghost is brill. Why dont you ghost to an external hard drive, a bit slow I know but very easy to do, or ghost to a dvd. Ghost can make it bootable and will have the program. Then all you have to do is plu a dvd drive in and boot from the dvd and you will have a fully installed machine in about 20 mins. It will even ghost over multiple cds or dvds if you have a huge install.

You can do it with a hidden partition and then hide the drive letter but is it worth it.

Have a nice day.

Richard
Carr Hill High School

[Norphy]

Ghost Corp Edition (known as the Solution Suite these days) can do this. It can do it over the network, to DVD, to external or second hard drives. It can install software, take an inventory of your systems. It is an excellent piece of software.

[ricki]

I agree but its expensive and the computers need to be networked.

Richard
Carr Hill High

[Gatt]

Hi all,

Being the first to admit never ever using ghost before, I now have the need to.

Our music PC's are stand alone and off netwrok and are in real need of rebuilding, I want to image the drive to a hidden partition so if anything goes bad I can simply go in and "Restore it".

Seeing as ghost seems to be the best thing for this and the fact that the school has a copy of it lying around I would like to know how you guys do it.

Answers on a postcard...........

I've been wondering this too - ive seen it done with PartitionMagic&Bootmagic but never with Ghost
The boot partition was DOS (F32) with a menu (Windows or Admin) the admin option was passworded, which then took you to a DOS menu of all the images that could be restored
Could probably do the same sorta thing with BootMagic & Ghost though..

[witch]

I'm with ricki - a bootable DVD is the way to go - especially if you have more than one machine that has the same profile.

[ICTNUT]

Ok Bootable DVD it is then, however, does anyone have any good FAQ guides that they can point me at so I can work out how to use ghost and get an image off.

Total noob when it comes to this ghost thing

[petectid]

I'm with ricki - a bootable DVD is the way to go - especially if you have more than one machine that has the same profile.

Yes DVD is the best way to go then if your drive goes tits up you still have your image for use on the replacement.

[petectid]

Ok Bootable DVD it is then, however, does anyone have any good FAQ guides that they can point me at so I can work out how to use ghost and get an image off.

Total noob when it comes to this ghost thing

Here

[SimpleSi]

I setup my all my machines with a non-hidden partition and use Ghost to save the C drive image onto the D Drive.

I also have a portable USB2 60GB hard drive (About £50-£70 nowadays) that I can save the image on as well and then archive it off onto the server via a networked machine so I can get it back if the image files on the D drive get deleted.

If you want to you can just archive the C drive direct to the portable hard drive and not have a 2nd partition at all.

regards

Simon

[DMcCoy]

Just remember to buy/check ghost licenses for the machines that you use it on. One license for every machine you ever use it on unless they are permanantly decommisioned or you reclaim the licence using a special gdisk command that wipes the drive and removes the signature.