Floppies have given up the ghost, but Ghost won't give up the floppies?!

November 16, 2006 7:48 PM

Floppy disks? Are you kidding me? I haven't used Symantec Ghost in a long time, but am forced to at the moment. Even back then, floppies were on the way out, and now they're flat-out gone. But as far as I can tell, Ghost still absolutely flat-out requires you to use floppies (which can then be transferred on to CDs) in order to function. Am I right? And if I am, isn't this absolutely insane?
posted by Sinner to computers & internet (19 comments total)

So what's the question?

Yeah, that's insane. Absolutely insane.
posted by dead_ at 7:51 PM on November 16, 2006

Acronis is another imaging product, but it very easily works from bootable CDs. And yes, you're correct that you have to jump through hoops to use Ghost from a CD.
posted by odinsdream at 7:53 PM on November 16, 2006

dead_,

I know I didn't really phrase my "question" in the form of a question, per se -- but put simply, I needed some affirmation that I was correct, after all the time I spent trying to find the simple solution that seemed like it had to be just beyond my grasp.

odinsdream,

Unfortunately, I'm stuck with Ghost - the company I'm working for is a Symantec partner.
posted by Sinner at 7:57 PM on November 16, 2006

I have a floppy drive that plugs into my usb port. It is Dell. I rarely use it but it has helped me a few times.
posted by JayRwv at 8:02 PM on November 16, 2006

I'm using Norton Ghost 9, and I write/store the images on a network drive as many other people would who use that product i'm sure.
posted by a. at 8:04 PM on November 16, 2006

I use Ghost on a daily basis, in a testing lab.

This is what we do: Have two partitions. The C: drive is formatted NTFS, and the D: drive is formatted FAT32. The actual ghost app, along with all our images, are on the D: drive.

When we make an image, or need to restore an image, we boot off of a Win98 bootable CD-ROM. This sees the D: as the 'C:', and we launch Ghost from there to restore our true C: drive.

For extra protection, we also keep our images on a network share. Ghost will restore images from a network share; it's just really slow. Hope this helps!
posted by spinifex23 at 8:05 PM on November 16, 2006

It looks like the Norton 10.0 product CD may be bootable, but I haven't used it since version 8, so I'd get a second opinion before you run out and buy a copy.

Norton Ghost Recovery Environment Support Article
posted by ad_hominem at 8:11 PM on November 16, 2006

Previously.

The free tools work nicely for me, and I can live without Ghost Explorer and multicasting.
posted by flabdablet at 8:47 PM on November 16, 2006

you might find a bootable windows cd running bartpe helpful. google for "bartpe ghost 9.0" and you should find lots of guides for creating a disk that runs ghost.
posted by phil at 8:52 PM on November 16, 2006

I use a USB "thumb drive" at work with Ghost, if the PC's Ghost partition isn't available.

I think I used HP's USB booting tool to create it, based off a Win98 boot disk.
posted by krisjohn at 9:02 PM on November 16, 2006

You can use a Windows live CD built using Bart PE with Ghost on it. The advantage is that you can stuff a ton of network drivers on it and you never have to worry tracking down a floppy with the drivers for the particular machine you're working with. So to answer your question: No, Ghost does not require the use of floppies but it does seem to require booting into an OS that is not loaded from the OS you wish to image (you can do that with CDs or DVDs currently). There are versions of Ghost resently released that obliviate this requirement.
posted by cm at 9:08 PM on November 16, 2006

Stepped out for dinner and then went home ... I'm very gateful for the links. I vaguely recall Bart PE from what I guess is technically now "back in the day."

While I want to reiterate my thanks for the workarounds, I reiterate (for no reason, I suppose) that in this day and age, the idea that a product like Ghost would not even have the option to natively create a bootable CD automatically is simply ridiculous.

Voting with my wallet isn't feasible in this case, because the (NFR) product was obtained before I got involved, but if I were to have bought this and found out about the floppy (semi-?) dependence after the fact, I'd be furious.
posted by Sinner at 10:08 PM on November 16, 2006

I just bought a pack of floppies on Tuesday. They're not gone.
posted by danb at 10:20 PM on November 16, 2006

(Mr Slightly Bewildered here)

Sounds like you've got an older version of the product.

Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 1.1 allows you to directly create bootable DOS CDs from the Ghost Boot Wizard. As cm mentioned, BartPE with Ghost32 is also a great option.

Of course, visiting each machine with any kind of media isn't really required. Have you checked out the Ghost Console and/or GhostCast server? The console allows central control over the imaging process, plus you get user migration, and a bunch of other stuff.

The Symantec site isn't a wealth of knowledge, but the user forums are really good, and a lot of the Ghost developers hang out there.
posted by slightlybewildered at 11:19 PM on November 16, 2006

The version of Ghost I have here comes WITH a bootable CD. It boots up enough to talk to your hardware and get on your network, and then you can restore a backup.

This Ghost isn't much like the old Ghost... it's more of a backup utility than a system imager.
posted by Malor at 5:28 AM on November 17, 2006

what version of ghost are you using? i guess i made up that you had 9.0. i ask because a perusal of the current version of ghost’s manual seems to indicate they have done away with the floppy disk requirement.
posted by phil at 5:40 AM on November 17, 2006

We booted from bootable CDs to do ghost, but floppies work too - depends which drives you pop on your disc.
posted by k8t at 6:15 AM on November 17, 2006

You're slightly bewildered? I spent literally hours working in Ghost Solution Suite yesterday, and I'm virtually certain that it was 1.1. Our license only arrived during the middle of this month. But if there was a CD to be created therein, I didn't see it ... then again, I wouldn't put it past Symantec to accidentally give us an older version of the product.

I won't be back in the office until Monday. The suspense will be killing me ... I'm off to check out those user forums...
posted by Sinner at 9:02 AM on November 17, 2006

I use a USB "thumb drive" at work with Ghost, if the PC's Ghost partition isn't available.

I think I used HP's USB booting tool to create it, based off a Win98 boot disk.

This is what I do as well, but I had to have a floppy drive in order to create the disks initially (i.e., create the floppies in Ghost, get the files off of them). The HP bootable USB stick tool can be found by googling for "SP27213".
posted by j.edwards at 10:56 AM on November 17, 2006