How do I use Ghost 2003 with XP on Boot Camp?

[kaidomac]

I want to be able to make a cloned image onto my external backup hard drive using Ghost 2003. So far I haven't had much luck. If I try to make a backup image to my Firewire hard drive, it gives me this error:

Unable to read MBR in Virtual Partition DLL

If I restart with the CD in the drive and hold Alt/Option to boot into it, it gives me the Ghost menu options to boot from the hard drive or the CD. As soon I as choose CD it freezes up, so that's a no-go. Ideally, I want to be able to clone an image of the XP partition to my backup hard drive and then be able to restore that image back to the XP partition later on, if needed. I did some searching on the forums here but I haven't had any luck figuring out how to do it. Any suggestions?

[kaidomac]

Also tried another method unsuccessfully - making a .dmg of the XP partition in OS X, reformatting the partition to FAT32 so that OS X would be able to work with it, and restoring the .dmg to that partition. No dice, it won't let me restore (not even in Target Disk Mode). Oh well, I'll keep trying...

[matty429]

You can use Bartpe and the drive ImageXML plugin..but if you re-partition, the size of the XP drive has to be exactly the same as it was ..

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

http://www.runtime.org/peb.htm

[jrsade]

I have an iMac 17" and making a backup with Ghost 9 works fine. Also booting from the CD works. However, I haven't yet tried to restore the backup...

Ghost 2003 doesn't work with XP as far as I now.

[Turk_]

Hi everyone... (sorry for my English )

A few days ago, I had the same problem...

Well, once I had installed BootCamp everything went OK, and even installing Windows XP I didn't have any problem. But, which were the next step?

Exactly.. my images made in Ghost (and stored in an external usb/firewire device). As the obviously and first step I putted in the ghost 2003 cd, restarted the machine holding the "c" key and.... not a good idea...early or later was freeze... I tried everything, multicast, peer to peer, images burned directly on dvd's, running ghost from windows (and getting the MBR error), partition the disk and even converting all the hard disk in a "windows partition"... but nothing seemed to work for restoring a Ghost image.

Finally, I found three magic words that solved my problem...Norton Restore Disk (included with Ghost 9 & 10) so I did this:

*If you are planning back-up or restore to/from an external storage device, FIRST connect it, and then

*Turn on the mac holding the option (alt) key, and you will see the partitions and attached devices. (Don’t click anything yet)

*Insert the Norton Restore Disk and when a CD named windows appears in the screen click it.

*This will show you the message "Press any key to boot from the cd"

(The steps 2 and 3 can be skipped if you insert the cd and hold the "c" key at the Mac sound)

*After pressing any key the cd will boot... starting in this point the loading of the console can takes 5, 10 or even 20 minutes, the secret for this part is to have a lot of patience.

*Once you accept the EULA the console will appear, go to the Recover tab and you will see the option "Recover using a legacy ghost Image", click it and you will be in a kind of "emulated" ghost console, but that works perfectly.

In this console you will have all the options of ghost, such as Disk to Disk, Disk to Image, Disk from Image, partition to partition, partition to disk, etc..(and you will see all the disks and partitions, so always keep in mind that you must have an idea about the size of the disks and partitions, otherwise you easily can overwrite a partition and lose information)

I hope to help someone with this information.

Greetings !!!

[kaidomac]

Originally Posted by jrsade

I have an iMac 17" and making a backup with Ghost 9 works fine. Also booting from the CD works. However, I haven't yet tried to restore the backup...

Ghost 2003 doesn't work with XP as far as I now.

Ghost 2003 works perfectly with Windows XP, I use it all the time. For some reason it doesn't like Boot Camp's setup, though. It even freezes at the boot menu when booting from the Ghost CD. I figured out how to clone it using BartPE and DriveImage XML though, so I'll post a tutorial of that sometime.

[Cyrealm]

Originally Posted by kaidomac

I figured out how to clone it using BartPE and DriveImage XML though, so I'll post a tutorial of that sometime.

Could I ask you to do that soon. =) I could not get the XP partition that I backed up to and external drive using Ghost 10 to restore correctly using Norton Restore Disk (Ghost 10 CD) =(. After trying several attempts, I just ended up reloading XP. I too encountered the problem booting Ghost 2003 from it's CD.

[kaidomac]

Originally Posted by Cyrealm

Could I ask you to do that soon. =) I could not get the XP partition that I backed up to and external drive using Ghost 10 to restore correctly using Norton Restore Disk (Ghost 10 CD) =(. After trying several attempts, I just ended up reloading XP. I too encountered the problem booting Ghost 2003 from it's CD.

Well here I'll give you the basics now and do a detailed step-by-step writeup later:

1. Setup the Boot CD

You will need a full edition of Windows XP Home or Professional, a copy of BartPE, and a copy of the DriveImage XML plugin. The last two are available for free. Here are the links:

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

http://www.runtime.org/peb.htm

Add the DriveImage XML plugin to the config window for BartPE and then have BartPE extract the necessary files from your XP disc (it does it automatically). Burn a CD with the output. You will know that the disc works by either inserting it into your XP machine while running (an overlay program will appear on the Start button) or by rebooting to see if the disc is bootable (if you're doing it on an Intel Mac just hold the Option key at boot and then select the CD).

2. Backup the XP partition

Reboot into the BartPE CD (warning: takes awhile to completely load). Open the DriveImageXML app and click on Backup. You will want to copy your C:\ to whatever you backup drive is (USB or Firewire hard drive). It's actually pretty quick; it did my basic Windows installation in like 10 minutes. You can also backup your main partition while Windows is running, but just for data integrity's sake I like to boot from the CD to ensure that absolutely nothing is running off the C:\.

3. Restore the XP partition

Reboot into the BartPE CD. Open the DriveImageXML app and click on Restore. You will want to restore your backed up image file to the C:\. If you're just overwriting your existing partition, then it's fine, no special requirements are needed. If you're repartitioning your hard drive, then it's a different story...

If you have wiped the XP partition via Boot Camp and repartitioned, the new partition must be EQUAL or LARGER in size than the partition you originally cloned. i.e. if you backed up a 30 gig XP partition and try to restore it to a 20 gig partition, it won't work. It will work if you restore it to a 30 gig or larger partition. If you want to create a master backup that you can use in the future, I'd suggest intially creating a 5 or 10 gig partition, installing Windows/updates/drivers/apps, creating the backup, deleting the partition in Boot Camp, and creating a larger partition more to your liking - this ensures that you can get away with pretty much whatever larger size partition you want to in the future, in case you initially create a 50 gig partition for Windows and later decide you only want it to be 30 gigs.

The next part is formatting. When you create a new partition in Boot Camp, it's not going to be formatted. You will need to format it to either FAT32 or NTFS, whichever you used when you originally installated Windows and backed it up. This is a little tricky. First you will need the original Windows XP installation disc. Make your partition in Boot Camp and restart with the XP CD in the drive. Format the drive to FAT32 or NTFS and when it finishes that and starts copying the Windows files, turn off the computer, restart and eject the XP disc (hold down the right mouse button or CTRL + left mouse button), insert the BartPE disc, restart again to boot from the BartPE, select the BartPE disc as the boot disc by holding down the Option key at boot time, and load your image following the directions above. Now you can successfully restore your image to the freshly-formatted hard drive. It's a bit of a trick but it works, I went through a lot of trial-and-error to ensure that everything was fully functional.

Let me know if you have any questions. I have done this several times and have been 100% successful

[slava]

[quote=kaidomac]Well here I'll give you the basics now and do a detailed step-by-step writeup later:

Hi. Can you please post here the step by step instruction. I thought that this process is straight forward, but it is not. regards

[slava]

[quote=kaidomac]Well here I'll give you the basics now and do a detailed step-by-step writeup later:

I managed to get bartpe on cd. At first attempt it wasn't any succes, since my original xp disc was in the the drive and bartpe gave no option to swap discs.
I got to the overlay image when I inserted back the bartpe cd, but there were no driveimage xml listed under the programs. I couldn't figured out what you mean by "Add the DriveImage XML plugin to the config window for BartPE" but then I thought it will be there if I choose to add as an extra program from the installed location. I wanted to test if I can boot from the CD, but nothing happened. There were no CD listed at boot prompt. Only osx and windows. If it really works for you, please give us some more details how to make it work.
thanks