Hi, the issue is that I have to use Northon Ghost with a portable hard drive(portable usb hard drive, dragon 2.5, 100gb's) and make it bootable, and be able to later on use it to restore its image (ghost) content on another clean formatted hd, does anyone know how to do this?

Basically i have to back up the content of many pc's, and transfer their images (using ghost) to a new high HD capacity system, but I only have a portable hd to work with(mentioned above), and it is requested of me to make the "update" on the new system bootable, so that it would be eazy to transfer the data just by pluging in the usb hard drive, boot, and install,/transfer the data to a new (formatted hd) computer.

I am pressed for time.

Any thoughts would be greately apprecieated.

Not clear, do you want to create images from several computes including OS and programs? Or do you just want to copy data to the new hdd? If the latter, you shouldn't need a bootable image for just the data.

Norton Ghost versions 7 and 8 works well for backing an image from one HD to another completely.

Norton GhostCast Server works in making an image of one computer to many. Using a miniswitch plugged in to the computer running Server 2003 or similar with ghost cast server installed. The image of the one computer can than be ghosted back to as many computers as your switch supports (one to many) using the DHCP service of the server.

To start of simple here is what I have done: I made a custom bootable CD using Barts which uses Windows PE and a copy of ghost 8 installed. I can than boot from the CD and ghost drive C: to a portable plugged in via USB

After the image is done, I use the same CD and boot the new "identical" machine and ghost back the image from the first to the disk on that machine and this creates an identical clone. It is best that both machines be identical so Windows does not fail bootup because of incompatible chipset or drivers.

When ghosting a small farm of PCs, I create my master image on one computer, ghost that image onto a Windows 2003 server computer running GhostCast server. once the image is made I can plug in all my new identical computers, I do 8 at a time and ghost back the one image to all the new computers. When I go to install the ghosted computers, all I have to do is change the computer name and make sure they are DHCP to avoid network conflicts...easy as cake...

Hi, i have tried that, that is making an image on the portable drive and taking it to the new pc, and then using the cd with ghost to transfer the data, but half way threw it just freezes


Ill try to clarify my dilema, first off I have to my dispozal a portable hard drive(the one mentioned above) and Ghost 12.

I need to make backup images using ghost from many computers, store it on that portable hard drive, and then be able to take that hard drive alone, plugg it to another pc, that has nothing on the hd (just formatted clean), and be able to restore/back up the images from the old computers, (that includes the entire windows installation, with all the software, and data that was installed on tthat hd)onto the new computer, only using the portable drive, is there a way to write(or there might be already) an application to be able to boot only (and strreight) from the connected hd, soemthing like the live cd's like Ubuntu, or other linux live cd versions?

That is my main dillema, how to make the images boot up right away from the hd, or atleast how to make only 1 image(from the old pc's) bootable, so that it would boot up itselfe, and coppy the ghosted content to the new computer.

I hope this clarified it a bit.

p.s. I cant use teh network to do that, I only have that portable hd, and for software only ghost tomy sisposition.

I can't vouch for ghost12 since it is no longer using the original ghost engine. I believe it was rewritten to us the Diskcopy engine and dumbed down to force you to install within windows.

The original ghost can fit on a bootable floppy in comparison.

If you need to make a bootable CD with ghost (ghost 7 or 8 is your best option not 12) go to this website. http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ As I said earlier you can make a bootable Windows PE (Pre-Installation XP) that fits on CD along with any programs you want that can fit in the size of a 700MB CD.

What you are doing sounds correct. With Ghost 8, sometimes when the ghosted image is bigger than 2GB it will split the image up into sections of 2GB apiece. So you end up with something like myimage.gho, myi000.01, myi000.02, etc.

When you go reghost your image to a new PC, ALL the parts must be located in the same folder or it will stop because it can't find them and fail.

If this is your situation, this is why you ghosting back to the new PC is "freezing"

Not sure what more I can tell you,

Hi, thank Youfor teh reply, I did have all the split portions saved to one directory, and I did follow the steps as i listed tehm(and also checked teh manula just in case, which states teh same thing that i did. So i guess there might be somethign wrong with the portable drive itselfe, althou ti did have 3 external drives on hand, and 2 of tehm behaved in the exact way(that is the ghosting failed in both instances)


Thants why I strived to make teh ghost image bootable, that is so a separate (pre windows cd) would not be neccesary, but i was unsuccesful, i thought there is a way to do this so teh hd would boot directly from itselfe upon "boot) and would restore the data to the new hd, somthing like an instalation of ubuntu , and other live cd instalations, so no other cd's and such would be needed, atleast thats what i strived for, since I wanted to just connect it leave it, so there would be no need for anyone to be present later on(no cd, and such)

Thank You for the information