In a previous life I was a systems administrator. One of the jobs that I routinely faced was installing the operating system and application code on 50 to 100 new systems and placing them on our users desks. If you have ever done such a task you know configuring a single system can take up to several hours. My solution to this was to use a piece of code called ARJ.EXE. This allowed me to build a complete image of a tested system and then to clone that system. The clone was downloaded from the local area network (LAN) to the new system. This worked quite well for Windows 3.11™. With the advent of long file names and Windows NT™ this approach failed. About this time I left that job and formed my own company. Therefore, for me it was "no longer a problem". I have been using the backup that comes with Windows 95™ with some success. However, as my Disaster Page points out this is not a complete solution. Most but not all of the code can be restored using Microsoft's backup. Something better is needed. That "something better" is Norton / Symantec Ghost. Do NOT loose your copy of GHOSTEVL.EXE or GHOSTWKS.EXE !!!
If you do you will not be able to reload your partition dumps (backups) from DOS.
The "fix" is to use Ghost Explorer. Ghost Explorer is a Windows™ program. This code will allow you to open a partition dump and restore files or folders.
This code allows you to switch between Windows XP and Windows 2000 And one final note:
With a little work (enable spanning) Ghost can back up to your CD-RW drive. You will have to modify your boot floppy to include the CD drivers so that you can backup and restore.
| Ghost 5.1b a.k.a Ghostwks (for use with WinNT) Links | |
|---|---|
| HotBot | Results of HotBot search. |
| Norton Ghost | A description of Ghost. |
| Ghost as Trial ware | Get a (crippled but) functional copy to use for 30 days. |
| Pros & Cons | A brief analysis of Ghost. |
| I.T. Now | Purchasing this software is not straightforward. |
| eBay search for System Works Pro | Norton System Works Pro comes with Ghost. Check the listing before bidding. |
| Ghost FAQs | How to create a boot disk and other information. |
| Ghost 5.1c (use with Win 2000) Points to Ponder | |
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| Naming Conventions | The first hard drive in your system is always drive one not drive zero. I have started using the following convention for my drives. Disk one partition one becomes 1-1-c, 1-2-d, etc. This allows for identification from DOS. Where you see gaps it can be assumed that such gaps are occupied by NTFS partitions. |
| Converting to NTFS | The first thing you should do after installing Windows 2000 is to convert the file system to an NTFS type. To do this go to the DOS box and type convert /? Then follow the directions given for converting to NTFS. Of course this assumes that you did a FAT install. |
| Problems | I normally boot from a floppy and run Ghost from a FAT partition on one of my hard drives. When you boot from a DOS floppy recall that DOS is not aware of NTFS and FAT32 partitions. That means the drive letters will shift. The solution is to embed the drive letter in the disk volume name. That way you will be able to see exactly what FAT drive you are on. Of course Windows NT and Windows 2000 both see FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS partitions. |
| Advantages | A NTFS partition is more effective in storing files. Where my FAT16 blocking factor with a 2 Gbyte hard disk was 32k bytes with NTFS the blocking factor dropped to 512 bytes. This meant that by switching to NTFS I got back 15% of my hard disk. |
| DOS Command Line Batch File Dump | I run from a batch file to do my backups. As my Windows 2000 partition is on my C: drive the following line is the source of the command to back up that partition. All of my images are stored in the root directory of the disk from which ghost.exe is run.
ghost.exe -clone,mode=pdump,src=1:1,dst=..\part-11.gho -autoname -fro -split=620 -z8 -sure That may be read as "Using ghost.exe in clone mode do a partition dump from drive one(1) partition one(1) to the root directory of this drive into a file called part-11.gho use autonaming for files that must be split and make the largest of these splits be 620 megabytes a compression factor of 8 and do not prompt me." |
| DOS Command Line Batch File Load | To load a partition I use the following:
ghost.exe -clone,mode=pload,src=..\part-11.gho:1,dst=1:1 -fx Which is read as "Using ghost.exe in clone mode do a partition load from the file called part-11.gho found in the root directory of this drive and load it to drive one(1) partition one(1) and do not index it. |
| Ghost7 | The newer Ghost 7.0 has several additional switches. I have checked it with the above call and it works just fine. The one major advantage of Ghost 7 is that my Ultra 66 hard drives run at a sustained rate of 124 Mbytes per minute. This would indicate that the source code has been improved. The result is a two-fold improvement in back up and restore times. |
| CD Backups | The above call allows the backup to be divided into sections. These sections can then be copied to a CD platter. Doing this will give you one or more CDs that have a copy of your system. Your data drives may of course be backed up using a similar approach. The DOS call becomes: ghost.exe -clone,mode=pload,src=r:\part-13e.gho:1,dst=1:3 -fx You will be prompted to insert the 2nd CD if your backup spans more than one CD platter. I use Roxio Easy CD Creator 5 but Nero will work too. |
| Ghost7 CD Backups | Ghost 7.0 can write directly to a CD-RW device. As such it is the only DOS program I am aware of that can do this. I am running a Tyan S1854 Trinity 400. I added a Promise Ultra66 PIC IDE disk controller and so have 4 IDE ports to work with. Each supports 2 devices. I boot from floppy to do my backups and so require that my CD-RW be visible to DOS. Devices connected to the Ultra66 are invisiable to DOS but visiable Windows 2000. In order for DOS to see your CD-RW it must be connected to the motherboard. |
| ARJ.EXE Links | |
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| HotBot | Results of HotBot search. |