How To Use Symantec Ghost - Save Your Time - Part 2

On the previous article I have shown how to make an Image from Partition now I will show you how to restore this to the partition

Boot your computer from an external device, because you are restoring or replacing the Boot Partition of the computer you don't want it running or the process will not proceed.

Start the Ghost program:

Select image / partition / from image.
Go to the storage drive and select the image with .GHO extension file.
Next select the target drive, note there are two drives here, one is the target drive (top) and the source drive (bottom). Be careful you will over write the storage drive if it is a hard drive!
Proceed? This is your last chance to insure you are on the correct drive, look as the white writing at the lower half of the screen, it tells you about the image file and the target drive.
Progress indicator, this drive was being imaged from an external USB hard drive, it is slow because the port on the target computer is a ver 1.1 USB port, very slow.
Image now on the target drive, you can restart now or shut down the system and remove the external drive if it is a bootable device. Restart and Enjoy!

If the image is fairly new then your data restore from your back up should go quickly. If the image is pretty old and you had installed software programs since the image was made you will have to reinstall those also. The idea is to make an  image when you feel there has been significant changes to your software programs.

How To Use Symantec Ghost - Save Your Time - Part 1

Making image from partition with Symantec Ghost

There is many users who have the experiences of having Windows Crash and go through the whole process of Windows installation and all other necessary softwares, which could take your several hours or even a days. Not to mention you have lost your precious collections of data, software, wallpapers and so on...

Well worry no more, you can better handle this situation with a simple tool and which will only take time only 10~30 mins(depending on your Image/Backup size) and you will got the full partition as you were saved image made last time using the Ghost software

For this you need to have 

1) The ghost image which contains your Partitions/HDD data (It can be your OS drive or any other drive or even your full Hard Disk)

2)The software, Symantec Ghost as well as your destination Drive/HDD

Below I will explain step by step procedure How to make an image of a partition:

Before you start you will need a couple of things:
1) A bootable device
2) A place to store your image, it should be 10 gig. Larger is better
3) The software, Symantec Ghost.

Preliminarily information:
Note: If you build a DOS boot device or if you use a windows boot device such as ERD or Bart's PE, UBCD, Hiren or what ever. You have two choices when you use Ghost. One is called a DOS command line program - Ghost.exe (16 bit program) and the other is a Windows program called Ghost32.exe (32 bit program). The advantage of ERD or Bart's PE is that they are 32 bit Preinstalled Environment bootable live windows CD or DVD, you will have a Windows type interface.
Once you have your tools, start the system with the bootable device which contains Symantec Ghost. Then start the program Ghost, when it is running the interface is the same, the difference comes with the options. Ghost being a 16 bit DOS program has to conform to DOS constraints. That being the naming convention: 8.3 which means the name can only be eight characters and the extension can only be three characters. Where as Ghost32 is a 32 bit program and the naming convention is the same as any Windows name, 256 characters and any extension you want. I do stress that if you do not use .GHO for the extension the program will not restore the image when you need to use it!

My version of Symantec Ghost software is about four revision old so the interface will look a little different but the functions are the same.

Start splash screen, this is Ghost32, behind the splash screen is the DOS command line box, If you close the DOS box it will close out the program, leave it open. Click Ok.
The next screen is the main menu screen. I have opened the menu down to create an image of a partition.
Once you select your image type the program will open up to your hard drives. Be sure to select the correct drive. If you don't know which drive or are unsure use the Storage manager to get the properties of the drive you want to image. Select your dirve
Now you will see all the partitions on the drive, select your partition you are making the image of, here I have selected the C: drive
Select your storage drive and then name your image. If you are going to make an image of more than one partition name them by the drive letter. I try to use the date of the image, once you have more than two images it is hard to keep track of the latest one.
Next you need to select how you want the image created, I use High compression because of space constraints, you may have very large storage space and want to create the image in the least amount of time, select Fast. No will not compress the image at all.
Select yes, the image process will start. The completion time will depended on a couple of things:  The size of the data on the partition, the fragmentation of the partition, and the device you are using to store the image.

Creating the image, the top bar is an estimate of completion. The menu will show you amount of data copied and the time elapsed
Finished
Continue or Restart

Well you have successfully created your Partition image which you can put in other media like DVD, Portable HDD.

On my next article I will explain step by step procedure How to restore an image of a partition