NT File System (NTFS)

As mentioned earlier, Ghost 2003 allows users to write images to NTFS partitions. See here for details. Prior versions would only write to FAT32 partitions, because Ghost works from DOS, and DOS does not support the NTFS file system.

Ghost would always let you create & restore images of NTFS partitions/disks, long as the image itself was stored on a FAT32 partition. And you could always clone (copy) one NTFS partition/disk to another.

For this reason, users of Ghost [prior to v2003] used to keep at least one FAT32 partition on their system, in order to store/receive their images. With v2003, this is no longer necessary.

Yet I still recommend you dedicate at least one FAT32 partition to store/receive your Ghost images, since FAT32 is *natively* supported by DOS, and Ghost works from DOS.

Ghost 2003 has no problem working with NTFS drives, except in the case reported by Mike Watts, where he writes to say:

Even though Ghost 2003 supports both NTFS and external USB drives, it cannot do so at the same time. The DOS driver that finds and mounts the external drive cannot read NTFS, even though once you get into Ghost, you *can* see NTFS drives. Therefore, if you plan to create Ghost images that involve external USB hard drives, they should be formatted as FAT32.

USB / External Drives

Pesky however, writes to say that it *is* possible to create images on USB drives formatted with/as NTFS (contradicting Mike). See here for details.

After doing more research, he developed a hypothesis which claims the deciding factors are:

1. whether or not the software host controller for your USB2 ports is NEC-compliant (as opposed to ALi, SiS or VIA-compliant); and
2. likewise for the software device controller for the bridge chipset in your external USB device.

While USB2 ports included on your motherboard can either conform to or depart from NEC-compliance, the same holds true for PCI-to-USB2 host adapter cards.

Other threads you might find helpful if you plan to image to a USB drive:

• USB/GHOST 2003: Panasonic drivers now XP-based
• USB 2.0 HDD/GHOST 2003: Building a bridge
• A Better USB 2.0 DOS Driver for Ghost + More!

If you have a Laptop with a USB 2.0 PCMCIA card and a USB 2.0 external drive, see here for njb's detailed step-by-step post on how to get this set-up to work with Ghost.

A quote from this thread reads: "Not every USB Controller + USB hard drive combination is compatible with Norton Ghost's DOS USB driver. See here for a non-Ghost DOS USB driver that has shown itself to be more 'universally' compatible with Ghost and DOS USB."

Mr. El_Pescador, the resident guru on getting Ghost to work with external drives, advises users to consider a SATA drive/controller, if they haven't already purchased an external drive .. for reasons he articulates here:

• External enclosure backup strategy

I don't use external drives, so I have no experience with them. There are however, gents at the forums who have much experience imaging to external drives, primarily USB 2.0. I'm sure they can help with whatever problem you might be having.

Dead Drives

Putting the risk of a dead hard drive in perspective: of the 20 or 25 times I've had to restore images of my system partition, only two (maybe three) were due to drive failure (hardware related). Most of the time, problems were due to something software related, usually with Windows, such as bad drivers, or some new software I loaded, or an installation gone bad.

Hard drives die more frequently than we'd like to believe. The worst part is that they always die at the most inopportune time (trust me) .. as Murphy himself will attest. In fact, the reason I began researching back-up solutions, and discovered Ghost, is because I had a hard drive die (with squat for back-up). The back-up lesson can be painful.

It bears repeating: if you have only one hard drive, and that drive dies, your 'back-up' image will die with it. Putting it bluntly: you're screwed. Nothing but an image (on a separate physical drive, or CD/DVD) can restore your system if your system drive dies. Many back-up options are available, such as a registry back-up and Windows own System Restore, but none of these alternatives are as comprehensive as an image.

With the prices of hard drives so cheap these days, it's a shame not to have a second hard drive. I've even posted a guide on how to use FDISK to partition & format a new drive (thanks to the Doc), and an article containing Partitioning Strategies you might find helpful.

A second drive is an especially good idea if you dual-boot. Then you can put one operating system on each drive .. and image to the opposite drive. Imaging goes twice as fast with two (physically separate) hard drives. While one drive is reading, the other writes.

With two separate physical drives, the read/write heads don't have to jump back & forth .. like they do when the image source and destination partitions are on the same (physical) drive. I never image one partition to another on the same physical drive. It goes too slow.

Note that people usually use the term hard disk to refer to a separate physical hard drive, and they use the term drive to refer to both a separate physical hard drive and a logical DOS drive (partition) on the same physical hard drive .. so the terms can become confusing. I'll try to make myself clear, as to which I'm referring to. Ghost refers to separate physical hard drives as 'Disks', and to individual logical DOS drives as 'Partitions'.

Data Integrity

This might be a good place to address data integrity factors, cuz that's what Ghost is all about: the integrity of your data .. especially the data contained on your boot/system drive. Things to consider:

• The NTFS file system [which supports journaling & is fault tolerant] is generally more reliable than FAT32 (see note #1 below).
• SCSI hard drives are generally more reliable than IDE drives, since they are designed to run 24x7.
  
  
• Cooled hard drives are generally more reliable than those with no active cooling (fans).
• Storage drives are generally more reliable than boot/system drives, which do more work.
  
  
• Hard drives subjected to physical shock are generally less reliable than those subjected to none.
• Multiple back-up images are always more reliable than (only) one.

So, if you want to maximize your system's data integrity, use a SCSI boot drive mounted in a hard drive cooler, formatted with the NTFS file system. Keep multiple back-up images on hand, stored on a non-system hard drive (also mounted in a drive cooler), and put your case in a place where is won't be subject to physical shock (usually on the floor, away from feet). If this type of info interests you, you might enjoy my piece on PC Stability Factors.

Next, let's get you your very own of copy Norton Ghost.