Ghost Solution Suite

  • 1.  Imaging problems w/SAS HDD using Ghost v11.5

    Posted Aug 13, 2008 01:36 PM

    Greetings,

    A few of our offices decided to buy a few hundred Dell T3400s with SAS HDDs and I'm having a bit of trouble imaging them.  We just upgraded from Ghost 8 to 11.5 on our main system, but the original images were taken with ghost 11.

     

    Issues:  I can create a boot CD that will recognize the optical drives, but when I place the DVDs with the images in the machine it doesn't recognize the files.  It tells me "This is not the first set.  Please insert the first and press 'Ok'". 

     

    Now to alleviate that I've decided to use the boot wizard to add the image files to the boot package.  However, it's taking 4+ hrs to create the ISO file for me to burn.  Am I going about this all wrong?  If I can get my hands on the original T3400 I'll re-image it if need be and try to proceed from there with fresh boot cd and image burned dvds. 

     

    On top of all this; I'm am completely new to Ghost.  There was absolutely no continuity between my predecessor and I.  They were gone before I arrived by a few months.  So I'm more than willing to listen to suggestions.  And I did a search, couldn't find anything related to this.  Thanks very much well in advance.



  • 2.  RE: Imaging problems w/SAS HDD using Ghost v11.5

    Posted Aug 13, 2008 03:16 PM

    My experience with imaging is based on Ghost 8 running from a DOS cmd prompt

    Was your image created using Ghost running under DOS, or running under windows?

     

    The other question is whether you have a bios setting that allows your drives to be run in "compatibility mode".

    A similar problem can be found with Lenovo laptops with SATA drives, where you can choose in the bios to run the drive in either AHCI mode (SATA) or compatibility mode (which makes it look like conventional ATA)

    We found you needed to choose compatibility mode while building, then set to AHCI mode when the operating system was up and running and the SATA drivers were loaded.

     



  • 3.  RE: Imaging problems w/SAS HDD using Ghost v11.5

    Posted Aug 13, 2008 06:59 PM

    Dont try adding images directly to CD/USB/DVD/ISO via GBW until the next Live update. This feature was designed to add small user files and (particularly PXE boot when one has no external media) it will certainly not work for you because Ghost boot wizard will compact images into WIM files, which will take long-long time to complete. And even then it might not boot because you might not have enough RAM for Winpe to load this WIM file. Place your images on another CD or better still use USB after GBW finished creating your boot package just add your images to it.

    Also, please Live update yourself to GBW build 2125 if you havent already.

    What are your image names like: main GHO and following GHS?

    Thanks.



  • 4.  RE: Imaging problems w/SAS HDD using Ghost v11.5

    Posted Aug 14, 2008 08:52 AM

    Firstly, this is the original poster.  Having account issues, but that's a side note.

     

    Ok, here's what I did after a lot more research and talking to a few other people about GSS.

     

    I scraped the idea of putting the image using GBW and was surprisingly able to get a hold of the original machine that was imaged... and imaged it again using 11.5.  It was kind of tricky and would have posted my problems but please look to my first sentence.  *sigh*  Anyways, what I found out was that trying to image using WinPE for pre-OS didn't work for me.  Had to find the option set that let me use the default of PCDOS.  Once I got that done the image taking process became a breeze.  I'm currently burning the image to a new set of DVDs (not using the GBW) and I'll find out in about 45mins if it works. 

     

    Overall, thanks to everyone that I spoke with about this and here's hoping that in less than an hours time I'll be done with this project.  *crosses fingers* 

     

    Edit:  Yes, they are .gho followed by .ghs files.  Thanks for the bit about updating my GSS sadly it's a closed network and can't be updated via LU.  However I do believe that a couple of threads down there was a solution posted to that so I should be ok for that part.  Thanks again.

    Message Edited by GSSVactus on 08-14-2008 08:04 AM


  • 5.  RE: Imaging problems w/SAS HDD using Ghost v11.5

    Posted Aug 14, 2008 12:31 PM

    Created a ghost boot cd via GBW on 11.5.  Used default settings for an ISO with cd/dvd bootable capabilities.  Took the image from the machine, no problems.  Insert ghost cd into new machine to put the image on.  Get to the menu to select the image from the DVD drive.  Select the drive and:

     

    Ghost CD/DVD Image (This is the file screen)

     

    The .gho and .ghs do not show, so when I double click to see if I can get inside that it says "Error loading CD/DVD Image Code 1972"  "This disk is not the first set.  Please insert the first disk." 

     

    Any ideas?  Everything I've done this morning has been done with GSS 2.5.  I haven't had a chance to update to the newest LU. 



  • 6.  RE: Imaging problems w/SAS HDD using Ghost v11.5

    Posted Aug 14, 2008 05:12 PM

    Even when creating boot packages with additional CD/DVD capabilities for DOS there is no 100% guarantee that ghost will be able to use every CD/DVD under the sun. DOS CD driver is quite old and sometimes newer manufactures dont provide full backward compatibility. I'd strongly suggest using Winpe if you have any problems with CD/DVD under DOS. This error code comes from two places. The very first check ghost does on CD - it simply tries to open a CD disk and if it fails it repors this error. It can also come from the reader of the image - ghost will try opening segments comparing certain values to make sure that image is intact. So, if it reads nothing or garbage then you'll get this error too. Both cases most likely indicate that the device is not fully supported by the current CD driver that ghost uses.

     

    Also in GSS 2.5 you dont need to create ISO first, you can burn directly to CD/DVD.



  • 7.  RE: Imaging problems w/SAS HDD using Ghost v11.5

    Posted Aug 15, 2008 10:38 AM

    I didn't think that a WinPE boot disk would have problems.  I can't use a PCDOS boot disk, it just sits there saying "Starting PCDOS..." until I get frustrated and reboot the machine.  WinPE disk loads no problem. 

     

    I've tried burning an ISO and burning straight to CD with GSS 2.5.  It doesn't seem to change the error.  However, guess I'll try to find drivers for that specific optical drive and see if I can add them to my boot package.  That and maybe finalizing the DVDs *thumps own head* as a friend suggested. 

     



  • 8.  RE: Imaging problems w/SAS HDD using Ghost v11.5

    Posted Aug 17, 2008 04:56 PM

    I think it will be a good idea to update yourself to latest build. Some people with closed network still have one machine open to outside world and there they can download latest updated for security products etc. You can maybe install Console with no clients on it and use this Console as the way to pull latest updates. Particularly for GSS it is easy because GSS pulls LU file and stores it on your computer. You then run it manually.

     

    To your main question - is it possible for you to upload that ISO so we can test it? You can contact me via private forum email.



  • 9.  RE: Imaging problems w/SAS HDD using Ghost v11.5

    Posted Aug 18, 2008 11:41 AM

    I finally got my image working.  Thanks for the help, but it was a phone call to Symantec that finally did it.  Here was my solution:

     

    http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/on-technology.nsf/docid/2008032111550460?Open&seg=ent