Ghost

Testiculese · Post by **Testiculese** » Wed Sep 29, 2004 7:14 pm

Krom reminded me of this, and I want to investigate the practicality of using Ghost for my machines.

I havn't seen or used Ghost for a long time. Since it was DOS-only. So I know nothing about it's current manifestation.

My scenario is: I have nine machines here in my network. I'm getting ready for a complete and absolute overhaul. Every drive in every machine is getting wiped and new OS's all around. Since I get anything I want free from MS, I'm going to take advantage of it. (10cpu 2k and xp licenses are nice!)
Once I have them all loaded, I want a snapshot of all of them. But storing the images is my main question...can I take a 250gb drive, and put images for nine machines? Eight actually, I doubt I can Ghost a 100gb game box installation. Or maybe I can, dunno. But with or without the game box, is this possible, where I can put the images and Ghost client on the hard drive, and a bootable cd (Or a bootable drive, and slave the box's drive for the restore), and restore them at will?
Could I even DVD the smaller machines? The servers are only going to have 20gb drives, probably not even half full.
Lastly, what version of Ghost is the preferred?

tia

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Wed Sep 29, 2004 7:47 pm

Not sure about Ghost, but I use Powerquest Drive Image and you can put the image on a network drive, CD, or other drive in the PC. Then use the DI CD to boot up, and point it to the image.

CritterB · Post by **CritterB** » Wed Sep 29, 2004 8:37 pm

I'm trying Acronis True Image at work right now. It should be finished creating the image by tomorrow and then I need to copy it to a fresh hd. I'll let you know how it goes.

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Thu Sep 30, 2004 12:54 am

Drive Image 7 -- very nice, no need for DOS or safe mode. Runs of the windoze desktop.

Edit: forgot -- you can browse the image too, nice if you want some files back.

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Thu Sep 30, 2004 4:11 am

Acronis is also another program I've used, but only once.

Testiculese · Post by **Testiculese** » Thu Sep 30, 2004 4:19 pm

Can anyone give me a ratio of drive to image with whatever package you described? What does a 20G with 10G, or something, on it end up being size-wize?

Stress, do you use an imager?

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Thu Sep 30, 2004 4:41 pm

DI7 only stores info that's there plus it does some compression. So 10GB data ends up becomming a < 10 GB image file (independent from the HDD size)

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Thu Sep 30, 2004 4:56 pm

Drive image will only do what space you are using, then low compression will do good.

I have a 5.5 Gig C drive that I image and it becomes 840 Megs.

Ned · Post by **Ned** » Fri Oct 01, 2004 8:24 pm

I recently experimented with Ghost trying to do a USB HD image. I found the program to be completely and utterly full of sh_____t, at least in USB 1 and USB2 modes.

USB 1 veeeeeeeery slow
USB 2 non functional