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Ghosting Drives Remotely

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  • 03-01-2008 3:55pm
    #1
    onechewy
    Closed Accounts Posts: 188 ✭✭


    Hello!

    I need to ghost two hard drives on our hosted Windows 2000 webserver. One drive is 8Gb with 6Gb on it, and the other 100Gb with 30Gb on it. It will probably take about an hour and a half to get the two of them backed up with high compression.

    I have symantec ghost to use for this, but the problem is gaining access to the webserver in order to do these backups. The hosting company only allows access between 9 and 5 and our website needs to stay online during office hours.

    The thing is though, as Norton Ghost is happy to back up your system drive while you are actually in your OS, could I just login to our server remotely, stop IIS and ghost the drives that way? Would I end up with a good image or is it a bad idea to do this remotely.

    I've never really done much of this before so sorry if I'm a bit clueless..!


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    #2
    ethernet
    Registered Users Posts: 3,568 ✭✭✭ethernet


    What a friendly hosting company :rolleyes: Don't know about Ghost but Acronis lets you creates images of the system partition while in use. I have created images of my install while live and they were fine. Is Ghost live only or can it also be installed? If you do have to install it, wouldn't be surprised if you need to reboot.


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    #3
    onechewy
    Closed Accounts Posts: 188 ✭✭onechewy


    ethernet wrote: »
    What a friendly hosting company :rolleyes: Don't know about Ghost but Acronis lets you creates images of the system partition while in use. I have created images of my install while live and they were fine. Is Ghost live only or can it also be installed? If you do have to install it, wouldn't be surprised if you need to reboot.

    Thanks for the reply Ethernet,

    Yeah, Ghost needs a reboot after installation. Not really a problem, I'm just a little concerned about the integrity of the image if I do it remotely.

    It will let you create an image while live no problem, but I haven't tested out restoring to an image that was created while live.


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    #4
    ethernet
    Registered Users Posts: 3,568 ✭✭✭ethernet


    If you feel edgy about doing it, it might be worth doing a web search. Surely the feature wouldn't exist if it wasn't pretty stable, or so one would hope.


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    #5
    ntlbell
    Registered Users Posts: 16,288 ✭✭✭✭ntlbell


    Also, change hosting provider soon as.


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    #6
    Khannie
    Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 37,485 Mod ✭✭✭✭Khannie


    Remotely doing anything shouldn't be a problem really. If you're not used to it I'm sure it can be a bit daunting, but in the unix world (for example) you're almost never sitting in front of the machine you're using. Remoteness can be just like sitting in front of the box.


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    #7
    onechewy
    Closed Accounts Posts: 188 ✭✭onechewy


    I discovered on Thursday evening that the version of ghost I had (v9) was incompatible with 2000 server, so I got my hands on ghost 2003 which is compatible.

    2003 reboots into DOS to create images, so after a couple of stern phone calls by the bossman , I got access into the hosting company on Saturday armed with a USB drive for storing the images on.

    I didn't have enough time to fully test out teh backup on one of the machines in the office, so it was big time fingers crossed.

    After 3 and a half hours (50% was spent waiting for the machine to reboot and relogon) and many many error messages, I managed to get it working. It was the USB drive causing the problem and I had to create a FAT32 partition on it for it to work. The mouse (regular USB 1.1) caused problems (abort?retry?fail?) as well. When the imaging process did start, the window was tellin me it was going to take 9 hours to image 30GB... so I just aborted.

    I'm having a look at Acronis now as a suitable option. I've not much hair left on my head after saturday so hopefully this will do it for me!


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    #8
    ntlbell
    Registered Users Posts: 16,288 ✭✭✭✭ntlbell


    onechewy wrote: »
    I discovered on Thursday evening that the version of ghost I had (v9) was incompatible with 2000 server, so I got my hands on ghost 2003 which is compatible.

    2003 reboots into DOS to create images, so after a couple of stern phone calls by the bossman , I got access into the hosting company on Saturday armed with a USB drive for storing the images on.

    I didn't have enough time to fully test out teh backup on one of the machines in the office, so it was big time fingers crossed.

    After 3 and a half hours (50% was spent waiting for the machine to reboot and relogon) and many many error messages, I managed to get it working. It was the USB drive causing the problem and I had to create a FAT32 partition on it for it to work. The mouse (regular USB 1.1) caused problems (abort?retry?fail?) as well. When the imaging process did start, the window was tellin me it was going to take 9 hours to image 30GB... so I just aborted.

    I'm having a look at Acronis now as a suitable option. I've not much hair left on my head after saturday so hopefully this will do it for me!

    Why on earth is the image 30gb?


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    #9
    ethernet
    Registered Users Posts: 3,568 ✭✭✭ethernet


    onechewy wrote: »
    I discovered on Thursday evening that the version of ghost I had (v9) was incompatible with 2000 server, so I got my hands on ghost 2003 which is compatible.

    2003 reboots into DOS to create images, so after a couple of stern phone calls by the bossman , I got access into the hosting company on Saturday armed with a USB drive for storing the images on.

    I didn't have enough time to fully test out teh backup on one of the machines in the office, so it was big time fingers crossed.

    After 3 and a half hours (50% was spent waiting for the machine to reboot and relogon) and many many error messages, I managed to get it working. It was the USB drive causing the problem and I had to create a FAT32 partition on it for it to work. The mouse (regular USB 1.1) caused problems (abort?retry?fail?) as well. When the imaging process did start, the window was tellin me it was going to take 9 hours to image 30GB... so I just aborted.

    I'm having a look at Acronis now as a suitable option. I've not much hair left on my head after saturday so hopefully this will do it for me!
    You poor sod! I wonder if that USB connector you used for the backup was also 1.1? I don't know about Ghost, but those time estimates always seem to start off very big and then get smaller in Acronis. What level of compression what Ghost using for the image, or is there any option for this?


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