ghost

Fi_C**

Hey guys,
Im not sure if this is the right forum to post this question??
I'm messing about with partitions at the moment...Formatting my whole drive and creating a dual boot Linux/winNt system... Have done this before in the past --- using fdisk and again with partition magic.... never have much luck with it ( something about boot cylinders!!)
I really don't understand exactly wot I'm doing but i'm happy messing around with it!!
Anyway the question;
Wot is Ghost --- it has been recommended to me ... I have RTFM so i have an idea wot it's all about -- I jst want someone to explain briefly it in a few simple sentences to confirm my suspicions!


thanks Fi**

s8n

ghost is a program made by norton which is used to take a "snapshop" or image of your harddrive and allows you to save it to cd. If you need to reset your pc to a certain state at a later time you can then use the ghost image you created to do so.

make sense??

ozpass

Norton Ghost is a utility to backup and restore disk partitions or entire hard drives.

You might use it as follows:

Say you have 2 hard disks attached to your computer, disk 1 and disk 2.

Disk 1 is split into 2 partitions partition1 and partition2.

Disk 2 is one large partition, partition 3.

We'll ignore Unix and the partitions it requires (for the moment) and assume it's a MS OS only setup.

Partition1 (on disk1) is a Primary DOS Partition and takes the DOS drive letter C:

Partition2 (on disk1) is an extended DOS Partition with A Logical Drive defined (drive letter d:)

Partition3 (on disk2) is a boggo DOS Partition with A Logical Drive defined (drive letter d:)

Booting to DOS with access to Norton Ghost would enable you to do the following (amongst others):


Read all of C: and save it as an image on

or maybe

Read all of disk1 (C: and ) and save it as an image on

or even

Read all of disk2 and save it as an image on C:

These images can then be 'unpacked' or 'written' to another drive, or partition at a later date.

The app. also allows the same to be achieved over a network writing several drives from one image. Also allows limited conversion of FS between images (say convert fat16 to fat32). Allows resizing i.e. 4Gb drive converted to an image, then image is unpacked to a new 80Gb drive, automatically re-sized to fit the larger drive.

Does other stuff too, this is just to give you the jist.

And welcome to boards.ie

Fi_C**

"GHOST is designed to minimize the installation times for operating systems such as Win95, WinNT and OS/2. This is particularly useful to organizations which have a large number of similarly configured workstations to install."

This is in the manual -- how does it minimise installation times??
Thanks BTW you did make sense
(more than the manual NEway);)

Lucutus

Originally posted by Fi_C**
"GHOST is designed to minimize the installation times for operating systems such as Win95, WinNT and OS/2. This is particularly useful to organizations which have a large number of similarly configured workstations to install."

This is in the manual -- how does it minimise installation times??

Imagine you have to admin an office who's just bought 60 identical PC's from Dell or some big manufacturer.

You install your company's prefered OS and apps onto one of the systems, it takes you hours.

The you ghost that drive and use it to install the exact same setup, (OS, it's admin settings and all your companies prefered apps), onto the other 59 PC's. This takes you less time per system than installing manually.

EZ

Luc

Fi_C**

Excellant guys thanks a mill!!

I've been asked at work to create a template image of an NT workstation with various programs installed on it -- as a back up if any of the systems need to be formatted!!

Cloning winNT is slightly more complicated because of duplicate network SID's I know that i can get around this by
cloning before the NT workstation makes its first official NT connection to the NT Server, ie before it is assigned an SID!
Is it the same for avoiding duplicate IP addresses???


Thanks a million for yere help!!:D

sirlinux

there is a utility out there that will change the SID on the workstation, just watch out for duplicate network names, i suggest calling your image something totally different to the rest of your workstations, otherwise ghost or powerquest drive image is the biz, you can have a workstation back up in 15 mins.

ozpass

What you are looking for is GHOSTWALKER the utility supplied with Ghost.

Use the following guidelines:

1) Take the Workstation OUT OF THE DOMAIN before ghosting.
2) Ghost away to your hearts content.
3) Run ghostwalker immediately afterwards (N.B. enable SMARTDRV in your DOS environment for gods sake)
4) Ghostwalker gives you the option to change netbios name - make sure you avoid duplicates.
5) Boot the machine(s) and put it (them) back in the domain.

I've installed 1500+ PC networks from scratch with a handful of bootdisks and Norton Ghost (v 5.1d) - it's a class app.

ozpass

Sorry, P.S. to last message.....

Use DHCP for your workstation IP addresses, they'll all get different leases cos it's based on the MAC address of the NIC.