Ghosting 30GB Image

  • Thread starter Thread starter Billy
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Billy

Can someone help me out, please?

here's the deal: I work in a medium/small media production shop that
is on the verge of exploding. I have to build a whole lotta identical
desktop machines in the next few weeks for incoming personnel on the
business side. I'd really like to be able to make an image and farm
it out to the new boxes as they come in.

We're using Win2k SP4 on HP/Compaqs with 30GB HDs and I only have
about 7GB to store an image on a shared drive over TCP/IP ... The IS
Manager (the guy I report to) says we can use Ghost 2003. Now, I was
under the impression that NTFS images are considerably larger than
their FAT32 counterparts, due to the features of the NTFS
filesystem... (as far as my meager understanding goes, encryption,
MFTs) making it impossible to use Ghost in this situation and I
disagreed with the Manager's opinion, but he said he "used to do it
all the time." I am aware that he may say a lot of things that he
"used to do all the time." I am running into brick walls every time
I try to restore the image to a computer. The process halts and
several minutes later I get a Unexpected End OF File error.

Do I need a bigger drive for image storage? Should I use an external
HD? Is there something better/more practical than ghost? Should I
get used to staying late as I install Office five times a night?

TIA
Billy

<[email protected]>
 
Billy said:
Can someone help me out, please?

here's the deal: I work in a medium/small media production shop that
is on the verge of exploding. I have to build a whole lotta identical
desktop machines in the next few weeks for incoming personnel on the
business side. I'd really like to be able to make an image and farm
it out to the new boxes as they come in.

We're using Win2k SP4 on HP/Compaqs with 30GB HDs and I only have
about 7GB to store an image on a shared drive over TCP/IP ... The IS
Manager (the guy I report to) says we can use Ghost 2003. Now, I was
under the impression that NTFS images are considerably larger than
their FAT32 counterparts, due to the features of the NTFS
filesystem... (as far as my meager understanding goes, encryption,
MFTs) making it impossible to use Ghost in this situation and I
disagreed with the Manager's opinion, but he said he "used to do it
all the time." I am aware that he may say a lot of things that he
"used to do all the time." I am running into brick walls every time
I try to restore the image to a computer. The process halts and
several minutes later I get a Unexpected End OF File error.
Click to expand...
Do I need a bigger drive for image storage?
Click to expand...

Obvious quick test for that possibility is to do it to one
of the 30GB drives with it on the network for that test.
Should I use an external HD?
Click to expand...

Thats dramatically faster, but there's a considerable
physical reconfig effort going that route with every PC.

I'd personally just get a USB2 or firewire external drive
and do it with that for the image file. UBS2 or firewire
depending on what those machines support.
Is there something better/more practical than ghost?
Click to expand...

Not really.
Should I get used to staying late as I install Office five times a night?
Click to expand...

I certainly wouldnt go that route. Better to set one
of the systems up for the image file temporarily.
 
Lil' Dave said:
Found the opposite true imaging NT 4.0 NTFS partitions.
Dave
Click to expand...

OK, I don't think I made myself clear. What I mean is, due to the
file system, Ghost cannot ignore the "empty" space on the drive. I
used to use ghost with FAT32 20GB drives and the images would come out
less than 1GB, sometimes 500MB depending on how much crud was on the
machine at the time. When we switched to XP I found that I would need
much more storage for a single image... and identical drive. I always
thought this was a limitation of Ghost 6.3 (or whatever it was).

My real question is: Am I doing something wrong, or do I simply need
more storage?
 
Excuse my oversight, I use DriveImage. DI is not filebased so doesn't care
about empty space written in the File Allocation Table for NT files. DI is
your answer anyway.
Dave
 
Excuse my oversight, I use DriveImage. DI is not filebased
Click to expand...

Corse it is. And it operates the same
way as Ghost does on that anyway.
so doesn't care about empty space written
in the File Allocation Table for NT files.
Click to expand...

Have you actually tried that particular situation with
an identical partition formatted FAT32 and NTFS
and seen what size image file is produced by DI ?
DI is your answer anyway.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily, depends on exactly what
you want to do and what OS you are using.
 
Billy said:
Can someone help me out, please?

here's the deal: I work in a medium/small media production shop that
is on the verge of exploding. I have to build a whole lotta identical
desktop machines in the next few weeks for incoming personnel on the
business side. I'd really like to be able to make an image and farm
it out to the new boxes as they come in.

We're using Win2k SP4 on HP/Compaqs with 30GB HDs and I only have
about 7GB to store an image on a shared drive over TCP/IP ... The IS
Manager (the guy I report to) says we can use Ghost 2003. Now, I was
under the impression that NTFS images are considerably larger than
their FAT32 counterparts, due to the features of the NTFS
filesystem... (as far as my meager understanding goes, encryption,
MFTs) making it impossible to use Ghost in this situation and I
disagreed with the Manager's opinion, but he said he "used to do it
all the time." I am aware that he may say a lot of things that he
"used to do all the time." I am running into brick walls every time
I try to restore the image to a computer. The process halts and
several minutes later I get a Unexpected End OF File error.

Do I need a bigger drive for image storage? Should I use an external
HD? Is there something better/more practical than ghost? Should I
get used to staying late as I install Office five times a night?

TIA
Billy

<[email protected]>
Click to expand...

I think it all depends how full the drive is.
With a 20g drive that has 3g used in a WinXP NTFS system,
it is imaged to about a 2g image. unused space doesn't get
imaged at least with DI2002.
 
Don't understand the question. How can you format a partition FAT32 and
NTFS identically? What's important is the amount of space indicated use by
either file system, and the resulting image file after imaging. The size of
the paritition is diminutively important here, whether the partition sizes
are identical or not.

DI does not care about file size indicated by the file system, only the
data. Ghost is concerned about empty space as its filebased and shows that
when saving NTFS. Their methods of retaining the partition, filesystem, and
files are not the same. There is nothing to prove.
Dave
 
| Don't understand the question. How can you format a partition FAT32 and
| NTFS identically? What's important is the amount of space indicated use by
| either file system, and the resulting image file after imaging. The size of
| the paritition is diminutively important here, whether the partition sizes
| are identical or not.
|
| DI does not care about file size indicated by the file system, only the
| data. Ghost is concerned about empty space as its filebased and shows that
| when saving NTFS. Their methods of retaining the partition, filesystem, and
| files are not the same. There is nothing to prove.

From what I've heard in this group, DI does a sector copy minus free clusters.

It is incorrect to thing of Ghost as file based like ZIP is. Ghost understand
multiple data streams and sparse data. You can easily create a 1TB file under
NTFS with nothing allocated. Ghost will not save any data, neither will
ntbackup. I don't know about xcopy.
 
Don't understand the question. How can you
format a partition FAT32 and NTFS identically?
Click to expand...

You can have two partitions with identical contents, one formatted
FAT32 and the other NTFS and see what size image file each produces.
What's important is the amount of space indicated use by
either file system, and the resulting image file after imaging.
Yes.

The size of the paritition is diminutively important
here, whether the partition sizes are identical or not.
Click to expand...

I was suggesting that test to see if the partition formatting has
any effect on the image file size, with identical file contents.
DI does not care about file size indicated by the file system, only the data.
Yes.

Ghost is concerned about empty space as its filebased
Click to expand...

Dont believe there is any difference between them on that.
and shows that when saving NTFS. Their methods of
retaining the partition, filesystem, and files are not the same.
Click to expand...

In fact at least with ghost you have considerable control over the detail.
There is nothing to prove.
Click to expand...

Corse there is on the original question, whether how the partition
is formatted will affect the size of the image file made.
 
Oh, now!

Time to get at least a 120GB HD (prefer just that and no bigger myself
to prevent any >120GB BIOS incompatibility problems).

If it's in an external box, you can easily hook it up locally or over
lan + server to backup PCs.

Also, you can put in removable HD bays into every PC.
Then, put a HUGE HD into a removable carrier, and you can also visit
each PC in case of backup or emergency and backup very quickly the
entire HD from the PC to the removable. (cheap, <$30 for each PC)

that way, if one PC starts to go down, you don't waste
time waiting for a network backup or opening up a PC, and you can easily
pull off a huge video in progress to work on another machine.

(why? even a gigabit ethernet connection ain't pushing a 100GB video
file anywhere as fast as a direct ATA/133 direct transfer to a removable HD)

----

Always try to keep at least 1/2 the HD you're backing up free, if not
2x+ that on the server. You'll need room in case of an emergency, and a
120GB HD at <$90 (www.fatwallet.com/forums/ -> hot deals) isn't going to
kill anyone's budget.

----
 
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