Help Me With Ghost!

[kendellrt]

It looks like I lost everything. I attempted to install Linux on my machine. It loaded into RAID just fine, but when it partitioned, it only did it on one drive. Now my NTFS is corrupt and I had to re-install. I installed a 60gig HDD I had kicking around with a basic Windows image on it, and then tried to ghost my last backup to my RAID array. It all went fine until the second to last disk, and then it failed. i tried it that way twice, and also tried with the recovery disk, but it would not accept my nvraid drivers, even though they work on Windows. So...I couldn't image my array, or transfer it to a single drive either because it said it needed 50% more space. I have lost hundreds of photos and videos of my family. I used ghost to backup, and never had a problem before. Does anyone know if I can extract those files from my imaged cd's, and how to do that?

[cybergrunt69]

I've never tried to get hdd data off of ghost CDs - never really thought about it since I always have enough room to hold the old stuff (knocks on wood).

 

From the sounds of what you may be losing, I'd say that a $200 investment in a new hdd is well worth the price of that data recovery. Yeah - a geek that actually does backups!.

 

Do you have any data recovery software? What you may want to do is try the ghost restore as far as it will let you (to the raid disks) then boot off the 60gb and use that to try to recover whatever you can. It may only get ya a percentage of what you've lost, but any little bit helps, yes?

[asus]

well.. my server runs a raid 5 and everyone's documents are being mapped to the server.. anyway.. ghost, install windows, then restore the image to a diff partition.. and get your stuff..

[kendellrt]

I have tried both ways you guys explained. Because I backed up the whole array as a single drive, it won't let me ghost to a partition smaller than the image says it is, even though it was 87% free space (300gigs all together). It won't load my perfectly good RAID drivers with the recovery disk, and booting from the extra 60 gig and imaging the array as a secondary drive fails at the second to last disk every time. Note to self - check the box that says "verify image" before backing up, even if it take a long time! I need to just see if I can restore individual files from the image. i may try exporting the image from the disks into one file on my drive, and then go into the option to recover files and folders. I think you have to have only images certain files and folders instead of "image a drive" to do that though. It just kills me to loose all of those photos of my 3yr old growing up. I always thought I was safe backing up with ghost and would never have a problem. <_<

[LobbDogg]

There should be a separate program on the Ghost cd called Ghost explorer, which allows you to explore and extract files out of a Ghost image. I've never tried it on a CD spanned set, only a single image file. You may have to browse the ghost cd to find it. (sorry its been a while since I've used Ghost, been used to Acronis TrueImage).

[cybergrunt69]

BAH! I should smack myself - yes, you can use Ghost Explorer to view the images. yes, it does work with spanned images. You'll generally need the first and last disks to load all the file/dir names and to verify the image (prolly a crc), then when you select data to restore, it should ask for a specific disk or filename (imagename.gh2, imagename.gh3, etc).

 

Thanks for the reminder LobbDogg... I'm a tard

[kendellrt]

I'll try to extract the spanned image as a single image, and browse it. Or, I'll just have to browse through the 19 cd's and DVD's it took to make! Thanks for the help guys, Ghost is new to me, I just got and, and have been upset that it isn't working how I'd like.

[Bleeble]

I'll try to extract the spanned image as a single image, and browse it.  Or, I'll just have to browse through the 19 cd's and DVD's it took to make!  Thanks for the help guys, Ghost is new to me, I just got and, and have been upset that it isn't working how I'd like.

484137[/snapback]

It's probably a bit late (my keyboard wasn't working earlier), but I'll post anyways. You can extract individual files from a Ghost archive. As a matter of fact, I just reinstalled windows after backing up my drive and had to extract My Documents, some programs settings, etc. So, it does work, but I had all the images on a different HDD, so I didn't have to swap anything. I have also used an older version of Ghost (last version or the one before) to restore an image from DVD's, so I know that works too. Hope you get what you need!

[kendellrt]

I tried to use the extract files and folders feature and I can see the directory structure after a while, and then while switching out my spanned disks to get to the files it freezes. I have tried this twice with the same result. What else can I do?