Ghost 2003

[clocker]

Anyone have experience using Ghost on a system with SATA drives?
My drive(s) are running on a nF4 chipset which Windows sees as regular IDE- i.e., I don't need to F6 drivers in for a regular (non-RAID) XP install.

My first attempt at making a Ghost image simply froze in the DOS screen...I had the empty Ghost window but no activity at all.
Windows was unbootable after this as Ghost sets up a virtual C: drive and borks the XP MFT.

After recovering from this (full reinstall) I tried again, this time using a command line switch ("-noide") that is supposed to resolve this issue.
Identical outcome.

This is irritating.
Either Ghost is simply not capable of dealing with SATA drives properly (an opinion widely held in Google searches), I'm doing something terribly wrong (an opinion widely held amongst my friends) or my i-RAM drive is the culprit.

Feedback appreciated.

[lynx]

I've certainly used Ghost with sata drives, and without any problems.
It may depend on the controller, mine is a SiI3112a.

Strangely, Windows does require a driver for the SiI3112a, but it appears they are not needed for Dos based systems.

[clocker]

Lynx,
When you used it, where were you saving the image file?
Both times I was trying to save to disk rather than a HDD partition...might that be the problem?

[lynx]

I was simply copying a partition from one disk to another, no image file involved.

When you say "saving to disk", do you mean one or more CD/DVDs, or do you mean to an unpartitioned HDD? I wouldn't have thought copying to an unpartitioned HDD would work, but I'm by no means an expert on Ghost.

[clocker]

I meant saving to a DVD.
"Cloning" the partition does me little good, I really need an image as the end result.

[lynx]

Can you clone the partition to an IDE drive, then make an image from there (in another system if necessary?

[clocker]

Well yeah, I suppose I could.
I sorta hate to sully Sprocket's interior with an IDE drive (which I'll have to cop from work as I don't even own one anymore) but if that's what I gotta do, then so be it.
Before I go to all this trouble I think I'll try the free "limited" trial version of Acronis Drive Image and see what that's like.
Thanks for the info though.

[clocker]

Update:

No real fix appeared but a workaround has.
I cannot make a Ghost image which is stored direct to disk and is bootable.
I can however make a Ghost image which gets stored to another partition using the "-noide" command line switch.

So, for a full restore of my C:drive I have to use my nLite custom install disk and just format/install from fresh.
Then I install Ghost into the fresh install and restore from the image on my E: drive.
The entire process takes 22 minutes...I just did it to verify that it works.

It's clunkier than I'd hoped but workable, so I guess I'll call it good.

Now that I can fully recover from a wipeout of C: I might do some more experimenting with a bootable restore disk but the urgency is gone and I have other goofball projects to pursue so this gets put on the back burner for the nonce.