Can anybody help me with Ghost 2003

I backed up an old computer with Ghost 2003 onto cds...it was dying and I was about to move. I am now trying to open the files, but am being told that the cds' file(s) is/are not Ghost files. The program recognizes the files well enough to put the Ghost icon next to each file (partition?), but will not recognize it when I try to open it with the explorer. I know that when it was backing my old files onto the cds it was running in DOS mode. I don't know if that makes a diffrence or not. If you can give any help, I would be extremely grateful. I really need to get my photography files opened up. I am probably considered intermediate in regards to computers, but with this program I am completely lost and confused. Thanks in advance!

 

This one really requires some thought but my first reaction is the cd's are segments and not in themselves whole files. Added together they would make a complete image file and honestly other than restoring it to the system, I would not know how to do that. Is there a chance to restore it to the hard drive as a whole and then view it in another pc?

 

When you say "but will not recognize it when I try to open it with the explorer." are you referring to the Ghost Explorer which is part of Norton Ghost or are you referring to Windows Explorer?

 

If the files were saved as an image by Ghost, then only Ghost can read them.

How did you back them up?

 

Rick_in_Fla ~ The ghost explorer says "not a Ghost file" when I try to open the file.

Rich-M ~ I don't know how to do that...but I know that when I tried to "restore my computer" it just wiped out my hard drive and told me that no operating system could be found. Maybe because I have 14 disks with files and not a disk created to restore my computer should something happen.


Nutrafrag ~ Good question...lol...I backed up that computer about 3 years ago. I think I did a complete backup though because it took forever and 14 disks to complete.

~ Ladyjessica

P.S. Thanks for trying to help me figure this out so far guys.

 

Sounds like the disks either aren't properly made or are not bootable...I never found original Ghost (prior to Symantec takeover worked at all with cd's myself).

 

Building on Rich-M's thought, and this is just a guess. It might work if you copied (not restore) all 14 CD's to a partition or folder on your hard drive. That way the ghost program could see all 14 CD's at once.

Of course that would take a lot of time with no guarantee of results.

Personally, I've never had problems opening Ghost images consisting of multiple 2 Gig files, however all the 2 Gig files were always present on the hard drive when I did it.

In the future, I would use Ghost on operating systems only. Any data backup I'd just burn it directly to CD or DVD without any imaging software.

Hope that helps.

 

Hi ladyjessica,

This is Mike from the Norton Authorized support Team responding to your posting.

The problem you are experiencing can be due to corrupted Ghost images which can occur when you create an image on a "dying" hard drive.

As DVOM suggested, your best bet is to copy all of the image files to a folder on your computer and to then use the Ghost viewer to see if the files are intact and can be restored.. Make sure that you have Ghost 2003 installed, as only that viewer can be used to look at all of the files.

Thank you,
Mike

 

Michael York makes an excellent point. One crucial difference between Acronis and Ghost I have noticed is Acronis will not make an image file if the hard drive is anything but perfect and Ghost will.