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pooface
09-09-10, 11:04
Hi guys.

Come accross a little problem...

At work, we use Symantec Ghost 8.0 to take backup images of the machines. Now, with Win XP this has been fine. But, took an image of a Win 7 machine, and upon restoring it, it came back with an "unable find boot" screen...

So, looking around, it appears we need to use Symantec GSS2.5.1 for Win 7 machines.

Has anyone used that?! Does it work well?! Are there any other alternatives where I can just put a boot disk in the machine, get it to do a backup over the network to the server, and then restore the backup over the network (preferrably to more than 1 pc at a time). Also, preferrably free (well, to start with at least :p).

Cheers in advance :)
steve1978
09-09-10, 12:27
Where i used to work we had a Novel network that had some cool backup software over LAn. it could be ran from any PC on the network to take a backup or restore.
pooface
09-09-10, 15:16
Where i used to work we had a Novel network that had some cool backup software over LAn. it could be ran from any PC on the network to take a backup or restore.

Want a full image backup (i.e. all partitions including hidden recovery partitions)... Just downloaded a trial of GSS 2.5, and will update to 2.5.1, and see how it goes...
grtmoby
09-09-10, 15:34
the built in windows utility is good poo u may think of giving it a try.

commercially, there is acronis true image.
pooface
09-09-10, 16:12
the built in windows utility is good poo u may think of giving it a try.

commercially, there is acronis true image.

As said, want to keep the hidden partitions, and when I used the windows image creator program, it only gave me the option of choosing the 2 partitions that were fat/ntfs...

Will hopefully be able to try this symantec option tomorrow, and will let you know...
sivhead
14-10-10, 14:23
symantec ghost should work to back-up windows 7 machines. Boot up into windows Pe at the DOS prompt run ghost32.exe (the ghost32.exe will need to be copied from your symantec ghost cd). If you are still having issues you can use Microsofts command line tool imagex.exe which will back-up and restore hard disks. The best method is to create a windows PE USB key on an external hard drive boot into PE and save the image of the hard disk to the external hard drive. You can even download a gui for it called GimageX. It saves the images as .WIM file extensions, which can be mounted if needs be.

See this the link its not that hard really,

http://www.svrops.com/svrops/articles/sysprepvista.htm
its one line to peform a back and 1 to restore. Also its free so requires no licence unlike ghost. see the followin link for how to create a bootable windows PE key.. it also has the command line to peform a backup.

imagex /capture /compress maximum /check c: z:\ult32domain.wim "Ultimate32 Domain"

or you can use the GUI GimageX if you prefer that method...
harryoz
14-10-10, 15:57
Hi guys.

Come accross a little problem...

At work, we use Symantec Ghost 8.0 to take backup images of the machines. Now, with Win XP this has been fine. But, took an image of a Win 7 machine, and upon restoring it, it came back with an "unable find boot" screen...

So, looking around, it appears we need to use Symantec GSS2.5.1 for Win 7 machines.

Has anyone used that?! Does it work well?! Are there any other alternatives where I can just put a boot disk in the machine, get it to do a backup over the network to the server, and then restore the backup over the network (preferrably to more than 1 pc at a time). Also, preferrably free (well, to start with at least :p).

Cheers in advance :)

poo,
ghost 8 is as old as dirt, ghost 15 is the latest and this works good with windows 7
hope this helps
pooface
14-10-10, 16:17
poo,
ghost 8 is as old as dirt, ghost 15 is the latest and this works good with windows 7
hope this helps

I was talking about the corporate version of symantec ghost... Yes, ghost 8 is still old, but not as old as ghost 8 for home machines...

So, that latest corporate version of ghost is 11.5.1 (from what I can see, and this is basically the GSS 2.5.1). After testing, yes, this does work fine...

Next question though, not gonna pay the upgrade fees to get the new version, so, what does everyone suggest in terms of an some decent free software, that works with windows 7, works just as good as ghost, but is free?! I take it there probably isn't one?! lol. But, any suggestions since this thread has been resurrected...