Creating a Bootable USB Hard Disk for Ghost Disk Image Files

This is a real tech blog about how to do something techy. It isn't directly related to school other than other Technology people at schools need to do this same thing, so I thought I would pass this on to people who might need to know how to do this.

I have successfully created a bootable USB 60gb hard disk that I am using with Symantec Ghost for imaging hard disks at my school. I am using it both with a Ghost server and with Ghost images on the USB hard disk. Here is the procedure I used:

First I removed my existing partitions from the USB hard disk using Disk Management (in XP and Vista it’s in Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management).

I then created a partition of 32gb in Disk Management and formatted it as FAT32 (it wouldn’t let me format it that way unless the partition was less than 33gb). I also created a second partition with the remaining space on the disk drive. I’m pretty sure I didn’t needed to create either partition because they were overwritten by the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool after the next step. I’d try skipping creating these partitions.

I formatted a floppy as an MS-DOS startup disk (right click the floppy drive, click on format and check the “Create an MS-DOS startup disk”). The HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool needs to copy the start up files from this floppy.

I ran the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool (downloadable from PC World at http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,64963-order,1-page,1-c,peripherals/description.html) choosing the FAT32 file system, having it “Create a DOS startup disk” (meaning making this USB disk bootable) and telling it to use the DOS system files from the floppy I had just created. Though a FAT32 disk is limited to 32gb in Windows XP, the HP tool had no problem creating a 60gb partition.

I then copied all the files from the Ghost boot disk zip-file http://www.divshare.com/download/8531838-415 I created to the newly created hard disk. This zip file contains all the files and directories I am using, with the exception of the Ghost executable file. You will need to add that yourself.  NOTE: If you modify this set up with your own files, be sure that you don’t overwrite the system files (MSDOS.SYS, IO.SYS, COMMAND.COM) on your USB hard disk.

Notes:

This hard disk comes up as the C: drive. In Ghost it shows as Drive 1. Don’t make a mistake and overwrite it. Your computer’s internal hard disk will be Disk 2.

All the real work of this was done by the author of the Visible Procrastinations blog postings “Build yourself a bootable Ghost USB key” (http://visibleprocrastinations.wordpress.com/2007/09/13/build-yourself-a-bootable-ghost-usb-key/) and “Build yourself a bootable Ghost USB key II” (http://visibleprocrastinations.wordpress.com/2008/08/29/build-yourself-a-bootable-ghost-usb-key-ii/). I have modified the config.sys and autoexec.bat configurations somewhat to fit what I need at my school. You will need to modify settings to match the network cards you are running. Viewing the Visible Procrastinations blogs will give you a better understanding of why things are set up the way they are and how to change them.

There are drivers in this setup for CD-ROM drives, including SCSI drives. These will result in device error messages on start up if you don’t have all those drives hooked up. This is by design, in case you might need them.

Using images on the hard disk that had been created using Ghostcast Server resulted in me getting a message when it needed to go to the next file in a set. The message is “Insert next media and press enter to continue”. My choices are OK, Cancel and FileName. If I choose FileName I just click on the next file in the series and I’m fine (until I need to do the same thing again for the next filename).

The files and directory structure in my zip file do not include the Ghost program. You will need to add that to the Ghost directory. I also use the G-Images folder for my Ghost images.

Comments

[Data Recovery]

Nice blog about "Creating a Bootable USB Hard Disk for Ghost Disk Image Files". GhostCast server is a utility of the Symantec Ghost software. Using GhostCast server you can create images of computers in the network or you can restore an image to several connected clients at the same time. The only thing you have to do is to boot all the clients with a Symantec Ghost boot disk, then you accept all the connected clients in the GhostCast server utility and then you simply send the image to all connected clients.

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[Sara]

The feature which I like most about GhostCast server is that we can restore images to several connected clients at the same time .This makes restoring images very easy.
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