Norton Ghost Problem in Win 98

[georgeg]

I'm trying to backup my wife's computer which runs Win98 using Norton Ghost which is a part of Norton System Works 2003 Professional. I've got it to run but while writing backup disks, before I can complete the backup, I get a failure to write to CD which ends the job. The first time two times it happened I was about 80% thru the backup job, on my third disk. The third time it happened on the second disk at a lower state of completion and now its done it twice on the first disk of the set. The first two times the cd burner had been burning for over an hour and now its has a read failure after about 20 minutes. The burner in my wife's 'puter is a HiVal 48x12x48 which I guess is a rebadged BTC .

Has anyone out there had a similar experience in Ghost? Is this a Ghost problem or (more likely) is this a problem with my burner? If I recall correctly, the BTC drives are generally considered ok drives, not the best but not the worst either. So, any opinions?

[Justin42]

Have you run a Chkdsk on the drive lately? I've had similar issues with Ghost if there were ANY imperfections of the directory structure...

Although your problem does sound vaguely drive related... have you ever had Ghost work properly or is this your first time using it?

Do you happen to have another partition you could write the Ghost files to (NOT a full partition copy, just writing the .GHO files)?

Try the best media you have, as well. I think Ghost automatically goes at the full speed of the burner, so if you're using media that can't handle 48X you might be running into problems there.

Is it writting a GHOST.ERR file?

(I have some experience with Ghost, but very little experience with it burning CDs on the fly..)

[georgeg]

Have you run a Chkdsk on the drive lately? I've had similar issues with Ghost if there were ANY imperfections of the directory structure...

No but thats not a bad idea.

Although your problem does sound vaguely drive related... have you ever had Ghost work properly or is this your first time using it?

This is my first time using it on this machine. I'm also using it on my own machine which runs XP Pro. It wrote the backup disk just fine but did have a system hang up while verifying the disks.

Do you happen to have another partition you could write the Ghost files to (NOT a full partition copy, just writing the .GHO files)?

No, I don't. The drive is only 8 Gb and I can't interest my wife in letting me add another drive to give her a bit more headroom.

Try the best media you have, as well. I think Ghost automatically goes at the full speed of the burner, so if you're using media that can't handle 48X you might be running into problems there.

I'm running TY media. I don't recall what the speed rating is, I guess I'll have to check it. Ghost reports its burning at 40-50 mb/min. I don't know what that would be in terms of CD speed.

Is it writting a GHOST.ERR file?

Yes, there is a GHOST.ERR file.
(I have some experience with Ghost, but very little experience with it burning CDs on the fly..)

[Action Jackson]

I'm using an older copy of Ghost under Win98.

The suggestion to ghost a drive to another partition is an excellent one. You should also do a check on the integrity of the .GHO file.

Just copy the .GHO file onto a quality CD.

Personally I just ghost it onto a completely different harddrive without burning it [I know, I'm asking for trouble].

[georgeg]

Try the best media you have, as well. I think Ghost automatically goes at the full speed of the burner, so if you're using media that can't handle 48X you might be running into problems there.

Today, I was able to get a successful backup using Ghost. The difference? I had been using Fuji 48x TY media. Today, I switched to some TDK 32x TY media and got a complete backup set burned! Go figure! Now, I just have to figure out how to verify the backup set. The instructions in the manual aren't real clear in this area.

[dodecahedron]

when you do, let us know!