How to use Ghost to make a back up of your OS

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Image to HD

Image to CD

Making a boot disk

Making a bootable CD

Restoring files

Full recovery

Automating with batch files

Tweaking your back ups

Switches

Switches ALL

Splitting huge images

Recovering cloned HDs

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Using switches with Ghost.

To use a switch with ghost you can either type it after ghost, like

"Ghost -split=600 -Z3"

or make a text file. I'll show the text file method. This is a faster way, in that once you make the text file; all you need do is call ghost with the text file after. Like this

"Ghost @switch.txt".

here is an example of a text file.

-SPLIT=600

-autoname

-z

-skip=@skipa.txt

-clone,mode=pdump,src=1:1,dst=D:\backup\back.gho

if you run this text file with ghost, this is what it will do

-split=600 tells Ghost to split large images in to 600M chunks. This is good if you plan to put the image on CDs.

-autoname tells ghost not to prompt you for a new name for every chunk. For example you have 2G of data, ghost will stop during the imaging and ask for a new name for the next 600M chunk. With this switch it will just name each image file a number for the extension. (back.gho, back.001,back.002 and so on).

-Z tells ghost to compress the image files. Add a number 1 - 9 to control the amount of compression. 9 is the most compression.

-skip=@skipa.txt this tells ghost to look for a text file called skipa. This text file will contain commands that tell ghost to skip some files or directories. Read below for more on skipping.

-clone,mode=pdump,src=1:1,dst=D:\backup\back.gho this line tells ghost what to do. You can use this to speed things up a little, instead of navigating in the GUI

. It says make an image of HD1 partition1, and save that image on HD2 (D:\) in a folder called backup, and save the image with the name "back.gho".

Using the Skip switch.

The skip file Causes Norton Ghost to exclude the indicated files during an operation. A skip entry can specify a single file, directory, or multiple files using the *wildcard. Filenames must be given in short filename format and all pathnames are absolute. Only FAT system files are able to be skipped. It is not possible to skip files on NTFS or other file systems. The skip switch may only be included in the command line once. To specify multiple skip entries, they must be included in a text file indicated using

-skip=@skipfile.

Examples:

-skip=\windows\user.dll Skips the file user.dll in the windows directory.

-skip=*\readme.txt Skips any file called readme.txt in any directory.

-skip=\ghost\*.dll Skips any file ending with .dll in the ghost directory.

-skip=\progra~1\ Skips the whole program files directory (note the short filename).

-skip=@skipfile.txt Skips files as outlined in the skipfile.txt file. For example, the skipfile.txt contains:

*\*.tmt

[partition:1]

\windows\

*\*.exe

[Partition:2]

*\*me.txt

This would skip all *.tmt files on any partition, the windows directory and any *.exe files on the first partition, and any file that ended with the me.txt on the second partition.

For a complete list of switches click here.