This automated system recovery process consists of a
bootable diskette image I have created as well as a program called
rawwritewin.exe with will create the floppy diskette from this image file. You
or your customer will need to supply Symantec’s Norton Ghost 2003 or higher. I
have tested this with Ghost 2003, V8 and V9. The image will create a bootable
diskette that will automate the recovery process. It consists of MS.DOS Version
6, several generic drivers for most common optical dives, a file to
pre-configure Norton Ghost, and a somewhat complicated Autoexec.bat file that
performs the automation process. I will explain later how these to last items
work and inter-relate.
Create an image file of the computer using Norton Ghost
being sure to save the file as image.gho. This can be done to another hard
drive, to a mapped network drive, or an external drive. You can also take the
hard drive out of the machine and install it as a secondary drive in another
machine and create the ghost image that way. It is ok to allow spanning if
required, just configure Ghost to auto name the span image files. They will be
image001.ghs, image002.ghs, etc. Make sue the span files are small enough to
fit the optical media you intend to use. I recommend 650 meg for CD’s. Make
sure you perform an integrity check on the image files to make sure they are
valid.
Create a bootable CD/DVD using either the GhostRecovery.img
file as your bootable source or use Rawwritewin.exe to create a bootable floppy
diskette to use as the source.
Make sure Ghost.exe and the image.gho files are on the CD.
If all image files and ghost.exe can fit on a CD or DVD that will work as well.
Be sure to verify data when burning the disk.
Note: Roxio can use the .img file as it’s bootable source,
however Nero requires a diskette.
Test the recovery disk on the system for which it was made.
I will often temporarily swap the hard drive with another raw drive for this
step. This will accurately simulate replacing a failed hard drive. Make sure
you thoroughly test the recovered system.
Recovering the system with a Ghost image file will restore
the system to the state at the time the image was taken. All data will be lost
so be sure to backup any user data before performing this procedure. The
procedure is simple. Insert the recovery CD/DVD into the drive and boot the
computer from the optical drive instead of the hard drive. Follow the simple
prompts, and the system will be restored. There will be an opportunity to abort
the process right before Ghost begins writing to the drive. This is provided in
case the disk is booted accidentally.
Note: Once Ghost begins writing to the drive it cannot be
undone. Make sure any important files and data have been backed up to another
drive before performing a system recovery.
ALL DATA ON THE RESTORED DRIVE WILL BE REPLACED WITH THE ORIGINAL DRIVE IMAGE!
GHSWITCH.TXT:
There is a file on the diskette called ghswitch.txt. This configures Norton Ghost to do a few things. It contains the following lines.
-afile=r:\Ghosterr.txt
-clone,mode=restore,src=image.gho,dst=1-quiet
-sure
-rb
What it means:
-afile=r:\Ghosterr.txt
The first line relocates the Ghost error file to a Ramdrive
so it can be written to. Otherwise Ghost would try to write to the optical
drive and would cause unrecoverable errors.
--clone,mode=restore,src=image.gho,dst=1-quiet
This line tells Ghost to restore hard drive 1 with the
image.gho file, and ignore all user prompts. If the image file is spanned
across several disks, it will ask the user for the next disk, etc. until it is
finished.
-sure
This line tells Ghost to not display the screen that warns
the user that the system will need to be restarted
-rb
This line tells Ghost to reboot the system
The other important file is the Autoexec.bat file which
performs the following procedures.
Sets the time zone to GMT +5
Installs the mouse driver and the CD driver
Finds the drive letter of the RAM drive set up by the
config.sys file. (This is required for redirects).
Sets an environment variable for the ramdrive and a
substitution to drive “R:”
Copies several files over to the ram drive
Sets the comspec to the ramdrive thereby transferring
control from the CD to the ramdrive
Prompts the user to allow restoration of the drive by
pressing the F8 key allowing the user to abort.
Tests the key response from the user for the F8 key
Finds which drive is the optical drive with the restore disc
Changes to that drive
Prompts the user one more time allowing them to abort the
process
Restores the drive from image.gho
Reboots the system
This system will work on a system with as many as 7
partitions and optical drives. I set up a ramdrive since the bootable optical
drive cannot be written to and if Ghost tries to have it’s error log file on
the boot disk, it will cause an unrecoverable error when it tries to write to
the log file. Since DOS assigns the first unused drive letter to the ramdrive,
and I need to address that drive by drive letter, I need to find out which
letter has been assigned to it. This is done with FINDRAM.EXE and FINDRAM.BAT
with the use of errorcodes. This allows me to set an environment variable with
the drive letter of the ramdrive. I can now substitute this drive letter with
“R:”. This allows me to direct Ghost to the ramdrive no matter how may drives
are in the machine. I then move a few important files to the ramdrive and
transfer control of the operating system to it as well. This allows the
swapping of the CD/DVD disc without causing command errors. I then prompt the
user for a specific keystroke (F8) to continue the process and test their key
response for the correct key. Any incorrect key will abort the process. If the
correct key is pressed, I find which optical drive contains Ghost.exe and the
image file. I then run Ghost.exe from that drive and the system restore begins.
This system has been tested with all operating systems from
DOS to WinXP Professional, as well as FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS file systems. It
will also work with raw unpartitioned and unformatted IDE hard drives.
If you require a more in depth explanation of the process,
or have questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
I this process does not serve your needs or specific
requirements, a custom procedure can be written for you to accommodate network
rollouts, external devices, as well as custom configurations.
Enjoy
Cliff Robertson
Clarify Technical Services
cliff@clarifytech.com