Boot Sector Always Corrupted

Is there anyway to get Ghost 15 to backup/restore a primary/boot partition (with a boot manager) and not have to do a FIXBOOT after the restore in order to boot (and then more work to replace the special boot manager)? If the answer is NO, then Ghost is practically unusable for an increasingly larger number of PC builds. Read on.   

 

More and more folks are trying to use Ghost with PCs that have boot managers or pre-boot loaders. For example, Lenovo laptop builds often have a boot manager that can access a hidden bootable partition that will restore the c: partition to it's original build. Corporate helpdesks love this as it's becomming the pat answer for just about any complex PC problem - go back to the original PC build. Meanwhile, the PC user loses everything they've installed or customized since the original build. Software encryption products for disk drives (e.g., McAfee and Checkpoint) also place a pre-boot loader on the boot track.

 

Everytime I create a Ghost image file backup of a primary/boot partition with one of these special boot loaders, the restore will always corrupt the boot loader. Using Ghost 15, this is true whether I specify the MBR checkbox or not. I find this to be true with either the Lenovo boot manager or the McAfee pre-boot loader.

 

Way back in Ghost V8, I did manage to get this to work using the -IB switch on the image creation. This switch copies the entire boot track (not just the boot sector) using a sector backup (only for the boot track, the rest of the partition is a normal native backkup). However, the Norton Ghost support team tells me this switch is no longer available and the chat sessions I've had with them seem to get confused when the topic veers over to boot sectors, boot tracks, and boot managers.   

 

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

Is there anyway to get Ghost 15 to backup/restore a primary/boot partition (with a boot manager) and not have to do a FIXBOOT after the restore in order to boot (and then more work to replace the special boot manager)? If the answer is NO, then Ghost is practically unusable for an increasingly larger number of PC builds. Read on.   

 

More and more folks are trying to use Ghost with PCs that have boot managers or pre-boot loaders. For example, Lenovo laptop builds often have a boot manager that can access a hidden bootable partition that will restore the c: partition to it's original build. Corporate helpdesks love this as it's becomming the pat answer for just about any complex PC problem - go back to the original PC build. Meanwhile, the PC user loses everything they've installed or customized since the original build. Software encryption products for disk drives (e.g., McAfee and Checkpoint) also place a pre-boot loader on the boot track.

 

Everytime I create a Ghost image file backup of a primary/boot partition with one of these special boot loaders, the restore will always corrupt the boot loader. Using Ghost 15, this is true whether I specify the MBR checkbox or not. I find this to be true with either the Lenovo boot manager or the McAfee pre-boot loader.

 

Way back in Ghost V8, I did manage to get this to work using the -IB switch on the image creation. This switch copies the entire boot track (not just the boot sector) using a sector backup (only for the boot track, the rest of the partition is a normal native backkup). However, the Norton Ghost support team tells me this switch is no longer available and the chat sessions I've had with them seem to get confused when the topic veers over to boot sectors, boot tracks, and boot managers.   

 

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

niktoman,

 

I forgot to ask. What is the error you see when the computer won't boot after restoring your Ghost image?

 


niktoman wrote:

Way back in Ghost V8, I did manage to get this to work using the -IB switch on the image creation. This switch copies the entire boot track (not just the boot sector)

 


 This quote is from http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH130961&locale=en_US

and the teminology is confusing. The quote is referring to LBA-0 as the boot sector. The partition boot sector, the first sector in a partition, is the sector corrected by FIXBOOT. This sector is not in the boot track (the First Track).

Brian_K, thanks for the reply!

 

That is interesting. I am running XP. The one thing my PCs all have in common is they are all Lenovo laptops (all corporate hand-me-downs). Also, I am not restoring to the same disk where the backup came from. In all cases, I restored to a different disk (different size, different sized partitions, but the exact same number of partitions). Also, I am only backing up and restoring the first (primary/boot) c: partion, not the whole drive. In one case, it was a crash that made me move drives. In another, it was an SSD upgrade. In another, I wanted to replace the original drive (that included the special Lenovo build partition and the boot mgr) because I couldn't get Ghost to work gracefully with it (because of this problem).   

 

In one case, it was the Lenovo boot manager that got corrupted. Then in another case, it was McAfee's pre-boot (encryption) loader that got corrupted.

 

I've seen others that had similar problems out in cyberspace and it wasn't always Lenovo, although a suspicious number were Lenovo.    

Brian_K, I just saw your two additional posts. Thanks for your help. I will reply later.

niktoman,

 

I posted an edit while you were typing.

 

What is the error you see when the computer won't boot after restoring your Ghost image?

Brian_K,  

 

I tried to see last night if I had notes on the exact errors. As I recall, after restoring a Ghost image from a c: partition where the Lenovo boot manager was present on that drive, the error was an NT loader error that occurred after telling the boot manager to boot the c: partition. I don’t have the exact error. With the McAfee pre-boot manager, the error was a Safeboot corruption error 92H.

 

I have a new theory on this as follows:

 

  • A Ghost image restore of a primary/boot partition will work just fine as long as it is done to the same drive that the image was taken from.  This is the case even if the drive contains multiple partitions or a special boot manager or boot loader.
  • A Ghost image restore of a primary/boot partition will also work just fine if it is done to a different drive (different size, different size partitions) as long as source drive boot sector has a standard boot loader.
  • A Ghost image restore of a primary/boot partition will result in an unbootable situation if it is done to a different drive (different size, different size partitions) and the source drive had a special boot manager or boot loader. In this case, you must re-instate the special boot code. This might require FIXBOOT and/or FIXMBR to get the partition to boot and then using System Configuration Utility or some other creative means to reinstate the special boot code.   

 

Does this sound correct? If so, there is soooooo much confusion out there about this. I noticed a guy on this forum Wed that was worried that a Ghost restore would corrupt his laptop rebuild partition (or process). He has good reason to be worried.


niktoman wrote:

Does this sound correct?


niktoman,

 

Not correct at all.

 

I just did a test for you. Win7 on the HD with BootItBM as the boot manager. BootIt is installed into an 8 MB FAT partition and also into many sectors of the First Track.

 

I created Ghost 15 images of Win7 and the BootIt partition. The HD was removed and replaced by a different sized empty HD. No partitions. From the Ghost CD the Win7 image was restored and the Win7 partition was resized 10 GB larger using the resize option. Usual Ghost Options regarding Active, MBR, Disk Signature were used. The BootIt image was restored and it correctly restored to the end of the HD.

 

No problems. The boot manager appeared on rebooting, Win7 was chosen and it loaded normally.

 

I checked and the new HD now had the same Disk Signature of the old HD.