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Sonstaff,
How did you delete the recovery points? Hopefully you went to the destination drive and deleted the recovery points there am I correct?
I deleted some from in Ghost and the rest from Explorerā¦I left one rec point there, but, the drive still showed full
I then compressd the drive, (which I didnāt wanrt to do) and was able to make a new rec pointā¦ after that, I installed Norton 360 which went OK and finally tried to install Ghost 14 which choked and I contacted the analyst in India to correct it this morningā¦all is OK now as far the the programs are running, but the drive is still compressed and filling up. BTW, I had G 10 set to delete the oldest rec point, but it didnāt do it. I hope G 14 will or , Iāll be right back here. 
Sonstaff,
Glad to hear the programs are running well now. I personally run a 500 gig drive as the main c: drive gets larger with time that also causes the images to get larger. Norton 360 is a restore point backup so each backup will be saved also causing more space each time. Personally I do manual backups, so I am in control of what is backed up, and how often. This way I make a new destination folder with the date I have created the image. Later on when I go back to look at the folders I can always delete the oldest out first. This works well for my needs and might be worth trying.
I understand that the drive will get bigger with time, but when I delete several restore points so that only one is left, why does the drive occupied space never get smaller? to the point I need to compress the drive to create another restore point...it just doesn't seem right.
The occupied space os over 300Gb, and the drive it it backing up is only around 100Gb...what's up with that?
Sonstaff,
I understand, are you able to look at the data on the external, properties and confirm total of what is on the drive. You am may also want to do the following on the drive to make sure it is not a maintenance issue of some sort.
1. To run chkdsk do the following:
- Click start then mycomputer.
- Right click on the c: or the drive you wish to run the scan on.
- Select properties then tools.
- Click the check now button.
- Make sure both check disk options are selected then click Start.
- Click yes to the warning then close all windows and reboot the computer.
It is advised to run the scan 3 times error free.
Defrag the system.
Click start then programs or all programs, next click accessories then system tools then disk defragmenter,
I would also be tempted to even advice you to get the important data off that drive format clean, then do the chkdsk / defrag, then put the data back into place to see how it then reacts. It is a very strange issue you are having on this drive.
Next:
Open my documents.
Click tools / folder options / view.
Select Show hidden files and folders then click apply and ok.
Look to see if any thing else shows up that you were unaware of.
I look froward to see if any of this will help.
Is it windows or Ghost that sees the drive as full?
It is bothā¦now it is telling me it canāt create a restore point, because the disk is fullā¦I hate to do it, but I think I will reformat the backup drive then run a full backup.
Sonstaff,
After the format try the chkdsk and defrag to make sure it is as clean as it can be. Let me know the results.
A tidbit of info:
Compressing a drive that has images on it can actually increase the space actually used on the drive to store the image, and it can increase the backup time. The algorithm that Microsoft uses for compression is not the greatest. You would be better off using no compression on the drive and high compression in Ghost for his images to save space. You may also want to remove all Ghost schedules etc and start over from scratch.
Now, when I try to format, it tells me āWindows cannot format this drive. Quit any disk utilities of other programs that are using this drive, and make sure that no window is displaying the contents of the drive. Then try formatting againā so I check everything that I can see, and try again,ā¦but to no availā¦I get the same message again. I tried to uncompress the drive and it did some, but there are lots of fbFiles folders packed with lost of files that remain compressed. (they are blue in the window). Is there any other way to reformat, like from DOSā¦(I know DOS is a thing of the past) or from safe mode?? How can determine if another program is secretly accessing the drive?
OK I snuck in the back door using the diskmgmt.msc utility, and it warned me that to force a format might cause problems in the program using the drive. It is formatting,now. Now a strange thingā¦before I activated this utility, I deleted all the files with Explorer, and the disk remained just under half full in āpropertiesā, but showed no files in Explorer. There was also no hidden partition showing in diskmgmt.msc, either. Odd.
Formatting went okā¦the disk was finally empty chkdsk showed evertyjing on order, so I tried to do a full back upā¦Error message said something like it couldnāt retrieve some reference to a file I had deleted. But it did create a restore point, and now it says it is backed up. In the backup history screen, there are references to files I know I deleted when I reformatted the driveā¦how can I get rid of them? I donāt have a option to delete from that screen.
What screen exactly do you see these references?
Backup History
How to Delete Ghost history files.
He needs to delete the .PQH files or history. To do such you need to do the following:
1) Run Services.msc
2) Find Norton Ghost in the list and stop it
3) Go to (for XP) C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Symantec\Norton Ghost\History or (for Vista) go to C:\ProgramData\Symantec\Norton Ghost\History
4) Delete all .PQH files
5) Go back to the services.msc window and start Norton Ghost.
It will also be advised to remove the current Ghost Image you have saved as the pointers will no longer be able to see that image. Then make a new image and you should be good to go.
Did as you say, and backed up the drive and My Documentsā¦now, when I go the the HOME screen, the pie chart has a wedge that says Backup Data 95.2 Gb and an additional one that says Other Used Space, 34.9 Gb and,of course free space, 335.7Gb. Is this as it should be? or is that 34Gb space the previous data that no longer has a pointer to it?
Remember, if you deleted the current image, re-formatted then removed all of the histroy at the same time there should be no extra data on the drive other then the image.
Can you run the Seast program and then look for the partinfo.txt (NGHDiagnostics) folder is where it is found, then post it so I can look at it. At this point is is not making much sense to me but this may help.
To run SeaST and gather log files for troubleshooting.
Click start then search or find depending on the operating system.
For the keyword or where it says all or part of the file name type seaST.exe.
Make sure look in is set for c:
Click advanced options and the top 3 options should have a check mark.
Click search.
Open a SeaST file that is found then click at the bottom āgather technical support informationā
Next open c:windows\temp\ right click the support folderand zip, send the support.zip folder to me in an attachment.
Another location may be:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Symantec\Norton Ghost
After you open the partinfo.txt file copy the whole page and post.
Partinfo.txt is too big to post I have 5 drives. Thereās probably lots of it you donāt needā¦can you tell me what part of it you need, and maybe I can post thatā¦or give me an email adress I can send a .zip file to.