I have been running Ghost 15.0 on my Win7-64 system for several years. I have incremental backups of my C: drive scheduled for twice daily (12pm and 6pm) with a new full backup weekly (Sunday @ 12pm). The backups go to the F: disk in my computer.
This has worked successfully up until about a month ago when all backups stopped running. I deleted the backup job and recreated it, but still no scheduled runs. I removed and reinstalled Ghost and when that didn't fix the problem I even uninstalled NIS 2014 as well as Ghost, ran the Norton Removal Tool and then reinstalled NIS and Ghost. Still no luck.
I can run everything manually but the scheduled backups only run (unpredictably) once in a while. There is no information in the system Event Log or in Ghost's logs to indicate that the task ever tried to start. The Ghost home page does show a missed backup until I run it manually.
In another weird anamoly I scheduled a file/folder backup for 10pm each night and that ran for several days but not the C: backups. I then deleted the file/folder backup but still nothing.
My backup drive is less than 50% full and I can't see anything that changed. I have Ghost 15.0 with the same settings on the wife's Win7-64 laptop and everything there continues to run OK.
Welcome,
Has anything on the system changed? Ghost isn't too compatible with USB 3.x or large drives - external or internal.
Keep us posted
No, all of the drives are the same. The only thing I could see was the upgrade from NIS 2013 to 2014 and maybe the monthly Windows patches. But my wife's laptop got all of those, too, and her backups work fine. Just missed another at 12pm. Wish the logs would at least show something.
I do notice now that even though I just missed a backup, the Status Details on the Ghost home page show that everything is backed up (Green). I'm just going to wait and see if the job ever runs again this week.
I should note that the backup drive (F:) is a 640GB internal drive. My wife's laptop backups over the network to the J: drive (also 640GB) in the same desktop system. I run a Win7 Backup & Restore job every night and it completes w/o any problems.
jmbissell wrote:
I should note that the backup drive (F:) is a 640GB internal drive. My wife's laptop backups over the network to the J: drive (also 640GB) in the same desktop system. I run a Win7 Backup & Restore job every night and it completes w/o any problems.
Hi,
When you do the backup & restore every night what are you backing up and restoring? Changing timestamps and restore points can confuse Ghost.
Keep us posted
Same thing I've been doing since I installed Win7 and Ghost a couple years ago. Are you referring to Windows 7 Backup and Restore? There I am doing a "Files in Selected Folders" backup of My Documents plus a system image nightly at 9pm.
My Ghost incremental backups run (or are supposed to) at noon and 6pm.
If you open GHOST, click on the ADVANCED tab, in the left pane, click on EVENT LOG. That will show any errors that might be occuring.
Been there, doen that. Nothing in the Ghost Event Log or the Windows Event Log shows anything except for successful (manual) runs. I am logging all events. Ghost has now missed the last three scheduled backups but the home screen still shows green. It did run the newly-scheduled File & Folder backup on time but not the incremental backup of C:
How many hard drives do you have in your computer?
I have 3: The C: drive is a Sandisk 250GB Extreme SSD. The backup disk (F:) is a 640GB WD Black. The backup disk (J:) for my wife's laptop over the network is a 640GB WD Green. Nothing has changed in this configuration for over a year.
Still nothing in any logs that says that Ghost tried to run at the proper times but it does report a missed backup when I open it.
The fact that a manual job runs but a schedule job does not means Ghost itself is working. Is the computer on when the job is scheduled to run? Is the job itself enabled? When you click on ADVANCED tab and then BACKUP JOBS, right-mouse click on the job and click ENABLE. (If it is already enabled, DISABLE will be visible.)
It's a long shot, but does each drive letter have a name? I had a similar problem of skipped backups on the System Reserved Partition. In my case it is a Windows problem that Windows does not always assign the same drive number when you boot the PC. Have a look here...
http://community.norton.com/t5/Other-Norton-Products/Ghost-15-not-always-backing-up-all-scheduled-partitions/m-p/228509#M22511
Yes, the job is enabled. As I noted in my oiginal post, the scheduled job just quit running for some reason. No change to h/w or Ghost. I did see one scheduled backup run on the 12th but I've had to run the others manually. I've left it alone for a few days but nothing happens. I am often sitting at the computer when the backup is scheduled to run and I don't get the prompt asking if it's OK to start the backup. It's just a very strange situation.
Today I tried moving the backup to have it stored to the J: drive. 6:00 came & went and no backup started.
Each drive letter has a name, always has. They are all labeled as "Local Disk (x:)". This was a clean install of Windows 7 and there is no system reserved partition. These are all Basic disks w/ NTFS.
jmbissell wrote:
Each drive letter has a name, always has. They are all labeled as "Local Disk (x:)". This was a clean install of Windows 7 and there is no system reserved partition. These are all Basic disks w/ NTFS.
Hi,
Long shot - veeeery loooong shot.
Try deleting the backup job, do a cold boot, create a new backup job and see what happens. It worked for me one time when I was about to lose my last hair, attached to my last nerve. 
If it is says"Local Disk", it doesn't have a label. Can you post a screenshot of disk management? I am really curious if the Disk numbers are changing and causing the backups to be skipped. You should look at Disk Management when the backup runs normally and then when it is missed look again. Pay close attention to the order the drives are listed and especially the Disk number. Of course this I could be barking up the wrong tree, but it doesn't hurt to rule it out.
I've gotten farther in my investigation. I first uninstalled Ghost and then manually went through the registry and cleaned out all its entries. After rebooting, I installed Ghost again and set up the same backup job for C:. The full backup was completed. This was at 9:30am. At noon, an incremental backup ran as scheduled. Same for the incremental t 6pm. So far so good.
The next day the noon and 6pm backups failed to run. the home screen indicated that backups had been missed but as usual there was nothing in any log to show that the jobs had ever started. The following day the noon backup again failed to run. I decided to restart the Ghost service even though Task Manager said that it was running. When the service stopped, the tray message popped up indicating that the connection to the server had been lost. As soon as the service restarted, a message popped up int he tray asking if I wanted to run missed backups. These ran normally. The 6pm scheduled incremental ran sucessfully that day as well.
The next day, no backups ran when scheduled. Again restarting the Ghost service fixed the problem for that day.
My system is set up to sleep between 10:30pm and 6:00am each day. It's been this way for well over a year and not unil recently has Ghost had a problem. I am now convinced that the problem has something to do w/sleep and that even though the Ghost service is running when the system wakes up, it isn't starting the scheduled tasks. I suppose I could put a job in Task Scheduler to restart the service every morning but since no other programs/services/drivers have any problems after sleep and Ghost itself has always worked, I see this as treating the symptom rather than the problem.
Oh, and if I define a file/folder backup, that runs even though the C: backup does not!
So the PC only went to sleep and not rebooted?
Yes, it sleeps overnight and wakes in the morning.
Try clearing out the history and the schedule. Perhaps something got hung there and resetting it will get it back on track.
To do that, delete your backup job, then stop the GHOST service. Then go the C:\ProgramData\Symantec\Norton Ghost folder. Rename the HISTORY folder to hISTORY_OLD and the SCHEDULE folder to SCHEDULE_OLD. Restart your system, re-recreate the backup job in Ghost, and let it run. See if that makes any difference.