Norton Ghost Image Drive RAID0 weirdness

[Tom]

Am I glad I read your post! I am just now setting up the
exact same environment on my newly built PC. I was
planning on using Norton Ghost to back up my RAID 0
(2x40g maxtors) to a new 80g maxtor IDE. I was thinking
that there may be a snag in doing so because backing up
thr RAID array might not be that straight forward. I was
thinking of setting up a RAID 0 + 1 but my onboard RAID
Promise Controller although supporting such a setup is
really maxing out the controllers capacity. I really
can't offer up much help for you but I would really like
to know what you intend to do! I would appreciate your
sharing the solution....if I find one first I'll let you
know...how about e-mailing me so we can extablish a way
of communicating. Thanks, Tom
>-----Original Message-----
>Hello folks,
>
> I run a RAID0 for my System partition and
periodically image the
>partition onto a third IDE partition using Norton Ghost,
assuming that in
>the event of a stripe failure, I'd be able to boot off
the IDE drive and
>re-image onto the RAID0. Just for kicks, I disconnected
the RAID0 drives and
>booted off the IDE imaged partition and get the
following error:
>
>Cannot verify the license, blah, blah, blah with an
error code 0x80090006.
>
>I guess my fail-safe plan is not so fail-safe afterall.
I tried booting the
>IDE in Safe Mode and it just won't get past the Windows
splash screen.
>
>What the heck is going on here and how do I fix this
such that I have a
>fail-safe back-up of my RAID0 system partition in the
event of failure?
>
>Thanks for any ideas,
>
>Dave
>
>
>.
>

[David Shorthouse]

Tom,

I think what's happening here is that when I leave the cloned back-up
IDE in the machine, upon the next boot to my system RAID0 partition, it gets
assigned drive letters (other than 'C' of course). So...on the test boot to
the cloned back-up, the OS can't load its files in a poorly referenced
registry. I imagine using a boot disk and attempting to fix the MBR might
work, but this seems like a hassle. My next test is to immediately
disconnect the RAID0 array after having run a Ghost clone to the IDE drive
to see if my suspicions are correct.
For the moment, since there now seems to be no point in cloning the
system partition to a second partition on a permanently attached drive, I am
simply making a series of split Ghost image files of the system partition.
This saves space and allows me to copy the files to CD from within Windows
at a later date- the native, on-the-fly CD burning in Ghost from DOS is
painfully slow.

If I could boot off USB or Firewire (my BIOS doesn't support that), this
would be my solution because one could immediately disconnect these types of
drives after a Ghost clone to prevent the drive designations from getting
messed up.

Hope this helps a little and I'll reply back here if my above test works and
thus confirms my suspicions,

Dave

> Am I glad I read your post! I am just now setting up the
> exact same environment on my newly built PC. I was
> planning on using Norton Ghost to back up my RAID 0
> (2x40g maxtors) to a new 80g maxtor IDE. I was thinking
> that there may be a snag in doing so because backing up
> thr RAID array might not be that straight forward. I was
> thinking of setting up a RAID 0 + 1 but my onboard RAID
> Promise Controller although supporting such a setup is
> really maxing out the controllers capacity. I really
> can't offer up much help for you but I would really like
> to know what you intend to do! I would appreciate your
> sharing the solution....if I find one first I'll let you
> know...how about e-mailing me so we can extablish a way
> of communicating. Thanks, Tom
> >-----Original Message-----
> >Hello folks,
> >
> > I run a RAID0 for my System partition and
> periodically image the
> >partition onto a third IDE partition using Norton Ghost,
> assuming that in
> >the event of a stripe failure, I'd be able to boot off
> the IDE drive and
> >re-image onto the RAID0. Just for kicks, I disconnected
> the RAID0 drives and
> >booted off the IDE imaged partition and get the
> following error:
> >
> >Cannot verify the license, blah, blah, blah with an
> error code 0x80090006.
> >
> >I guess my fail-safe plan is not so fail-safe afterall.
> I tried booting the
> >IDE in Safe Mode and it just won't get past the Windows
> splash screen.
> >
> >What the heck is going on here and how do I fix this
> such that I have a
> >fail-safe back-up of my RAID0 system partition in the
> event of failure?
> >
> >Thanks for any ideas,
> >
> >Dave
> >
> >
> >.
> >

[David Shorthouse]

Well, my little test failed and my suspicion was wrong. After having cloned
my system partition to a partition on a second drive, I turned off the
computer, disconnected the source system drive and tried to boot off the
destination drive. No go. The Windows splash screen appears and then
promptly complains with the identical error I reported earlier. Now I'm at
my wits end. I was hoping to maybe use an external USB2 drive to perform
some periodical clones as back-up for my system drive, but if I can never
boot off these freshly cloned system partitions, what the hell is the use?
If I was to make periodic image files instead, how the heck can I be certain
that these will ever work when and if needed?

Dave

> Tom,
>
> I think what's happening here is that when I leave the cloned back-up
> IDE in the machine, upon the next boot to my system RAID0 partition, it
gets
> assigned drive letters (other than 'C' of course). So...on the test boot
to
> the cloned back-up, the OS can't load its files in a poorly referenced
> registry. I imagine using a boot disk and attempting to fix the MBR might
> work, but this seems like a hassle. My next test is to immediately
> disconnect the RAID0 array after having run a Ghost clone to the IDE drive
> to see if my suspicions are correct.
> For the moment, since there now seems to be no point in cloning the
> system partition to a second partition on a permanently attached drive, I
am
> simply making a series of split Ghost image files of the system partition.
> This saves space and allows me to copy the files to CD from within Windows
> at a later date- the native, on-the-fly CD burning in Ghost from DOS is
> painfully slow.
>
> If I could boot off USB or Firewire (my BIOS doesn't support that),
this
> would be my solution because one could immediately disconnect these types
of
> drives after a Ghost clone to prevent the drive designations from getting
> messed up.
>
> Hope this helps a little and I'll reply back here if my above test works
and
> thus confirms my suspicions,
>
> Dave