I am trying to create a disk image using Norton Ghost and it asks me if I want to create a CD ROM boot disk, or a boot disk with CD-R/RW, LPT and USB support. To the latter option, it then adds "do not use to read from CD", which is very confusing. Although this pc has a CD-R drive, I am not sure what the question actually means and the Symantec website was mind-bogglingly complex in its technical support section. Basically this is just a home pc, and I want to create a disk image on CD-R, using the CD-R drive of course. But I am not sure whether I should be creating a bootable disk with CD-R (etc) support, because I have no idea what this question is all about and why it says "do not use to read from CD" next to this option. Any help welcome

You are way ahead in the game. Will your drive image fit on less then 700meg cd-r? If not then using cdr is a moot point. Unless something is new I don't believe you can span a image across multiple cdr disks. If your system can boot a bootable cdrom and you don't have a cdrom boot diskette than by all means opt for the bootable cdrom.

I think you should just divide your drive into two or more partitions and save the ghost image on a separate partition than your boot partition. I have but do not use Norton Ghost, but just like PQ's Drive Image you probably will need a proprietary boot CD to get it going if you ever decide to restore the image. __________________________________________________________ The greatest risk is not taking one

Ghost will span multiple disks.

Of course you can span multiple discs. what would be the point of burning to a CD if your couldn't. If you made the bootdisc that has the burning feature built in it will do it automaticly for you. If you make the bootdisc that will read CD's and write an image file to the hard drive, here is the way to have it split the image file. Look at the autoexec.bat file on the bootdisk. Depending on which version of ghost you have it will either be called "ghost.exe" or "ghostpe.exe" Add this text right after the ghost.exe ghost.exe -split=600 -autoname where 600 is the size that the image file is split into. Now to answer you first question. What is the difference of the types of bootdiscs. The bootdisc with CD burning capabilities is just for burning your hard drive image to CD's. If you need to restore that image file to your hard drive, then you can't use this disc. You will need the other bootdisc to restore the image file to your hard drive.

Hi Thanks for the replies. I am still a bit confused! The reason is that I cannot see the underlying logic here. To make a bootable CD or any kind I still have to burn it onto CD-R. So what I cannot work out is why there is a difference between creating a CD-R or CD-ROM bootable disk. My hard disk has 10Gb of data. After creating the image, I want to have the option of either restoring the image to the same hdd, or restoring the image to a new hdd, should the hdd become damaged. So I will need to span multiple CD's and be able to either use the bootable CD on the same or another hdd. Does it matter which I choose? Do I need to create two bootable CD's? Sorry I am utterly bewildered.

I use Ghost exclusively and this is my method: 1:) I use a 98SE boot disk which has CDROM access enabled. It contains this autoexec.bat: @echo off MOUSE.COM LH \MSCDEX.exe /D:cd1 /D:cd2 /D:cd3 CD GHOST echo Loading... GHOSTPE.EXE -z9 and this config.sys: DEVICE = oakcdrom.sys /D:cd1 DEVICE = btdosm.sys DEVICE = flashpt.sys DEVICE = btcdrom.sys /D:cd2 rem DEVICE = aspi2dos.sys rem DEVICE = aspi8dos.sys rem DEVICE = aspi4dos.sys DEVICE = aspi8u2.sys rem DEVICE = aspicd.sys /D:cd3 LASTDRIVE=Z On the disk I have a "Ghost" folder which contains the Ghostpe.exe (see the autoexec.bat above) 2.) I use the boot disk to rune the Ghost.exe and then select which of my bootable partitions I want to backup. Then I backup to my CD burner and I use rewritables. When the disk is full it will ask for the next disk. I usually use 3 disks for about 4gig. When the burn process is about to start it will ask whether you wish to copy the bootdisk to the CD (which will make it bootable). I always say "no" because I would rather rely on my bootdisk which I know will always work in whatever computer. If you wish you can contact me at ewen@nospambetarun.net