I am trying to create a Norton Ghost bootable DVD (I can't create one directly from Ghost). I created a bootable DVD using the NERO DVD-ROM boot option and the Ghost boot disk. It worked (booted) fine when I used it except when it came to ask me for the second disk in the set. I had copied it to the DVD and hoped it would just find it but it didn't. So, how do you create bootable DVD's when the boot files span more than 1 diskette?
Span them on multiple discs! When you are making your image, it tells you that it is too big to fit on one DVD and to insert the next one
I think I haven't made my problem clear enough. The Ghost boot disks are 2 3.5" floppy disks. When I use the NERO DVD-ROM boot option I insert the first floppy disk in drive A: but I don't know what to do with the second floppy disk. Assumably I need to create some kind of image file from both floppy disks and point the NERO DVD-ROM boot program at that image file to create the bootable DVD. This is what I'm not sure how to do.
If you can make the DVD bootable already, all you should have to do is put the image and Ghost both on the DVD. Then boot to it and run Ghost. I know Ghost 2003 can make a bootable DVD and put the image on it for you, but since you didn't mention the version I don't know if that's an option.
Well if the DVD is bootable, why resort to floppies? A DVD is ever so much bigger than a diskette so it shouldnt be a problem fitting a handful of boot diskettes on a DVD ;-)
Look, the problem is that the files on both diskettes must form a part of the boot record on the DVD. Right now the DVD I have made boots but then stops and asks for disk 2. Assumably if disk 2 was a part of the boot record like disk 1 it would find it automatically (hopefully). If not I'll have to try and edit a file on the 1st boot disk before creating hte boot DVD. In response to the other post I cannot create a bootable DVD directly from ghost.
Ah ok that would make sense then Have you tried running ghost using standalone mode? That should solve your problem nicely
Bah, just forget about Ghost altogether. Imagine a simple floppy boot disk of any variety. There are however, in this instance, too many files to fit on a single floppy so there are 2 floppies. At some point in the boot process it asks you to insert the second disk and press any key to continue. When you create a bootable DVD using NERO it has an option to load a disk in drive A: from which it will obtain the boot information. In my particular situation there are 2 disks. I have tried simply copying the files from the 2nd floppy onto the DVD but this does not work - it just puts up the message asking for the second disk. If the files on the second disk are a part of the DVD boot record it might find them automatically. If not there is probably some .bat file I can edit. My simple question was how do I include all the files from both disks in the boot record of the DVD.
Then what do you do? If I wanted to create a bootable CD or DVD out of more files than would just happen to fit on a nappy little floppy disk, how would I go about it? Can I create an image file combining my 2 floppy disks and use that? If so how?
When you created the boot discs, was there an option to create a CD/DVD instead of floppies? In any case, you need to start from scratch instead of trying to get the two discs to work as one on a DVD.
All you should have to do, to keep things simple anyway, is get a boot disk that doesn't take 2 floppies (forget having Ghost do it) and use that for Nero to get the boot files from. If you don't have one you should be able to find floppy images with Google. Once you have the boot information, make the DVD with the files you need for Ghost and the image file you need to be able to restore. Then you can boot the disk, run Ghost manually, then you can restore interactively in Ghost.
The upshot then is that you cannot create a bootable DVD from more than 1 floppy? What if I created a small partition on my hard drive and copied all the files from the boot disks to the partition and then pointed Nero at the partition instead of the floppy drive? Is there something special about a bootable floppy that would prevent this from working? It just seems strange that there isn't some simple way of doing this.
I'm not sure what files your set is using to boot from so there's no way I can answer that, but in general, maybe - maybe not. I'm guessing the program that asks you for disk 2 is checking the floppy drive for it. If that's set up in a text file somewhere it can probably be changed. If it's in a .EXE or .COM file it might still be possible, but would require using a hex editor to do it. In any case you're going about it the hard way if you do that because you don't need 2 floppies worth of stuff to boot your computer. With an old fashioned DOS/Windows boot disk you can start Ghost by just putting it into the Autoexec.bat file, and if you read up on command line options for Ghost you can probably get it to automatically restore for you if you want. I've never tried making a boot disk with DVD-ROM support, but I can't believe it's much, if any, harder.
