How can I recover files from corrupted Ghost files??

I have been using Ghost that came along with Norton Systemworks 2003 for almost 5 years now. Duh. Any ways, I wanted to try creating a Ghost image and saving it directly to DVD's. I went and set up everthing in DOS, needed to have FireWire support for the DVD Recorder. No big deal. Ghost booted up fine and all that. Did the typical things to get started: source = my auxiliary drive, copy to = my DVD Recorder. Chose Fast Compression, which was later realized as being my first mistake. The file creation took about 5 DVD's and everything appeared to be going okay. The whole process took almost 2 hours. I then went on to do the Integrity Check. Shortly after I started the Integrity Check, was in too much of a hurry to get done and I was so confident that the Image file was okay that I shut down the machine, and proceeded in zero-ing both of my HDD's. Had I run the Integrity check just a few more minutes I would have found that the Ghost Image file had been corrupted and I would have never erased my HDD's. The errors that I was getting in DOS when Ghost exited itself was Decompression Errors when I later went back and tried to do an Integrity Check. That is when I realized I should not have used Fast compression, rather I should have used No Compression. Makes sense. Most of the data on my Aux drive were Ghost Image files and they were already compressed enough as it is.

So, here is my dilemma, and a serious dilemma at that. All my vital data for my business is stored in that corrupted Ghost Image File. I have 5 DVD's with several corrupted segment files and have yet to find a way to at least read the files. I can't restore back to the HDD, that's for sure. I've tried using a few command line switches in XP to run Ghost Explorer and nothing works. The files will not load. I did manage to find some folders listed but they were empty.

Anybody have any ideas on how I can recover any of my data from these corrupted Ghost files???

 

If you have not used your hard drives for anything since you zeroed them out, you may wish to contact the drive manufacturer or a professional data recovery service, such as Ontrack, to inquire about the possibility of recovering your business data from the hard drives themselves. I'm not optimistic such a recovery would be feasible, but it's worth asking about. In theory it's possible to recover data that's been overwritten, but as a practical matter it may not be economically feasible if it's possible at all . Still, you may as well contact the drive manufacturer or a data recovery service and ask how likely it is your data could be recovered from those hard drives and how much it would cost. This is assuming that the hard drives in question have not been used since they were zeroed out. If they are in use, it may still be possible to recover some of the old overwritten data, but such recovery becomes less and less likely the more the hard drives are used.

If you don't wish to pay for professional data recovery help there is software available (both freeware and regular retail stuff) that may allow recovery of some data from your hard drives. But typically such software is able to recover data deleted from the recycle bin or from a drive that's been repartitioned. Whether a similar recovery would succeed with drives that have been zeroed out (so-called low level formatting) I don't know.

There are both free and commercial hard drive data recovery programs available here in MajorGeeks download section. Maybe someone else here will know if any of those are likely to be able to recover data from drives that have been zeroed out.

But if it is the case that your only chance of recovering your data depends on restoring it from your corrupted Ghost DVD's you should probably start by contacting Symantec and explaining what happened and how important the data is to you. Or again, try contacting Ontrack or some other pro data recovery service to see if they think they can recover your data and find out what they might charge.

If you're determined to attempt data recovery on your own you might still be well advised to pay at least a few dollars to Symantec tech support to get some tips on what steps/methods will offer the best chances of recovering your important data.

Did you attempt to use this command switch with Ghost:

-CRCIGNORE

I found this info on the Symantec website about the above command switch for ghost:

"CRC errors indicate data corruption. This switch overrides CRC error detection and may allow a corrupted image file to be used. Using this switch leaves the corrupted files in an unknown state. You can use this switch to help you extract files from a corrupted image file."

That command switch is intended to be used with Symantec Ghost 8.0 and Norton Ghost 2003. Is that what you used to create this backup?

The DVD's you burned aren't DVD/R-W's, right? They're DVD-R's? Because, given the importance of the data to you, you shouldn't risk trying any operations that might re-write the data on the disks and make it even more difficult to recover unless you are very confident that such an operation will succeed. And even then, it would be a good idea to back up your set of disks by copying them/burning a set of DVD-R's. And that might be a good idea anyway, even if your originals are DVD-R's -- assuming that they'll copy OK, which may be a problem given that the data is corrupt.

If you decide to contact a pro data recovery service make sure they understand the exact nature of your problem. Data recovery services often specialize in recovering data from hard drives that have crashed because of mechanical failures and such a service is typically quite expensive. But they may also be able to help with a problem such are yours and perhaps it won't be as expensive as recovering data from a failed hard drive. Ontrack has a good reputation, but there are a number of other data recovery companies around. Do an online search for "business data recovery" or "data recovery service" or something similar if you're interested in some professional help.

Even a straightforward backup with no compression can contain errors of course. But when the method you're using also involves compression you increase the probability that something may go wrong and also increase the difficulty of recovering such data if something goes wrong. And that's an invitation for Murphy's Law to kick in. But I'm sure I don't need to tell you that now.

You seem well aware that you shouldn't have cut corners by not completely testing your backup before you wiped your hard drives. And for really important data, even running a verify operation isn't necessarily adequate. The best thing to do for critical data backups is to actually attempt a complete restore operation (with a spare hard drive, for example) to insure your backup will function correctly if you need it. All this is more time and expense, but, given it's your business data, you shouldn't cut corners. I'd think at least some of the additional hardware costs to implement such a foolproof backup setup would be a legitimate business expense for tax purposes. But I certainly don't want to be quoted as a tax expert so you should check with your attorney or accountant/bookkeeper about possible tax deductions/write offs for additional backup hardware, like an additional hard drive for actually testing data restoration from your backups.

I hope some of these suggestions will at least help you decide how best to proceed. Good luck!

 

Have you tried to copy the whole dvd's to your hard drive?

 

You would not have to mess with the dvd contents, until you have them on your hardddrive, then try a tool like
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Virtual_CD-ROM_Control_Panel_d4402.html

http://www.majorgeeks.com/Original_CD_Emulator_d558.html

http://www.majorgeeks.com/Disk_Image_Viewer_d3534.html

If you still cannot view the files, or get to them, while the copy is on your hard drive, you might get lucky with Linux Live cd, to read them on your hard drive from the Linux operating system, that you write to cd, and then copy and paste the folders that you can get to, to a new folder on your hard drive to work on.
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html
http://www.livecdlist.com/wiki/index.php/LiveCD_Creation_Resources

 

Yes I have.

Each DVD has at least on corrupted segment file that, when I try to copy, will stop copying altogether about 1/3 into the copy of that particular file. The best I could do was to copy what I could from each corrupted segment file till it stopped, pull the DVD out of the Player, and then use Norton Protection to restore the automatically deleted file along with the one's that I had no problem copying. There is somewhat of a peculiar pattern: every third segment file on every DVD will not copy completely. The third DVD, however, is different in that not only was the third segment file turn out to be a bad copy, but 2 additional files would not copy over complete either, one wouldn't even copy over at all.

Thanks for all the info. I'll try all 3 or 4 of those different Programs.

Here is a portion of the GHOSTERR.TXT file:

Date : Sun Mar 2 23:23:46 2008
Error Number: (19235)
Message: Decompression error 10
Version: 2003.793 (Dec 17 2003, Build=793)
Command line arguments:
Active Switches :
Spanning
AutoName
CRC Ignore
ProgMode : PROG_LOCAL
PathName : 2764 Current.GHO
DumpFile : @CD-R1Ghost CD/DVD Image
DumpPos : 2314625878
File64 buffersize : 0
FlagImplode : 0
FlagExplode : 2

Operation Details :
Total size.........41888
MB copied..........2289
MB remaining.......39599
Percent complete...5%
Speed..............407MB/min
Time elapsed.......5:37
Time remaining.....1:37:09

 

Go here http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl
the folks there, Ghost troubleshooting specialists, may be able to give you some ideas.

I stopped using Ghost because of the integrity check failing. I got tired of doing images twice until I got one to work (this was without compression).

 

Plodr has been really helpful, there-
look at this link- command line possibilty for corrupt ghost - sorry I have no more knowledge of it, but Plodr might give more.
http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1138324167/15#19

 

glgavis 99, have you made any progress retrieving your data from that corrupted Ghost backup? If so, I imagine other people here might be interested in hearing what worked (or didn't work for that matter).