Dynamic Disk support in Ghost and LiveState Recovery
Situation:
This document describes Dynamic Disk support in Symantec Ghost and Symantec LiveState Recovery
Solution:
There are several issues you must consider when using Symantec Ghost or Symantec LiveState Recovery to create or restore the image files of Dynamic Disks.
Note: The information in this document applies only to Microsoft software RAID, not hardware RAID.
Dynamic Volumes and the Recovery Environment
- The Recovery Environment does not recognize mirrored and RAID 5 Dynamic Disk types and so does not assign them a drive letter. An image stored on either of these volume types cannot be restored in the Recovery Environment. You must copy the image file to a different volume type or to a network location before you can restore it.
- The Recovery Environment can restore image files that are stored on the following volume types: simple volumes, striped volumes (RAID 0), and spanned volumes.
Restoring Dynamic Disk Volumes
If you are having trouble restoring an image of a Dynamic Disk volume, make sure that at least one of the following conditions is true:
- There is a volume (the type does not matter) in the existing Dynamic Disk that is at least as large as the volume from which you are trying to restore the image file. Keep in mind that different volume types may require more space than others. For example, RAID 5 needs additional space for parity information.
- The disk space to which you are trying to restore the image is a Basic disk that can be converted to a Dynamic disk at a later time.
Note: When restoring the image, you may need to unmark the option "Set Volume Active" and restore the image as a Basic volume. Once the volume has been restored, you can convert it to a Dynamic volume.
References:
For an overview of Dynamic Disks, see the Microsoft document Dynamic vs. Basic Storage in Windows 2000 (Article ID 175761).
Document ID: 2004055241016262
Last Modified: 05/02/2006
Date Created: 04/13/2004
Product(s): Drive Image 7.0, Norton Ghost 10.0, Norton Ghost 9.0, V2i Protector Desktop Edition 2.0, V2i Protector Management Console 2.0, V2i Protector Server Edition 2.0, V2i Protector Small Business Edition 2.0