Recently I made the mistake, which I'll do never again, of starting to create a Ghost image using Ghost 2003 without creating the disaster recovery disk which I've don a dozen or so times without incident. However, this time I got "Missing OS" message instead of DR DOS starting Ghost like it normally does when creating Ghost image. I'd made a bootable Ghost CD and ran Ghost from it to try to restore image to partition from a previous image where Ghost showed the image and prompted to select destination to restore image, but all partitions were grayed out and not selectable. I bit the bullet and reinstalled Windows and all apps from scratch.

Does anybody know why all destination partitions were grayed out and whether there's a solution for this problem? Would running Ghost from the CD to create the partition that was attempted to be restored have averted this problem? What good is an imaging program if an image can't be restored due to destination to restore to being non selectable?

2003 is out dated.

Ghost 2003 is much more compact and uses less resources than newer versions, and it works very well. I finally engineered a way to get a good boot disc with Ghost 2003 on it to recognize all drives. I compiled a Nero CD image file and included contents of Windows 98 Startup disk and selected drive A for boot source when that option is given in Nero. It boots well, and Ghost 2003 recognizes all drives just fine. This eliminates the need to launch Ghost from Windows, have to reboot and create disaster recovery disk. BTW I also included contents of Windows 98 upgrade CD plus contents of folder containing Windows 3.1 which I previously copied from floppies. Now I'm able to setup Windows 98 upgrade version when needed without having to change disc or insert floppies in addition to running Ghost on same bootable disc.

May be old but sometimes older version are less bloated and work better as I also use ghost 2003 and won't go to newer version unless I have too...I have separate HDD to keep my C: image at so I can always reboot from that image and clean up any problem programs. Haven't tried the external USB HDD to copy image to yet ...

I completely agree with coolcolors, and I've passed on at least 2 or 3 opportunities to get Ghost 10 for free after rebate. The external USB HDD backup works well too, and I keep my OS partitions on separate hard drives as well. One can't have too many backups IMO.