How to create and restore an incremental backup with Ghost Console

Products

• Ghost Solution Suite

Issue/Introduction

You want to know how to use Ghost to backup your client computers and restore the backups.

Resolution

The Ghost Console in Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 2.x, 1.x and Symantec Ghost 7.5/8.0 includes an incremental backup feature. The incremental backup feature allows you to create a backup for each client computer, either manually through the Symantec Ghost Console or on a schedule that you create in the Symantec Ghost Console. When you want to restore the backup, you choose the date to which you want to revert the client computer.

Each backup set consists of incremental files and an image file. The incremental files contain the differences between the current state of the computer and the previous incremental file (or the image file, if there is no previous incremental file).

This document explains two procedures:

• How to set up Ghost to create these files for a single computer. This is called a backup regime.
• How to restore a backup.

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Notes:

• Backup Regime files can be saved only to the computer that is running the Symantec Ghost Console.
• Ghost cannot save the Backup Regime files to a computer that does not support long file names.

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To create a backup regime
Follow these steps to create a backup regime from the Symantec Ghost Console:

To open a new Backup Regime

1. Open the Ghost Console.
2. Click Backup Regimes.
   Note that if you created a folder under Backup Regime, such as Accounting Dept., and you want to create a new regime under the new folder, click the folder name.
3. On File menu, click New > Backup Regime.
   This opens the Backup Regime Properties window.

To configure the Properties tab

1. Type a name for this Regime in the Name box.
2. Click Browse.
3. Double-click the machine group that the client computer is in, click the client computer, and then click OK.
4. Select a number for "Minimum number of days to keep backups."
   Generally, this number should be as large or larger than the "Number of days between baseline images."
5. Select a number for "Number of days between baseline images."
6. Check Schedule Automatic Backups.
7. If you want to specify cloning options other than the default, do so in the "Additional options for Ghost command line" box.

To configure the Task tab

1. Click Task.
2. In the Comments box, type a description of this backup regime. (Not required)
3. In the "Run as" box, type a description of a new user. (Not required)
4. Click Password.
5. Type a user name and password that has local Administrator rights on the Console machine.
6. Click OK.

To configure the Schedule tab

1. Click Schedule.
2. Select a value for each of the following boxes:
   • Schedule task
   • Start time
   • Schedule task daily
     Note that this option is visible only if you select Daily in the "Schedule task" box.

Ghost creates the backup files at the scheduled times.

To restore a backup
Follow these steps to restore a backup from the Symantec Ghost Console:

To select the regime you want to restore

1. Open the Ghost Console
2. Click Backup Regimes.
3. Right-click the backup regime that you want to restore.

To select the restore options

1. Click Restore.
2. In the Rollback To window, click the entry that has the date and time to which you want to restore this computer.
3. Click Finish.

Ghost now restores the baseline image to the client computer, and then restores all incremental backup files up to and including the file created on the date and time you selected.