.GHO recovery

[Mikus]

I have a pretty sad situation.

 

My family had a hard drive that had tons of bad blocks, so when i got it i wanted to make a image using Ghost from it. 
At about 90% i got an error that stopped Ghost. After the error the drive died entirely and i cant access it in any way.(no utilities can detect it and it is clicking all the time until it stops)

 

So, all i have left is 57gb corrupted .gho image, that ghost explorer does not open, and a dead hard drive. It contained some important information that i would like to get back. 

 

Does anyone know some way how to get at least some of the information from the .gho image?

[MG2R]

You could try converting it to a .ISO file. More information here. For your convenience, I've quoted the relevant bit below, but please do check out the complete article and make sure it is relevant to you.

 

After applying the latest upgrade, open Ghost Boot Wizard, and note the version and build at the bottom to the left of the Copyright. It must be 11.5.0.2141 or later.

• Select Windows PE. Click next.
• Select Standard Ghost Boot Disk. Click next.
• Leave the defaults for Client type. Click next.
• Leave defaults for Network Client Configuration. Click next.
• Leave defaults for Network Client Address unless you need to set a static IP. Click next.
• Select Create ISO Image. Give it a name and location. Check the box marked Support for bootable CDs/DVDs. Click next.
  
  IMPORTANT: Click Add... and then click Add... again and add your .GHO file. In the Destination folder on media field, type "image" and then click OK.
• Click next.
• Click next once more to finish and create the ISO.

 

If that fails because of a corrupt .GHO file, you can always try to use dd on Linux to output a CD-format.

 

But honestly, if the files were THAT important, you really should've known better and taken a backup...

[Mikus]

Solved the problem, so basically i put the GHO file into a VHD and mounted it on a virtual machine, then using tools like ERD65 and some other i managed to recover all the data that was saved until i got the ghost error 

[MG2R]

Solved the problem, so basically i put the GHO file into a VHD and mounted it on a virtual machine, then using tools like ERD65 and some other i managed to recover all the data that was saved until i got the ghost error 

Nice. How much of the drive was still saved? Are the files you managed to get off in perfect health, or are they corrupted here and there?

[Mikus]

When i made the image itself the hard drive had tons of bad blocks so some of the files were corrupted as they were, but basically i got them back as i would if i simply copy them from hdd when it still worked.

 

Fun fact: when the drive worked the pc turned on for 15-20 min, when i pressed ctrl+alt+del it showed black screen with error that says this function cant be displayed and after few minutes a message popped up saying that Microsoft Windows has stopped responding :D