Member Avatar for Ian Anthony

Greetings all,

I am a new member to the forum so please bear with me if I'm not completely with the protocol for this forum !

I have an Advent 3000 PC, with a Windows XP Home Edition operating system.

I recently had serious problems with the PC, and I downloaded a trial version of Norton Ghost, version 12, to back up my entire system before I tried some serious recovery work.

Ghost would only allow me to copy selected folders to an external hard drive, and I was unable to make a full image of my hard drive/operating system. Using Ghost, I copied the Documents and settings folder and a copy of my Outlook pst files to my external backup drive.

I've since had to completely re-install windows, and I now need to access the backed up files on my external drive. I had to download and re-install Norton Ghost 12 again, which has gone ok, but when I run the software it cannot detect any 'recovery point' to work from. It will also not let me complete a 'File and Folder' recovery.

I can see the backup files clearly on my external HD, but Ghost cannot recover the data to my C drive ! The complication is that Ghost has broken my backed up folders into smaller units and given them numerical file names!!!! This prevents me from simply copying and pasting the files from the backup drive onto my main hard drive. Can anyone assist me here, as I desperately need the backups of my Outlook pst files to carry on business.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by UltimaCyberman

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Short, practical recovery plan for :

Those numeric files are Ghost’s file-backup fragments (the File & Folder backup format), not ordinary .pst files you can copy with Explorer. The supported method is: open Norton Ghost → Tasks → Recover My Files → choose File and Folder (left pane) → File → Import Backup Destination and point that dialog at the parent “Norton Backups” / “File Backup Data” folder (or an individual fbfFiles_xxx folder). After the import completes, search for .pst (or use .*) and recover the PSTs to a separate drive/folder first. (community.norton.com)

If Import shows errors or returns no results, rebuild Ghost’s catalog before trying again: stop the Norton Ghost service, rename/delete the catalog/index file, then restart the service and re-run Import. On XP the catalog lives under C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Symantec\FileBackup; on Vista/Win7 it’s under C:\ProgramData\Symantec\FileBackup. Importing each fbfFiles_xxx subfolder one at a time can help when a giant import fails. If the files on the disk are old .GHO images (legacy format) rather than v2i/iv2i, Ghost 12 may not open them — you’ll need the legacy Ghost/Explorer or the original recovery environment that created the backup. (community.norton.com)

Practical cautions: run Ghost with full privileges, never recover a PST directly over a live mail store, and verify the recovered PST in Outlook (or import it) before switching mail clients. If Import still fails, make a sector-level copy of the external backup (so the originals stay untouched), then try reinstalling Ghost or using the recovery CD/environment that created the backup — that has fixed similar problems for other users. ’s suggestion of a third‑party tool is noted, but try Ghost’s supported import/rebuild path first and be cautious with unvetted utilities. (manualzilla.com)

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Member Avatar for akimotonaoki

Thank !

Member Avatar for jbennet

Thank !

What?????

Member Avatar for UltimaCyberman

Several times I faced the situation when I needed to recover deleted files. And I used MultiStage Recovery .
As advertised, it employs every single feature of NTFS and FAT file systems to recover files quickly and efficiently. And it seems to be true. But
the program supports only Windows.

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