Just for the record, I will answer your questions based on Ghost (the Enterprise Edition),
Not their consumer product with the same name which has derived from "PowerQuest Drive Image" but has got in common with the 'real deal'.
Can Norton image Linux partitions as
well?
Yes, Symantec Ghost added support for the ext2 filesystem in 1999 and for ext3 subsequently.
Does it mean that images can only be
created from within a running Windows?
No, Ghost.exe works in a DOS environment, however, for better controller controller support I recommend Ghost32.exe from within a Windows environment (e.g. BartPE)
For Windows partitions: Does it
support both regular and Server
versions? Acronis doesn't image Server
partitions in the regular version.
Symantec Ghost will clone any Windows drive/partition (even when encrypted with BitLocker, but Ghost will switch to 'sector mode' and the images will be accordingly large in size).
When restoring an image, does Norton
give the option of including/excluding the MBR?
The command line switch -PMBR specifies that the master boot record of the destination disk be preserved when performing a Disk-to-Disk or Image-to-Disk operation.
For more information about Ghost, I recommend the Radified Guide to Norton Ghost:
This guide presents what many consider
the ultimate back-up strategy. It is
based on features found in Norton
Ghost, a hard drive imaging/cloning
software program developed by
Symantec.
Although designed around Norton Ghost
(considered the most reliable
application of its kind), the
strategies presented here (such as
performing a test-restore, to ensure
your back-up image will work when you
really need it) can be applied to
any disk cloning program.
On a personal note: I have cloned thousands of drives with Ghost, it never failed me. Ghost is still the reference and 'industry standard'. the only program I consider anywhere near Ghost would be Drive Snapshot.
It would seem that bootsect
was failing because the device was already bootable.
This morning I decided to try using it to boot with the Windows 7 Professional 64-bit installer image loaded on it, despite the failure, just to see what would happen. Surprise-surprise, it worked. -_-
Best Answer
Well, I simply tried the brute force way: I let the tool create a dual-architecture ISO and examined it for a bit. It contains a regular Windows bootloader with entries for both x86 and x64 versions of the setup, residing in folders instead of the drive root.
Then I simply removed the original x86 and x64 folders, because they contained only a single edition (going by size, anyway). In their place, I added the whole contents of the regular MSDN ISOs, which contain both editions.
I then created an ISO image using the
oscdimg
tool (available here):(Command line courtesy of this blog)
Important: The source (and possibly destination) directory must not reside on a volume that is ReFS-formatted and/or hosted on Storage Spaces. Otherwise,
oscdimg
will fail withBoth architectures installed successfully in both BIOS mode, the x64 version worked with UEFI, too. The x86 version is, however, not bootable in UEFI mode. This can probably be fixed somehow. The original x86 ISO is UEFI-bootable. (Edit-addition/correction: Various sources suggest that under UEFI, windows/setup kernel must match the underlying processor architecture, ie. x32/86 Windows 10 will only install on an x32 machine, and x64 only an an x64 supporting CPU. Seeing as you don't often see UEFI x32 machines that doesn't seem to be much of an issue. See here)
Because I don’t think Microsoft will mind, I zipped the base layout of the disk, it’s available here (19.4 MiB). That means you won’t have to download a dual-architecture ISO to get started. The archive doesn’t include
oscdimg
, so you’ll have to get that from the page linked above.(Addition: This Multi-boot (x64/32, Pro/Home) ISO method also works for a bootable USB drive. You can make such a drive using the various popular methods, and then just replace the files/layout with the same one used for this ISO. Some care must be taken though if you want a USB drive that boots both traditional MBR/Bios and UEFI, as the UEFI requirements can be a bit picky.)