Symantec Ghost Interoperability with Systems Running Intel Responsiveness Technologies

Ghost32 11.5.1 (Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 2.5.1) is incompatible with an SSD (mSATA card installed on the motherboard) accelerated disk in an Intel Rapid Storage Technology (Intel Smart Response Technology) environment.  In order for Ghost32 running in a WinPE environment to see what is normally an accelerated OS drive, you must first turn acceleration off, then boot the system with the Ghost32 WinPE boot disk.  Once the image of the disk (the one acceleration has been turned off) has been created, a reboot of the computer and re-acceleration of the disk can be done.  To restore an image to a normally accelerated disk, acceleration must be turned off, the image restored to the disk, the system rebooted and acceleration turned back on.

Turning off acceleration can be done at boot with Ctrl-I and turn off acceleration from the Intel Rapid Storage Technology status screen, or from Windows 7 by running the Intel Rapid Storage Technology management program.  Acceleration can be turned back on only from within Windows 7 by running the Intel Rapid Storage Technology management software.  This is documented in a Dell whitepaper found at the following link:

http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/direct2dell/b/direct2dell/archive/2012/04/13/dell-whitepaper-intel-responsiveness-technologies-setup-guide.aspx

I have a Dell XPS 8500 with a 32 GB mSATA SSD configured in Intel Smart Response Technology as a Raid 0 disk and my OS partition residing on disk 0 accelerated. The acceleration is noticeable, so use of the acceleration is warranted. Finding this solution to back up disk 0 containing my OS partition was a must, and the above procedure works flawlessly.  Anyone running a system using this Intel Smart Response Technology and wishing to back up their accelerated drive with Ghost, will have to follow the outlined steps in order to create an image or restore an image.