Yesterday’s tip addressed the topic of re-installing Windows, and I gave you an idea on how to go about it without hours of no-production downtime. But, after you go through all of the work, still, of doing all of that, what happens if you want to do it again in a few months or if, god forbid, your hard drive crashes? Well, you have an option and that is to Ghost your hard drive.

Now, I capitalize “Ghost” because I have a particular program called Ghost in mind, by Symantec. This utility allows you to create a drive image of your entire computer and store it on a network drive or burn it to CD/DVD – whatever you want to do with it. This drive image is basically a full record of what your PC’s file system looks like that that particular unit of time. So, after you have your PC freshly set up and in good working order after hours of setting up everything just like you want it, it might be a good idea to Ghost your drive. Down the road, if you want to restore your PC to its fresh status, simply restore it using your drive image and you’re set to go.

For more information on Norton Ghost, www.symantec.com/sabu/ghost/ghost_personal/.