Norton Ghost

[WhatsThisBoxFor?]

Up until very recently I have been backing up my data by copying things that I didn't want to lose, and luckily I have never had to use them. Unfortunatley my CD-RW drive has gone south, and so I do not have any way of making real backups, and since I start working for the holiday on Thursday I should get enough money for Ghost, on top of other upgrades I want. But I have a few questions:

1. How long does the process take, I have a 20GB drive and a 80GB drive?
2. Does it support writing to dual layer disks? At 16X?
3. The DVD Burner I am looking at getting ( http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=78297 ) is not on the supported burner list, should I look for one that is?
4. Can you do other things while it is backing up your data (i.e. surf the internet)?
5. Does it require installing on the hard drive?

TIA.

[RJS2]

I dont know if this is the answer your looking for but i have the 2003 version of symantec ghost and you cannot use internet whilemaking a ghost image becuase it goes into dos (PCdos) to make the image and as for putting it on another drive thats what i do with mine im not sure if ya can put it on a different partiton on the sme drive or not.

Heres a good tutorial for ghost

http://ghost.radified.com/ghost_1.htm

[jimmyrules712]

Originally Posted by WhatsThisBoxFor? 2. Does it support writing to dual layer disks? At 16X?

not sure

Originally Posted by WhatsThisBoxFor? 3. The DVD Burner I am looking at getting ( http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=78297 ) is not on the supported burner list, should I look for one that is?

I dont think it matters, it seems to pretty much work with anything that is standard.

Originally Posted by WhatsThisBoxFor? 4. Can you do other things while it is backing up your data (i.e. surf the internet)?

no, as dee_sel said, the way it works is t hat when you run the ghost action it reboots your PC into a dos-like mode.

Originally Posted by WhatsThisBoxFor? 5. Does it require installing on the hard drive?

Do you meen do you have to install ghosto n your HD? the answer to that is yes, you do not however have to install any other norton programs.

[glc]

If all you want to do is back up *data*, Ghost is not the ideal tool. Ghost is for creating total drive images.

If you are buying a DVD burner, the full retail version of Nero 6 comes with "BackItUp" which will do what you want very nicely.

[WhatsThisBoxFor?]

glc, what I have been doing is what you say, but what I want to do now is do a complete drive image, since if my hard drive fails it will be a lot of effort into putting back all my programs, and settings. Also this is a family computer that I want to back up, and no other members of the family back up there data (how ever much I nag them to do so) and I do not know what they want to keep/need so I think a image would be better, since it gets everything.

Jimmy and dee_sel, thanks for your reply, it was very useful, I know pretty much everything I want to.