Norton Ghost any good?

[Force Flow]

Is Norton Ghost 2003 any good?

[morriswindgate]

Ghost is ok,, but I prefer Drive Image. It has a better interface for it's setup and more features. Ghost still looks and operates like an old DOS program

[Tuf]

The new version of Ghost is a GUI that operates from Windows. I still use the 2002 version of Ghost and I like it. It hasn't let me down yet.

[HAL9000]

I still use GHOST all the time at work and love it.

[not important]

I use Ghost. It has saved me from my own ignorance a number of times.

[skeg]

use ghost a lot and think its great

[David_Jones]

I reckon that Ghost is one of the best pieces of software ever.

Without it, I would never have had the confidence to 'break' Windows again and again, try to fix it (often failing, but learning massively in the process), and know, *100%* that Ghost can bring back my system exactly, and I mean EXACTLY how it was before I ever fiddled.

And it does this in minutes, not hours!

I like this utility!

David.

[reboot]

I still use ghost 2001, and it's too simple.
Ghost and Partition Magic are probably the two best utilities ever invented.

[doctorgonzo]

Originally posted by reboot I still use ghost 2001, and it's too simple. Ghost and Partition Magic are probably the two best utilities ever invented.

I second that. Before Ghost and PM, I was always worried about screwing things up and losing important data. Now, I know that if something goes bad I can be up and running with all my data intact in almost no time.

The question is never if you will need to restore your data, the question is when. Be prepared beforehand.

[bailey]

just got ghost 2003, have not had a chance to play with it yet but looks very good to me

[i3OSS]

Ghost is a back up program right?

[David_Jones]

Kind of.

It allows you to image a partition or a whole physical disk.

You can then restore that 'backup' and return the partition or entire disk to the exact state that it was in when the image was made.

Slightly different from just backing up your data in that if the OS or apps get fried somewhere down the line, you have to re-install them to use the data that was backed up (or use a different machine).

If you have an image, you just resotre the image, and the OS and apps are there exactly as they were when the image was made.

Personally, I recommend imaging the partitions, and also backing up data separately, but that is just my opinion.

HTH,

David.

[Force Flow]

It makes an image of your entire drive; not quite a standard backup program.

Btw, how often do you get corrupted images and will norton tell you if they did get corrupted?

[Tuf]

I don't make image files because without testing them it's hard to know if they will work. I just ghost the entire partition to a partition on another drive. There's no compression involved and I've never had a failure that I know of. You do need to have a bunch of extra drives if you have very many machines though. But the extra security is worth it to me.

[Force Flow]

I've got two.

So, if I make an image of the first one and save it on the second one, the image should be alright, correct?

How big are the image files? My HDD's are 80GB each. I'm using about 20GB on the first one and about 5GB on the other one.

[CorruptedSanitY]

force_flow2002,

Yes you can image HD1 and save it to HD2. I do not know how big the size is but you got 80gb.. u aint got a problem.

For Ghost 2002 you needed to save the image to a FAT32. It would not work on an NTFS drive.

[CorruptedSanitY]

Would it not be nice if some one who has experience with Norton Ghost write up a little guide?

I think we would all appreciate it.

Any one willing to do the good deed?

[Tuf]

Image files can only be saved to FAT32 but you can clone NTFS partitions to NTFS partitions and back. If you clone like I do they are abou the same size as the original. If you make images it will compress them somewhat you and the type of files you have determine how much. If you have mostly mp3 files they are already compressed and won't get much smaller. If you have mostly documents the size may be reduced quite a bit. The higher you set the compression the longer it takes to make the image.

There is a good site about Ghost and another that has some useful info.

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

http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/

[Force Flow]

Thanks for the links, Tuf!

[RayH]

Ghost and Drive Image do bascially the same thing. But Drive Image is easier to use. Any idiot, including me, can do it!

But either way, one of these programs belongs in very computer user's arsenal! If you get regular and systematic about making images, you'd be surprised what ISN'T a problem any more!