Norton Ghost - any good?

michaelab

michaelab

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I'm looking for a better backup solution to the one I have at the moment. Presently I use Windows XP Backup to backup my 'documents' (everything under "Documents and Settings\<my username>") to my spare hard drive. This isn't bad as all non-recoverable stuff is backed up and it's very fast. The likelihood of *both* my HDDs going tits up at the same time has to be incredibly small so I feel it's safe too.

However, if my main HDD crashed I'd have the rather tedious task of re-installing XP and all my apps again. To avoid that I've been thinking about something like Norton Ghost - can anyone recommend it (or alternatives)?

Presumably you need a spare HDD (external or internal) of at least the same capacity as the drive you're trying to ghost? I realise it supports other media but it would seem that a 2nd HDD is the only really practical option for ghosting a drive of any significant capacity.

My spare HDD is only 30Gb whereas my main drive is 80Gb (of which 45Gb is used).

Michael.
 
Ghost is excellent, unfortunately of no use to me though since I use exclusively S-ATA hard drives and there are a few issues with the controllers for this type of disk :( (another sign of S-ATA being very immature as a standard, though its not as annoying as the flimsy and loose cables, but thats for another rant..). I use RAID 1 for the 'important' stuff anyway, and the chances of both my disks dieing at once is very very slim, but the ability to ghost onto another drive would be nice...

Ghost is very flexible with regards to size of disks, its possible to ghost a 40GB drive to say a 120GB drive, and have it make the rest of the drives capacity available as free space, effectively stretching the partition to fit the drive. I believe its possible to ghost to a smaller disk too (say 28GB of data from a 120GB disk to an 80GB one), though obviously it will only work if the size of data being ghosted (as opposed to just free un-filled space) will fit onto the smaller disk!

:)
 
i'm actually going to recommend not backing up an entire system, just keep your documents.

it takes under 45 mins to install xp from scratch.
i can have my entire system (pretty much) back up and running in under 2 hours, with all my usual apps reinstalled.

i run a 2 hard drive system. i can wipe c:, install xp, then reinstall apps from the 2nd hard drive, where i keep everything sat in a folder for easy access. i start with the essentials (from winzip to itunes) and leave other less often used apps until i need them for the 1st time.

plus a wipe and reinstall cleans out all the rubbish that accumulates through time on the hard drive (and you reassess if u really need an app).

(i understand ghost is great if you need to install multiple identical pc's, does so quickly and easily.)
 
Valid points Robert but I reckon it would take me more like 4-5 hours to be properly up and running again after a full re-install. I have done it 2 or 3 times before and, like you, I leave the less used apps until the first time I need them but even so, installing XP, applying all the updates and then installing the important apps still seems to take for ever!

One thing I will say is that Windows XP backup isn't bad at all for a cheap and cheerful backup solution that's free. For starters it's incredibly fast. I've tried using a couple of shareware and other (Nero) backup solutions and they seem to take 4-5 times as long as XP Backup.

Michael.
 
BP used it for deploying a standard build on their laptops, all 60k of the blighters...thats a good enough recomendation if you ask me...
 
michaelab said:
Valid points Robert but I reckon it would take me more like 4-5 hours to be properly up and running again after a full re-install. I have done it 2 or 3 times before and, like you, I leave the less used apps until the first time I need them but even so, installing XP, applying all the updates and then installing the important apps still seems to take for ever!

One thing I will say is that Windows XP backup isn't bad at all for a cheap and cheerful backup solution that's free. For starters it's incredibly fast. I've tried using a couple of shareware and other (Nero) backup solutions and they seem to take 4-5 times as long as XP Backup.

Michael.
Click to expand...

I would have thought backup software is meant to take its time, running as a background activity - not using up resources on a live system.

In the old days you could copy your HDD to another, then take a blank HDD, fdisk some partitions, format it + make it bootable from a floppy, then [from the copy of your machine]

xcopy *.* /s/e/v

does that sort of thing still work nowadays??
 
I use RAID 1 for the 'important' stuff anyway, and the chances of both my disks dieing at once is very very slim, but the ability to ghost onto another drive would be nice...
Click to expand...

Must agree with Will as only this weekend whilst visiting a friend her RAID 1 system decided to throw a tantrum and one disk disappeared of the face of the Earth leaving the only clue as to what was happening was a previously unseen icon (Intel Storage Manager?) flashing away in the system tray. After clicking on this angry looking icon it informed us what had happened and that a recovery was already underway - now that is what I call good service. By the time we had returned from a short lunch the friendly looking icon now informed us that the system had recovered and all was working as expected. I must agree a full windows install and patch application is something I'd rather not have to do but it holds no fear and just eats into precious free time.

I'm so glad I advised my friend to go for safety of RAID 1 rather than the speed of RAID 0 system.

PS all documents, music & photos were already backedup just in case a full reinstall was required.
 
Graham C said:
I would have thought backup software is meant to take its time, running as a background activity - not using up resources on a live system.
Click to expand...
perhaps true on a multi-user live system but not really relevant for most home systems that are rarely used by more than one person at a time.

In the old days you could copy your HDD to another, then take a blank HDD, fdisk some partitions, format it + make it bootable from a floppy, then [from the copy of your machine]

xcopy *.* /s/e/v

does that sort of thing still work nowadays??
Click to expand...
Almost certainly not, esp. not with NTFS partitions.

Michael.
 
I'd heard that Ghost was originally good, but since it fell into Symantec's hands people's reactions have been more mixed.

I'm not too happy about things like Windows Backup for the personal user - if I remember correctly it relies on an index file which it puts, by default, onto your (only?) hard disk. Which is fine if you want to restore the accidentally-deleted file or two but not a lot of help if the disk gets trashed. Some of the third-party stuff is like that as well.

I tend to the multiple simple folder/file copy myself - semi-automated. Media's a lot cheaper and faster than your time.

That takes care of data (anything that's not bought-in software). Reinstalling OS and applications is a time-consuming pain - especially when some applications have ego problems and want to take control of the machine (so you have to install them, then remember and reapply all the little tweaks to remind tham that you paid, and you're in charge). Don't know a way round that apart from applying some re-education to software developers.
 
I haven't read all of this thread so excuse me if I am repeating someone else but Ghost can compress the data it is backing up so you may be able to fit 45GB of used hard disk onto a 30GB drive.

I found Ghost was great but then when I used NTFS it couldn't cope with it. Drive Image was good, but now Ghost has caught up and can do NTFS it is great again.

Just don't delete stuff off your back-up drive even when you are not using then other! It will choose that moment to fail ;)
 
Another vote for Ghost, I ran the repair bit of a PC shop for a year or so, I reckon about 1 in 5 problems I saw was related to other Norton/Symantec programs like System Works and all that crap but Ghost is the one piece of software they seem to have got right, used it nearly everyday.
 
Tenson said:
I found Ghost was great but then when I used NTFS it couldn't cope with it. Drive Image was good, but now Ghost has caught up and can do NTFS it is great again.
Click to expand...
AFAIK Symantec bought the company that made Drive Image so Ghost now is, effectively, Drive Image by another name.

Michael.
 
Yeah - Drive Image was originally from PowerQuest. The latest version of Ghost (v9.0) is effectively PQDI 7.0 with Ghost badges on it.

I've used Ghost and PQDI and have found them both to be pretty effective. I use Ghost 8.2 Corporate Edition at work and the multicasting feature is very timesaving for pushing an image out to 10 PCs at a time. Effective when you are rolling out a new ICT suite.
 

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