Someone explain Norton Ghost to me (1 Viewer)

[Ronald Epstein]

Just bought a Maxtor external hard drive and I
want to back up my system in case of emergency.

Heard Norton Ghost was the best way to do this.
I am not sure what Norton Ghost actually does.

Questions.....

1. Does GHOST take an image of your hard drive or
back it all up with all the files.

2. With the first question in mind, when your drive
fails or you need to format, do you reboot with the
Norton Ghost IMAGE disc that you made and it completely
restores to the way you backed it up?

I would imagine an IMAGE would not fully restore your
system. Doesn't the image rely on actual software
programs to be installed?

I could really use a crash course on how Norton
Ghost will benefit me in times I have system failure
or just want to reformat my computer and return it
to a previous image state.

Thanks in advance

 

[Patrick_L]

Ron,

some good info here

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Exactly. An image is an exact copy of the contents of your hard drive with all software, data files, Windows settings, etc. You boot off CD #1 (it generally takes several CDs to back up a system) and the program reformats and partitions your HDD, then starts copying your files back to the disc. As each CD is finished the program ejects the CD and prompts you to put in the next disc. (Ghost boots to a version of PC-DOS that supports NTFS, which is why it can restore an NT/2000/XP installation on an otherwise inaccessible drive.)

You would not need to reinstall your software after restoring your system via Ghost.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Joseph,

Your answer is perfect. Would you mind
a few more questions, please?

I am going to back up my entire system on a
250GB Maxtor external drive. I presume that
I can boot from this drive in case of formatting
or should I go the multiple CD route instead?

Also....

If there is (let's say) 200 GB worth of material
to back up, this is exactly the amount of CD or
external storage space that is required?

or....

Does Ghost compress all this data so you don't
have to use as many CDs?

Thanks again

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Ron, Ghost can compress pretty well (you have to set it as an option), but I reckon 200gb of data is still going to take up at least 150gb as a compressed image, absolute minimum. It will also back up to DVD-R or RW.

For amounts of data of that size, you're much better off buying a big additional hard drive. The time saving alone will justify the expense and if you ever have to restore that data - or just extract a few files to restore - you'll be glad you didn't use 100s of CDs or dozens and dozens of DVDs.

The Ghost program itself is very small and fits on a floppy disk. If you can boot the PC into DOS and as long as the hard drives can be read, Ghost will work fine.

 

[Joey_R]

Ghost is a wonderful program. Read this Radified Guide for a little assistance.

 

[Darren Lewis]

The new version of Ghost (Norton Ghost 9.0) is radically different to Ghost 2003.

Symantec bought out Powerquest, and this latest release of Ghost is basically Drive Image 7 with a Norton interface, and the additional capability of incremental backups. Here in the UK when you buy Ghost 9, you get a CD of Ghost 2003, as Ghost 9 will only work with Win2K/XP.

I use Ghost 9 to image both my system drive and my data drives. Being able to image from within Windows is brilliant - no more DOS boot floppy disks.

I restored my system drive from a ghost 9 image a few nights ago with no problems.

Darren.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

You could do that with Ghost 2003. It handled the reboot into DOS and subsequent reboot back itself.

I used DI for a while and liked it but I still prefer Ghost because of the command-line interface and myriad of options.