'Ghosting' A Computer? (1 Viewer)

[DeathStar1]

This is a new term I learned while looking up support at wsftp.com. I must have bought three copies of the software because of needed reformats and limited activation keys. I thought I'd outsmart them this time by installing it on my portable hard drive, but that didn't work. Now I find this note on their site..

>>
If you need another activation due to a hard drive crash or a planned system rebuild please contact Customer Service for another activation at ". Once the software has been activated you can Ghost your computer.* When a ghosted image is loaded Ipswitch software will not require you to enter your license key.>>>

Does anyone know what this means? How does an image provide this service? Is it like a .jpg?

 

[Citizen87645]

I believe - and my knowledge is limited - this is a term generated from Symantec's Ghost (data backup) product:

http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoff...t10/index.html

It's basically like calling all facial tissue Kleenex.

 

[Mike_J_Potter]

You are right it is refering to activate wsftp or whatever else then and then make a clone of the hard drive (aka image or ghost) The disk imaging programs will clone the drive bit for bit onto another drive, or cd or whatever. That way when you need to restore or reinstall the OS you can restore the image and the PC will be back the way you originally had when you did the image. Hope that wasn't too confusing

 

[DeathStar1]

OK, I downloaded a program called Arconis True Image. I made a backup of my entire machine, so I never have to worry about the WSFTP nonsense again. But, a question..

I have a program on my laptop that's on it's last key activation.....wish I would have known that before I bought it. It only has three key activations, and I had problems with it and had to uninstall it to fix it...

How would I make a ghost of that program only and append it to my other HD backup?

Anyone know?

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

I'm not following here... wsftp, the ftp client, requires key activation every time you do a reinstall of the operating system??

Why would anyone bother with it at all if so when you can get highly capable software to do file transfers for free? Filezilla springs to mind, for instance. Perhaps you speak of some other Ipswitch product...

The activation procedure is tied to the hardware, at least it should be to make it effective at punishing the user as much as possible (I hate those schemes almost as rabidly as I hate C.R.A.P. - what was formerly known as DRM, that is).

That would make it difficult to copy it from machine to machine (which is the point of activation - making it difficult to copy. That it aggravates and annoys the legitimate users while people download pirated copies and have no such problems is just a side effect...)

If you take a disk image of one machine and recover to the same machine, activation won't be necessary (or rather, the activation info is contained in the image and restoring it restores that too) but if you restore the image to another machine the activation will most likely not work anymore leading to the need to reactivate.

 

[DeathStar1]

I'm not following here... wsftp, the ftp client, requires key activation every time you do a reinstall of the operating system??>>>

yep, they require you to enter in your serial key each time, and once that number is used up, you can't use it again to reactivate. This is what annoys the hell out of me. For someone who has three computers(work, home, and Shore), and if someone goes wrong with one of them and a reformat is needed, boom, you're out of luck and need to buy another key..

Or, in the case of Adobe Photoshop, I have to call support(almost never goes right with department transfers) and get my upgrade reactivated again because it dosn't recognise my valid 5.0 software.

So, it looks like even if I ghost the one machine with WSFTP, or Photoshop, and install it to another machine, it won't work on the second machine? Sigh... back to square one...

 

[TonyD]

sounds alittle like whats going on over here


neil how did you get the Acronis True Image, was it inexpensive?

 

[DeathStar1]

I downloaded a free trial at cnet.com 's download section , so yeah, it's inexpensive for the 30 day trial

 

[TonyD]

neil do you have a direct link to that free trial?
the only one ican find is at Acronis True Image's site and it is only 15 days.
but it won't let me open it. when i try to run set up you have to register and it won't allow regesiter for some reason.

 

[DeathStar1]

Hmm, weird.

I downloaded the trial at cnet.com (Go to the download link, and search for Arconis True Image, it'll be the first one up), installed it on my home machine, worked fine. I tried to repeat the process here, and I got the same error you just described...

Anyone else have that problem?

 

[Christ Reynolds]

i second this. wsftp is a nice little program, but there are plenty of high quality FREE alternatives.

CJ