I have used GHOST 2002 and now 2003 with XP to restore the
partition containing XP. They works fine, with only a few
quirks, described later. I highly recommend GHOST,
although PowerQuest DriveImage and Acronis TrueImage also
work. Personally I find TrueiMage friendlier than GHOST,
especially for USB. I have not used DriveImage, but it
ets good reviews around the web.
GHOST 2002 does not do USB, but GHOST 2003 does. However,
2003 is limited to the first USB controller it finds.
(Ditto for firewire.) So, if you have USB 1.1 on the
motherboard and USB 2.0 on a separate PCI card, GHOST will
only work with the USB 1.1 port. Maybe you could disable
the USB 1.1 in the BIOS, but I was never motivated to
try. Also, GHOST is touchy about mixed USB 1.1 and 2.0
devices/controllers. If you have 100% USB 2.0, GHOST
should work well.
XP Re-activation should not be an issue, if you restore an
image that was made after your last activation. The files
associated with activation are just that, files, and GHOST
restores them as well as others. That said, there are
other clever license-protection schemes that GHOST may not
handle. For example, TurboTax 2002 writes some stuff to
the boot record and GHOST does not normally include that
in its backup. It can, but not as the default, and only
if you image the entire disk, not just a single partition.
The one exception to what I just worote is if you have
made a lot of changes and the new disk, really the new
disk volume number, pushes you over the edge for re-
activation. Still, if you have the same RAM, motherboard,
CPU, and NIC, the odds of re-activation are almost zero
for a new hard drive.
But, if you replace the hard drive, you may get a blue
screen of death (maybe not), depending on how different
the disk hardware is. This is also true if you replace
any hardware, especially motherboards. But, at worst you
should be able to run a "repair" installation of XP.
However, you would need a copy of the XP CDROM for that.
Still, a blue screen for a new disk is not common.
Norton does not "screw up restore points", not exactly.
But realize that restore points contain data for all
partitions, unless you change the defaults. But, the data
for each partition is saved on that partition. So, in my
case a restore point has data for C:\ and E:\. If I use
GHOST to restore only one partition, then I need to create
a new restore point and delete old ones (via disk cleanup,
more options). Thus, I usually make GHOST images of both
drives, C:\ = XP and E:\ other programs. But, I have
successfully restored only C:\ with no problems, since I
had not really added/removed programs from E:\ since that
image of C:\ was made.
Other GHOST limitations: (1) The windows interface to run
GHOST is not reliable, yet. Instead, use the DOS boot
floppy option. Yes, DOS can support USB (and firewire),
at least when Symantec gets involved. The windows
interface of GHOST works fine for other things, like
making DOS boot disks, exploring GHOST images to recover
one file or a directory tree, etc. (2) GHOST does not
handle all serial ATA and/or RAID drives or handles them
with limitations. Neither SATA not RAID is officially
supported by Symnatec, but it sometimes works anyway.
Check their website for more info; perhaps this has
changed. However, I have SATA+RAID on a ASUS P4S8X
motherboard and the DOS-based GHOST works fine. By the
way, TrueImage does not do SATA at all, yet. I am not
usre about DriveImage. If you have plain old IDE (ATA)
disks you will hav no problems. (3) GHOST is a bit tricky
to use if you have GOBACK installed. But, the GHOST
manual explains what to do. Actaully, GHOST has a ood
manual, and you can download a copy to xamine free from
Symantec.
