Acronis vs Ghost

[_R]

I know that anything from Dr Nortenstein's labs must be a multiheaded
monster, but aside from that, what are the general tradeoffs between
current versions of Norton Ghost and the Acronis tools suite?

 

[Lil' Dave]

Point me to the Acronis product you mentioned in the OP.
http://www.acronis.com/
Possibly this, but is not exactly what you quoted?
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/

Suspect you're speaking of home use products vice corporate/server products.
But, not specified in the OP.

Suggest you rephrase the question, else, apples and oranges comparisons are
likely to result.

 

[Guest]

I think that the biggest trade off between Ghost and Acronis True Image is
the ability to image within Windows. Acronis will do it, Ghost requires a
reboot into the DOS mode in order to function.

 

[Alan Smith]

No.
http://www.symantec.com/region/reg_eu/product/ng_features.html

 

[WTC]

I think that the biggest trade off between Ghost and Acronis True Image
is
the ability to image within Windows. Acronis will do it, Ghost
requires a
reboot into the DOS mode in order to function.

Ghost 9.0 will image the disk within Windows.

 

[mxh]

I know that anything from Dr Nortenstein's labs must be a multiheaded
monster, but aside from that, what are the general tradeoffs between
current versions of Norton Ghost and the Acronis tools suite?

Norton's latest "Ghost" is a fiasco...err...combonation of Drive Image
(which they acquired from Partition Magic") and Ghost. I was a sworn Ghost
user until went the way of all their other bloatwware. I now refuse to use
anything Norton.

I can't really compare features since I no longer use Ghost. I've been using
Acronis TI for a few years now and have been quite happy. It does what it's
supposed to without the hassels and system corruption of Norton Ghost (the
last version I purchased was v9. I installed it, tried it for a few days and
promply returned it. 2000 was the last version I used that was decent).
Plus, Acronis puts out new builds on a regular basis and has great customer
support.

I also have another program many in this NG use called Bootit NG. I prefer
Acronis.

You can download a trail of Acronis.


mxh

 

[Filthy McNasty]

Using at least one appendage, the entity known in this space-time continuum

You can download a trail of Acronis

You can also get free, full, online registration required, prior versions
from time to time on the coverdisks of UK magazine "PC Plus", by Future
Publications. They may also have copies for download on their website at
http://www.futurenet.com/pcplus/. I am v.happy with Acronis. It has saved
my bacon more than once

 

[mxh]

Ghost 9.0 will image the disk within Windows.

And was one of the last to acquire the ability to do so (I believe Acronis
was amongst the first), and in fact, seemed unable to do so until they
acquired and ruined Drive Image.

mxh

 

[mwos]

A blue screen with Ghost. Smooth and efficient backups with Acronis is what
I have been experiencing. I am sorry I ever bought Ghost 9.0. I definitely
recommend Acronis True Image.
Mike

 

[Kerry Brown]

I know that anything from Dr Nortenstein's labs must be a multiheaded
monster, but aside from that, what are the general tradeoffs between
current versions of Norton Ghost and the Acronis tools suite?

Both work fine. I have several customers who use Ghost 2003. They want a
brand name they recognize They have had no problemsthat couldn't be worked
around. I use True Image 8.0 myself and prefer it, mostly because I have
used it more and am used to it. True Image can't format a CD or DVD while
creating an image and needs 3rd party software installed to do this. Ghost
doesn't handle oddball partitions (like hidden recovery partitions) as well
as True Image when cloning drives.

Kerry

 

[JD]

For the average home user, Image for Windows, from
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/imagew.html is a much smaller (and
less expensive) program and does the job fast and efficiently. It
takes me less than 5 minutes to make an image of my system partition
with about 4 gig of files on.

I have used Acronis and Ghost and had trouble with both. With Image
for Windows, which includes Image for DOS, images can be made whilst
still working in XP and can be written to CD, DVD or a file on another
HD (for the system partition). If saved on a FAT32 HD, image can
be restored using a boot floppy.

JD

 

[frodo]

True Image is the only one that works (well) w/ RAID setups, especially if
you boot to a raid array.

 

[GO]

Norton's latest "Ghost" is a fiasco...err...combonation of Drive Image
(which they acquired from Partition Magic") and Ghost. I was a sworn Ghost
user until went the way of all their other bloatwware. I now refuse to use
anything Norton.

I can't really compare features since I no longer use Ghost. I've been using
Acronis TI for a few years now and have been quite happy. It does what it's
supposed to without the hassels and system corruption of Norton Ghost (the
last version I purchased was v9. I installed it, tried it for a few days and
promply returned it. 2000 was the last version I used that was decent).
Plus, Acronis puts out new builds on a regular basis and has great customer
support.

I also have another program many in this NG use called Bootit NG. I prefer
Acronis.

You can download a trail of Acronis.


mxh

I'm glad I'm not the only one to think Ghost 9 is a complete and utter POS.
Symantec/Norton used to have a great name and make great products but they
seem to have turned into the EA (Electronic Arts) of the "tools" market,
just pushing out release after release before the product's really ready.
I'm still a regular user of v8 but also have recently played with the trial
of True Image and have been very impressed.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

I know that anything from Dr Nortenstein's labs must be a multiheaded
monster, but aside from that, what are the general tradeoffs between
current versions of Norton Ghost and the Acronis tools suite?

I have a very narrow use, but for that, Acronis doesn't suffice.
All I want to do is to archive bootable clones of my system
partition on a large capacity archival internal IDE hard drive.
Acronis True Image will take the entire suface of the source
drive and copy it to the entire surface of the destination drive.
This is great for migrating an OS from a small HD to a larger HD -
the usual vanilla use for a cloning utility. But I want to select JUST
a SINGLE partition from a source HD and transfer it to unallocated
space on a destination HD where it will be among OTHER similar
clones. And they all have to be immediately bootable - none of this
"image restore" step from an image file. Ghost will do this - when
it's working. Right now, though, it frrezes my PC as it begins the
copy step. So, I plan to try Casper XP since their tech rep says
that it will do what I want.

*TimDaniels*

 

[_R]

I have a very narrow use, but for that, Acronis doesn't suffice.
All I want to do is to archive bootable clones of my system
partition on a large capacity archival internal IDE hard drive.
Acronis True Image will take the entire suface of the source
drive and copy it to the entire surface of the destination drive.
This is great for migrating an OS from a small HD to a larger HD -
the usual vanilla use for a cloning utility. But I want to select JUST
a SINGLE partition from a source HD and transfer it to unallocated
space on a destination HD where it will be among OTHER similar
clones.

So far, Acronis will do this.

And they all have to be immediately bootable - none of this
"image restore" step from an image file.

If you're referring to booting the image itself (as opposed to
restoring it first) then I'm not sure that Acronis can do it. Just
curious about why you'd want to do that as it sounds like it would be
very slow.

Ghost will do this - when
it's working. Right now, though, it frrezes my PC as it begins the
copy step.

So, I plan to try Casper XP since their tech rep says
that it will do what I want.

*TimDaniels*

I hope Casper works as planned. Norton and Acronis could use some
competition (I guess there's BootIt Ng as well). Please report back
on whether Casper works out.

I didn't want to tilt my original question with my own opinion, but
I've had much the same experience as many in this thread. I've found
Norton to be too cumbersome. Acronis, on the other hand, seems to
require a few different packages to get the same range of
functionality.

I've also found that Acronis's MigrateEasy, while sounding like a
nice, simple tool, doesn't seem to work at all. Of course their
imager seems to resize partitions on restore now, so the bases are
covered there.

One other thing that was discussed here: Can Acronis restore an
individual file from an image? I haven't had occasion to do this, but
from the menu it appears as if it can. I guess one of the followups
narrowed this to 'restore a locked system file while XP is running.'
That may be a bit different. Again, I'm trying to imagine why that
would be a major requirement, but I guess there are scenarios...
In any event, that sounds like it may be tough to synchronize, and I
would not be surprised to see Ghost crash if the wrong file is chosen.

Re the above: I've occasionally used 'unlocker' (URL on request...I
don't have it handy) to unlock and delete a file that was locked by
XP. It would seem like you could replace it, with the provision that
XP knows to look for it after it's unlocked (Unlocker may stop a
process). Still, I can't think of where I would apply that.

 

[Leythos]

True Image is the only one that works (well) w/ RAID setups, especially if
you boot to a raid array.

Funny, I've used GHOST 2003 to restore and image RAID-1 and RAID-5
volumes many times on many platforms.

Ghost 2003 is a great product, with the ability to make images, store
them on a server some place, and then to restore the image over the
network as needed, it's a great tool for shops with many systems.

 

[GO]

One other thing that was discussed here: Can Acronis restore an

individual file from an image?

Yes. Acronis can "mount" an image file just as if it were another hard
drive/partition and you can access files/folders as normal.

 

[frodo]

Funny, I've used GHOST 2003 to restore and image RAID-1 and RAID-5
volumes many times on many platforms.

ONLY from within windows itself; if you loose the raid boot drive you
can't restore it from any form of floppy or cd boot disk using ghost.

 

[Leythos]

ONLY from within windows itself; if you loose the raid boot drive you
can't restore it from any form of floppy or cd boot disk using ghost.

Nope, I restore the image to a RAID array from a DOS boot disk with the
image on a USB device or DVD. Now, if you're talking about a soft RAID
array created by the OS, then yea, but I'm not silly enough to use that
method when IDE RAID cards are cheap as they are.

 

[frodo]

Nope, I restore the image to a RAID array from a DOS boot disk with the
image on a USB device or DVD. Now, if you're talking about a soft RAID
array created by the OS, then yea, but I'm not silly enough to use that
method when IDE RAID cards are cheap as they are.

You are right, but it's an "unsupported feature":

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPOR...003 for Windows 2000/NT/Me/98/XP&osv=&osv_lvl