Is there a cheaper or Freeware alternative to Norton Ghost?

[kalynuik1]

I know, I am cheap right, Norton Ghost is under $100.00 but is there a
cheaper or Freeware program that can do the same or close to the same as
norton ghost, backing up partition to Bootable CD or Bootable DVD?

Thank-you

(e-mail address removed) <-- remove spam to email

 

[Will Dormann]

I know, I am cheap right, Norton Ghost is under $100.00 but is there a
cheaper or Freeware program that can do the same or close to the same as
norton ghost, backing up partition to Bootable CD or Bootable DVD?

Acronis TrueImage is $49.99, and it's a really slick program.

But if you're not looking to spend any money, perhaps check into
Partimage. I haven't used it myself so I can't vouch for it, though.


-WD

 

[Rod Speed]

I know, I am cheap right, Norton Ghost is under $100.00 but is there a
cheaper or Freeware program that can do the same or close to the same
as norton ghost, backing up partition to Bootable CD or Bootable DVD?

Ghost 2003 is a hell of a lot cheaper than that
as part of SystemWorks Pro 2003 off ebay.
http://tinyurl.com/2a35g

Needs to be Pro, its not included in plain SystemWorks 2003.

I'm not aware of anything free thats as good as that.

 

[CSS]

Acronis TrueImage. Great product, even better with the 7.0 release. I have
used it now for over a year, and it has saved me several times. I cans ay
from personal experience it is much better than Drive Image. No experience
with Ghost.

 

[Z Man]

Acronis TrueImage. Great product, even better with the 7.0 release. I have
used it now for over a year, and it has saved me several times. I cans ay
from personal experience it is much better than Drive Image. No experience
with Ghost.

Perhaps you could answer a question for me. I am a Ghost 2003 user, but I
don't like the fact that Ghost forces you to drop to DOS to clone a disk. I
would like to clone my main server disk (about 36GB) to an empty disk on
another computer on the network. Can TrueImage handle this task from within
Windows? The computer that has the disk to be cloned is running WinME, the
system with the empty hard drive is running Windows XP Professional SP1.
Thanks.

 

[Will Dormann]

Perhaps you could answer a question for me. I am a Ghost 2003 user, but I
don't like the fact that Ghost forces you to drop to DOS to clone a disk. I
would like to clone my main server disk (about 36GB) to an empty disk on
another computer on the network. Can TrueImage handle this task from within
Windows? The computer that has the disk to be cloned is running WinME, the
system with the empty hard drive is running Windows XP Professional SP1.
Thanks.

Yes. TrueImage can image your drive from Windows without needing to
restart the machine.



-WD

 

[John Craig]

What in TrueImage do you like better than Drive Image? My experience
is only with Drive Image and Ghost.

Acronis TrueImage. Great product, even better with the 7.0 release. I have
used it now for over a year, and it has saved me several times. I cans ay
from personal experience it is much better than Drive Image. No experience
with Ghost.

John Craig
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[CWatters]

Yes I also have DI and Ghost. Much prefer DI, particularly for scheduling
backups.

 

[CSS]

TrueImage can image completely w/o having to boot out of XP, is very fast,
can image and restore over a network, latest version does scheduled full and
incremental backups and drive cloning. A recent restore of 90 or so gig of
data took about 1 hr. and 15 minutes.

I owned Drive Image 2002 and used it successfully on Win ME for a month or
so to do unattended backups (after a HD failure). Upgraded to XP, then could
not get DI it to work through Windows-- continual "out of memory" errors on
reboot. NO useful info on PQ Tech Support website for XP or running through
Windows, emails to Tech Support came back with "canned" responses pointing
me to older solutions on website for problems booting from floppy disks.
This prompted me to change to TrueImage about a year and a half ago. I did
have one initial problem with TrueImage-- could not boot from its boot CD
with my Compaq USB keyboard attached (ok with a PS2 keyboard). Acronis tech
support worked me through the problem, and the latest version (7.00) appears
to have resolved this issue.

There is a review of the 6.0 version at
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1091164,00.asp

I can't comment on Ghost-- never tried it.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

TrueImage can image completely w/o having to boot out of XP,
is very fast, can image and restore over a network, latest version
does scheduled full and incremental backups and drive cloning.
A recent restore of 90 or so gig of data took about 1 hr. and 15
minutes.

[.......]
There is a review of the 6.0 version at
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1091164,00.asp

The article in PC Magazine mentions this:

"TrueImage does not let you clone one hard drive directly
to another-a valuable option if you want to configure one
or more computers to be identical to the source computer
without the added step of first saving the hard drive image
to CD-R."

Does this limitation (a severe one, in my opinion) still hold in
version 7.0?

*TimDaniels*

 

[Will Dormann]

The article in PC Magazine mentions this:

"TrueImage does not let you clone one hard drive directly
to another-a valuable option if you want to configure one
or more computers to be identical to the source computer
without the added step of first saving the hard drive image
to CD-R."

Does this limitation (a severe one, in my opinion) still hold in
version 7.0?

7.0 does not have that limitation.


-WD

 

[Farouk Dindar]

7.0 does not have that limitation.

I have switched over from my combination of Drive image and Partition
Magic to True Image and Partition Expert. The latter program can clone
a drive.

Farouk Dindar

 

[Paul Atreides]

Perhaps you could answer a question for me. I am a Ghost 2003 user, but I
don't like the fact that Ghost forces you to drop to DOS to clone a disk. I
would like to clone my main server disk (about 36GB) to an empty disk on
another computer on the network. Can TrueImage handle this task from within
Windows? The computer that has the disk to be cloned is running WinME, the
system with the empty hard drive is running Windows XP Professional SP1.
Thanks.

Drive Snapshot can do that too, it's faster and trial version is fully
fonctionnal.

http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/index.htm