Norton Ghost 9.0

[Don MI]

One other question. I have a Linux box and a laptop on the same LAN. Can
Ghost
9 be used to image those devices to my backup drive?

Ghost Version 9 requires Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Home or
Professional.

Ghost 2003 boots or reboots your computer to a DOS operating system. If
file system of your drive can be read, what files are on the drive is not
relevant.

The Retail Ghost 9 package contains both Version 9 and 2003.

Don

 

[Peter Wilkins]

I find no need nor
advantage to creating disk images to CD/DVD media. My sole objective (and I
would suspect this is the real objective of most users) is to easily and
effectively maintain a reliable backup system.

I too have had great success using Ghost 2003 and have no desire to go
to version 9. I never liked Drive Image.

But I do still regularly create disk images to DVD, and can report I
have had no problems with this. I use the DVD because I keep
backup-backup images off-site. I keep on-site images on a separate
HDD. I keep the DVD's off-site just in case the on-site system gets
stolen or the house burns down. So I'm paranoid!

I could use a USB2/firewire external drive for offsite backup but it's
a bit of a waste as I want to use it for other things as well, and the
DVD's take up no room and can be posted easily.

 

[Peter Wilkins]

I have two 160GB drives formatted with NTFS. I would like to have a disaster
recovery scheme that would allow me to recover drive 1 from drive 2 using a
boot floppy. Will Ghost 9 allow one to make a image or clone (??) from drive
1 to drive 2 with NTFS format? Does it have to be done via a boot floppy? My
thought is to use Ghost 9 with the second drive as my primary backup scheme.
Opinions?

Dunno, but you can do all that with Ghost 2003 so I suppose you should
be able to do it with Ghost 9! With 2003 you need a boot floppy or a
bootable CD/DVD that you can make with Ghost, but only if you can't
boot with your windows drive.

Using the second HDD as your primary backup scheme is OK as far as it
goes, but I assume from your wording you have a secondary scheme to
cover the possibility of the computer with both HDD's in it burning up
or getting stolen. An off site backup is a good idea - I use DVD's
with Ghost 2003. I also find that a full image is a bit time
consuming on a daily basis and unnecessary unless you have made system
changes. I make daily incremental backups of My Docs - can be done
from within Windows and only takes a few minutes. Any number of
backup programs can be used for this - even the built-in XP backup,
but not Ghost. I do a Ghost image whenever I make system changes or
install new progs, or about once a month if I haven't made any
changes.

 

[J. S. Pack]

How does is compare to Acronis?

Alias

Acronis is a GREAT product. My only real complaint is that in multilingual
environments the lettering on the menus may disappear, rendering it useless
in Windows. You can get around this by using the recovery CD or making sure
English and United States is chosen throughout in the Regional and Language
Options. I haven't bothered to check other possibilities.

Ghost 9.0 is better in some ways. It's slightly more convenient to make
incremental backups. It puts an agent in the systray area. It has no
language corruption problem. It appears that you can add things to the
image, which can be useful for backing up something w/o going thru a full
or incremental backup. Acronis images, on the other hand, are read-only.

Ghost 9.0 though has a problem in that you can't create an image (in the
new drive image format) by booting from the recovery CD. All you can do is
recover. Hence you always have to create the image from within the Windows
environment. Normally that's a good thing, but there can be cases when you
don't want to do that. For example, I once made a backup using Acronis from
within Windows while a real-time data acquistion program was running and it
ended up corrupted. (I had thought it would. Some things are too good to be
true.) Acronis, however, provides you w/ a bootable recovery CD from which
you can also backup. With Ghost, you have to switch to the old command
environment Ghost (less convenient than a full GUI, but much more flexible
w/ exclusions, etc.) and hence the old file format. That's not so bad, but
(I think) you can't later increment that image if you wish.

I would likely switch to Ghost if they'd give you a complete recovery
environment as Acronis does, but they're both great products.

 

[Mike]

Dunno, but you can do all that with Ghost 2003 so I suppose you should
be able to do it with Ghost 9! With 2003 you need a boot floppy or a
bootable CD/DVD that you can make with Ghost, but only if you can't
boot with your windows drive.

Using the second HDD as your primary backup scheme is OK as far as it
goes, but I assume from your wording you have a secondary scheme to
cover the possibility of the computer with both HDD's in it burning up
or getting stolen. An off site backup is a good idea - I use DVD's
with Ghost 2003. I also find that a full image is a bit time
consuming on a daily basis and unnecessary unless you have made system
changes. I make daily incremental backups of My Docs - can be done
from within Windows and only takes a few minutes. Any number of
backup programs can be used for this - even the built-in XP backup,
but not Ghost. I do a Ghost image whenever I make system changes or
install new progs, or about once a month if I haven't made any
changes.

Actually, I need two levels of backup. In the old system, I used a tape drive
to backup the entire drive. However, the primary purpose of this was to be
able to recover individual files and not necessarily recover a blue screen
disaster. I do not have a tape drive on the new system, but do have a DVD
burner so I will need to come up with a data backup scheme using them.

The second level of backup that I want is the blue screen protection. On my
old system I used Ghost to backup to a removable hard disk (using disk
cartridges). The clone disk could then be used along with the tape backup to
quickly recover the entire system without having to do a reinstall of
everything (been there too many times).

My thinking at this point would be to create an image file of HD1 to HD2 to
provide me quick blue screen recovery and to use DVDs for data backup. Do you
use both DVD-RW and DVD-R for changing data versus more fixed data?

My primary concern with Ghost is that the older versions did not get along
with NTFS real well. Hopely, the later versions are better at handling that
environment.

 

[Mike]

Ghost Version 9 requires Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Home or
Professional.

Ghost 2003 boots or reboots your computer to a DOS operating system. If
file system of your drive can be read, what files are on the drive is not
relevant.

The problem I have had in the past was that Ghost could not create an image
file to a NTFS HD. The only way I could do it was to create a clone. Given that
I am going to have a 160GB drive that may only have 50GB in use, my preference
would be create an image file. I guess I could reformat the second HD to have
a FAT and NTFS partition and use the FAT partition for the image file?

Additionally, DOS cannot read a NTFS file system (unless one has a hack). I
was curious whether the later versions of Ghost have gotten around that issue
for backups.

The Retail Ghost 9 package contains both Version 9 and 2003.

What is the advantage of Ghost 9 over Ghost 2003 on an XP Pro system?

 

[Mike]

I too have had great success using Ghost 2003 and have no desire to go
to version 9. I never liked Drive Image.

By "Drive Image" do you mean a complete ghost as an image file rather than a
clone? Why would you have problems with that?

But I do still regularly create disk images to DVD, and can report I
have had no problems with this. I use the DVD because I keep
backup-backup images off-site. I keep on-site images on a separate
HDD. I keep the DVD's off-site just in case the on-site system gets
stolen or the house burns down. So I'm paranoid!

I suspect, however, that you are only backing up data files and not the entire
system? Having had to rebuild too many systems as a result of a blue screen
failure, I like having a copy of the entire system to quickly recover from.

I could use a USB2/firewire external drive for offsite backup but it's
a bit of a waste as I want to use it for other things as well, and the
DVD's take up no room and can be posted easily.

Uhm, that is a thought. Use the external HD as the primary disaster recovery
system ...

 

[Mike]

I had to give up Ghost 9 because of problems with the .netframework and use
Acorinis True image because it does not need it.

Why would .netframework be a problem with XP Pro?

Which version of Acronis True Image are you using? I'd like to not only manage
my XP Pro, but be able to grab a backup copy of a Linux server that is on my
LAN. From their write up, it looks like one can make a backup copy of HD1 to
HD2 without rebooting and that it could access my Linux server as well?

 

[Mike]

I've been using various versions of Symantec's Norton Ghost program for
about four years now. I find the program simple to use and effective in what
it does. For me that means cloning the contents of one drive to another
drive using the Ghost bootable floppy disk or Ghost bootable CD. I have
frequently remarked that I wish every software program I use (and will use)
was as simple to use, straightforward in design, and effective in what it
does as Ghost.

The older versions of Ghost I used (Win2K NTFS drives) would only allow me to
clone to a second equivalent drive or create an Image File of the drive to a
FAT HD. It would not handle creating an Image File to a NTFS HD. (The reason I
preferred the image file over clone what that mostly unused source drives could
be compressed into a smaller image file on the destination drive (as opposed
to using the whole destination drive for the clone).

My exclusive use of the Ghost 2003 program is to clone one hard drive to
another for what amounts to a near-failsafe backup program. I perform the
cloning operation using a Ghost bootable floppy disk or should the computer
not contain a floppy drive, a Ghost bootable CD.

I would like to do the same thing, but be able to create image files of
multiple systems (XP Pro, Win2K Laptop, and Linux server on a LAN) to my
backup disk drive. I have done this in the past by creating bootable floppies
with network drivers that Ghost could use to communicate among the various
systems. However, the destination drive has to be FAT formatted. Has Ghost
2003 or 9 changed any of this?

Given the way I use the Ghost 2003 program in an XP environment, is there
any advantage for me to use the Ghost 9 program in lieu of the 2003 program?
Or, for that matter, using the Acronis True Image program instead?

I'd like to know the answer to that one myself.

My primary goal is full system disaster recovery without having to build the
system from scratch. I want blue screen protection. Date file protection can
be provided any number of ways.

 

[Mike]

Ghost 9.0 though has a problem in that you can't create an image (in the
new drive image format) by booting from the recovery CD. All you can do is
recover. Hence you always have to create the image from within the Windows
environment. Normally that's a good thing, but there can be cases when you
don't want to do that.

Will it allow one to grab an image from a networked machine? For example,
could I grab an image of my laptop that is on the lan (one could create a
mapped drive?)?

It would be a bit more difficult to grab an image off of my Linux server that
way. I use Samba, but not for the entire system. I guess I could ...

Acronis, however, provides you w/ a bootable recovery CD from which
you can also backup.

Backup to a FAT or NTFS formatted disk from the bootable CD?

With Ghost, you have to switch to the old command
environment Ghost (less convenient than a full GUI, but much more flexible
w/ exclusions, etc.) and hence the old file format. That's not so bad, but
(I think) you can't later increment that image if you wish.

The older Ghost would not and would only create image files reliably on a FAT
formatted drive.

I would likely switch to Ghost if they'd give you a complete recovery
environment as Acronis does, but they're both great products.

What then is the advantage of using Ghost 9 over Ghost 2003? Wouldn't Ghost
2003 give you the same thing as Acronis?

 

[John Butler]

Mike

You have made good comments.

I have used both Ghost when it was a Norton product, Drive Image when it was
a Powerquest product and Ghost 9 which is really an update by Symantec of
Drive Image. The later DI and Ghost 9 need the Microsoft network environment
installed whether one is backing up over a network or not. I found this very
unreliable in a stand alone system.
I now use Acronis to make full image of the system disk as backup on an
external HDD for disaster recovery, and CasperXP for cloning to an idle hard
disk for file restoration. Both methods are very fast and the HDD can be
kept safe, you are right about that. If one has a disaster limited to the
system disk one can switch boot priority and boot from the idle copy made by
CasperXP and the use that to clone a new system disk. This method is quick
but evidently not fool proof.

I still make a full backup to "DAT" tape using Veritas Backup My PC once a
month for archiving, each month to a new tape, and safe storage.

John

 

[Art]

On Sat, 11 Dec 2004 10:28:32 -0500, Art wrote:

I've been using various versions of Symantec's Norton Ghost program for
about four years now. I find the program simple to use and effective in
what
it does. For me that means cloning the contents of one drive to another
drive using the Ghost bootable floppy disk or Ghost bootable CD. I have
frequently remarked that I wish every software program I use (and will use)
was as simple to use, straightforward in design, and effective in what it
does as Ghost.

My exclusive use of the Ghost 2003 program is to clone one hard drive to
another for what amounts to a near-failsafe backup program. I perform the
cloning operation using a Ghost bootable floppy disk or should the computer
not contain a floppy drive, a Ghost bootable CD.
Art

I would like to do the same thing, but be able to create image files of
multiple systems (XP Pro, Win2K Laptop, and Linux server on a LAN) to my
backup disk drive. I have done this in the past by creating bootable
floppies
with network drivers that Ghost could use to communicate among the various
systems. However, the destination drive has to be FAT formatted. Has Ghost
2003 or 9 changed any of this?

Mike:
I've had no experience with Ghost 9.0 so I can't speak to that program. Over
the past few years I've exclusively used the Ghost 2003 program in the
Windows XP environment as well as with the Win9x/Me operating systems.
Virtually all my experience in using the Ghost 2003 program has been with
standalone computers. I've had little experience in using the program in a
network environment so I'd be loathe to offer you any advice in that area
one way or another. And I haven't worked with Linux at all.

I, and my clients, have one objective and only one objective. And that is to
easily and systematically maintain a failsafe backup system of their
day-to-day working hard drives. Nothing else. No disk imaging to CD/DVDs. No
incremental backup procedures. None of that. Just cloning one hard drive to
another so as to maintain a virtual bit-for-bit copy of the working hard
drive. So that when the day comes (as it surely will!) that the working
drive becomes corrupted or physically defective, a clone of that drive is at
the ready and within a short time the computer can once again be off and
running. As I've previously mentioned, we accomplish this through the use of
using the Ghost 2003 program to clone one hard drive to another.

I've noted from many newsgroup postings that a considerable number of users
prefer the Acronis True Image program. Given my objective as stated above,
it's hard for me to imagine how any disk imaging program can be more easier
to use and more effective in what it does than the Ghost 2003 program when
it comes to cloning one hard drive to another. But I'm willing to listen.

My primary goal is full system disaster recovery without having to build
the
system from scratch. I want blue screen protection. Date file protection
can
be provided any number of ways.
Thanks, Mike.

Please see my comments above.
Art

 

[Jack Gillis]

Gee, when I started this thread a few days ago I never imagined it would
draw as much attention as it has.

The thoughtful conversations raise another question. Many have implied
that Ghost 2003 can back up from a bootable CD. I'm not sure if that
means you can create a bootable recovery CD using Ghost from which to
run Ghost in a bare metal situation rather than from a recovery floppy.
Is this truly the case. Can you create a bootable recovery CD using
Ghost? However, I've not found a direct way to do that. When I got my
floppyless laptop I created a bootable recovery CD by using Nero and
getting a bootable DOS from a W98 startup disk and copying the Ghost
recovery floppy to the CD. At least I think that is how I did it.

Thanks for insights on this.

On Sat, 11 Dec 2004 10:28:32 -0500, Art wrote:

...... Much Snipped.....

 

[R. McCarty]

This traces back to the introduction of Drive Image 7.0, which began
the "Hot Imaging" process or V2i. For years, I've used Drive Image
as a DOS boot tool (w/ Bootable CD-R disk). When 7.0 cane on the
scene, I stopped at version 6.0. I still believe they abandoned the
Bare Metal support to keep things under Windows (Activation issue)
and reduce the so called "Casual Copying".
I can't speak to Ghost 9, but I would suspect there is no native Dos
mode type of support with it, beyond the Recovery process.

 

[Peter Wilkins]

By "Drive Image" do you mean a complete ghost as an image file rather than a
clone? Why would you have problems with that?

No. Look at the context. I meant the programme Drive Image. Ghost 9
is a rebadged Drive Image. I have no problems with creating Ghost disk
images, and said so.

I suspect, however, that you are only backing up data files and not the entire
system? Having had to rebuild too many systems as a result of a blue screen
failure, I like having a copy of the entire system to quickly recover from.

Backing up data files only with Ghost? I said "But I do still
regularly create disk images to DVD". In my terminology, a disk image
is just that - an image of the complete disk (or partition). I too
like having a backup which enables me to recover the whole system!

Uhm, that is a thought. Use the external HD as the primary disaster recovery
system ...

No, it's not a thought. It's what I said I do: " I use the DVD
because I keep backup-backup images off-site. I keep on-site images
on a separate HDD" . Just to repeat. My primary backup system is
on-site HDD's: data only backups on a separate internal HDD, full
system backups on an external HDD. I also use Ghost disk images on
DVD as my secondary backup system, stored off-site for security. The
point of my comment was to explain why I didn't use the external HDD
for off-site storage. Why send off the USB external drive for off
site security when I would have to bring it back to update it, and
couldn't use it while it was gone? Sheesh!

I don't think you read my original post very well - you certainly
don't seem to have understood it.

 

[Art]

Jack:
I was afraid someone was going to ask that, i.e. how to create a bootable
Ghost 2003 CD so that you can use that media to clone one hard drive to
another. I was afraid because there's a certain Catch-22 quality at work
here as I will explain...

Creating a Ghost bootable CD using Roxio's Easy Media Creator 7
1. Open Creator Classic.
2. In Advanced Projects section (left column), click on Bootable Disc.
3. In Choose Type of Bootable Disc dialog box, select Use Existing Image
File and click OK.
4. Insert Ghost bootable floppy disk and add all the files on that disk to
the project.
5. With blank CD-R in your burner, click on Burn icon.
6. Burn.

(I'm sure the same basic procedure can be used with other CD burning
programs, e.g., Nero, but since I generally work with the Roxio product I'm
not familiar with the precise steps in those other programs).

But do you see the Catch-22 reference? First, you have to create a Ghost
bootable floppy disk! It's easy enough to do that from the Ghost program (I
can provide you with the simple steps if you want), but obviously you need
or can gain access to a floppy drive to create the floppy disk. Now I have
heard that a Ghost bootable CD can be created without the need of first
creating a Ghost bootable floppy disk, but I've never found a way to do
this. I contacted Symantec about it but never got a meaningful response. If
anyone knows how to do this I certainly would be grateful in hearing about
it.

Let me make one thing clear. When I speak of a Ghost bootable CD (or a Ghost
bootable floppy disk), I am referring to media that is specifically used to
clone one hard drive to another hard drive. When you use terms like "Ghost
bootable recovery CD" (or "Ghost bootable recovery (floppy) disk") I trust
we're speaking about the same thing.
Art

 

[Peter Wilkins]

Actually, I need two levels of backup. In the old system, I used a tape drive
to backup the entire drive. However, the primary purpose of this was to be
able to recover individual files and not necessarily recover a blue screen
disaster. I do not have a tape drive on the new system, but do have a DVD
burner so I will need to come up with a data backup scheme using them.

A Ghost disk image can also be used to recover individual files if you
can boot to Windows using the Ghost Explorer, so it can do both data
and blue screen recovery. I write disk images to HDD as a primary
on-site backup and to DVD for off site backup.

I usually write disk images to the HDD then copy the gho and ghs files
to DVD rather than write to DVD directly, although that works OK too.
I do write images directly to DVD every so often, to create a bootable
DVD system backup that I can use if the system won't boot.

The second level of backup that I want is the blue screen protection. Onmy
old system I used Ghost to backup to a removable hard disk (using disk
cartridges). The clone disk could then be used along with the tape backup to
quickly recover the entire system without having to do a reinstall of
everything (been there too many times).

Recovering from a clone is faster than recovering from an image, but I
use images as they can be compressed and I have multiple uses for my
second internal HDD and for my external USB HDD. Perhaps I should get
another external HDD - they are pretty cheap - and just clone.

My thinking at this point would be to create an image file of HD1 to HD2to
provide me quick blue screen recovery and to use DVDs for data backup. Do you
use both DVD-RW and DVD-R for changing data versus more fixed data?

I don't do clones to give blue screen backup - I do a Ghost disk
image, which takes much less space, but I must admit is much slower to
create. I mostly use HDD for data backup, using a schedule. I don't
use DVD's for changing data backups, only for full system backups. No,
that's not quite correct - I do have a UDF (DirectCD) formatted DVD-RW
that I keep in the drive when not using any other DVD and use that as
an immediate extra backup for really important stuff. I use the
DVD-RW just like a HDD, though it's a bit slower. For full system
images with Ghost, I only use DVD-R, not RW. I tried using CD-RW with
Ghost a few years ago, but Ghost wouldn't reuse them without requiring
a full erase (30 min) rather than a quick erase (30 secs)- too time
consuming. Since going to DVD I have not tried the RW - perhaps the
latest Ghost 2003 will use quick erased DVD-RW.

A word of warning. If you do use DVD's for data backup and want to
recover individual files from a Ghost image, copy all the Ghost gho
and ghs files onto a HDD and restore from there - otherwise you will
spend hours shuffling disks in and out of the drive. Ghost Explorer
needs all the image files accessible at the same time to work quickly.

My primary concern with Ghost is that the older versions did not get along
with NTFS real well. Hopely, the later versions are better at handling that
environment.

I have had no problems with the latest Ghost 2003 with NTFS, both
internal and external drives. But I know not about Ghost 9.

 

[Jack Gillis]

Jack:
I was afraid someone was going to ask that, i.e. how to create a
bootable Ghost 2003 CD so that you can use that media to clone one
hard drive to another. I was afraid because there's a certain Catch-22
quality at work here as I will explain...

Creating a Ghost bootable CD using Roxio's Easy Media Creator 7
1. Open Creator Classic.
2. In Advanced Projects section (left column), click on Bootable Disc.
3. In Choose Type of Bootable Disc dialog box, select Use Existing
Image File and click OK.
4. Insert Ghost bootable floppy disk and add all the files on that
disk to the project.
5. With blank CD-R in your burner, click on Burn icon.
6. Burn.

(I'm sure the same basic procedure can be used with other CD burning
programs, e.g., Nero, but since I generally work with the Roxio
product I'm not familiar with the precise steps in those other
programs).

But do you see the Catch-22 reference? First, you have to create a
Ghost bootable floppy disk! It's easy enough to do that from the Ghost
program (I can provide you with the simple steps if you want), but
obviously you need or can gain access to a floppy drive to create the
floppy disk. Now I have heard that a Ghost bootable CD can be created
without the need of first creating a Ghost bootable floppy disk, but
I've never found a way to do this. I contacted Symantec about it but
never got a meaningful response. If anyone knows how to do this I
certainly would be grateful in hearing about it.

Yes, the Catch-22 (we are kindred spirits) became obvious with the
puchase of the floppyless laptop. The process you described for Roxio
was pretty much the one I used under Nero. Like you, I've heard it is
possible to do it without the need for the floppy and sure would like to
know how. It would seem like a staright forward thing to do.

Let me make one thing clear. When I speak of a Ghost bootable CD (or a
Ghost bootable floppy disk), I am referring to media that is
specifically used to clone one hard drive to another hard drive. When
you use terms like "Ghost bootable recovery CD" (or "Ghost bootable
recovery (floppy) disk") I trust we're speaking about the same thing.
Art

Yes, we are talking about the same thing. I trip over terminology
problems more often than I want to admit.

Thanks for your reply

 

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