Norton Ghost

BobbyMurcerFan · Mar 17, 2003

I've been thinking of pickup a copy of Norton Ghost or Powerquest's Drive Image to back up my hd. It's been working well, but it's also pretty old and currently not backed up. Any opinions on Ghost, Drive Image or other backup progs/methods? Thanks!

P.S. A web search on both products comes up with quite a few bad reviews for BOTH products.

trader3 · Mar 17, 2003

You may want to get BackupMyPC by stompinc.com.

Here is a link for a 30 day trial:

http://www.stompinc.com/trial/index.phtml

It's probably the best backup program on the market and has been for years. It used to be called Backup Exec by Veritas. It will offer you a lot more control than Ghost or similar products.

nitro · Mar 17, 2003

Quote from BobbyMurcerFan:

I've been thinking of pickup a copy of Norton Ghost or Powerquest's Drive Image to back up my hd. It's been working well, but it's also pretty old and currently not backed up. Any opinions on Ghost, Drive Image or other backup progs/methods? Thanks!

P.S. A web search on both products comes up with quite a few bad reviews for BOTH products.

I prefer Drive Image only because it supports more file systems. If you only need to worry about Fat or NTFS style FS, then ghost is as good as any.

nitro

nkhoi · Mar 17, 2003

bad experience with ghost, it didn't recorgnize my win98 machine at all.

Bsulli · Mar 17, 2003

Can recommend Ghost 2002 but not 2003 because it now includes DRM and modifies a sector in the boot area of track zero on the hard drive. In other words restoring to the same machine isn't hard but if your between a rock and a hard place and need to easily move to another pc your S.O.L.

Have use both verison and dumped 2003 and kept 2002.

Someone mention the Vertias product. Have also used it with good success on fileservers.

DRM= Digitial Rights Mis-management. The stuff is garbage. Look at what it did to TurboTax and the resulting class action lawsuits.

my two cents worth.
Bsulli

CalTrader · Mar 17, 2003

Quote from BobbyMurcerFan:

I've been thinking of pickup a copy of Norton Ghost or Powerquest's Drive Image to back up my hd. It's been working well, but it's also pretty old and currently not backed up. Any opinions on Ghost, Drive Image or other backup progs/methods? Thanks!

P.S. A web search on both products comes up with quite a few bad reviews for BOTH products.

Drive image, the ex-Veritas product etc all work. Another alternative is the FREE - it comes with windows servers etc. Backup utility. Windows backup actually works very well if you have a small network. I've used Veritas products on Enterprise large systems installations for primary backup systems and they work very well. If you have a small office exclusively made up of Windows PC's and servers, you can probably avoid having to pay more software licensing dollars and just use the free included utility ....

BobbyMurcerFan · Mar 17, 2003

Thanks for the tip. However, the problem with using Windows Backup is that it won't write to CD-ROM drives.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315255

I get a tape or second hd, I imagine Windows backup might be a good way to go.

bungrider · Mar 17, 2003

i've used ghost 2002 (you can pick up systemworks 2002 OEM on pricewatch for like $15) quite extensively.

it is a total pain in the ass to learn how to use it and configure it, but once you do and get it working with your drives (it doesn't support all CD-R/RW drives) it is a real pleasure to use.

i'm not sure if the learning curve is worth it though, especially if there are easier alternatives..

nkhoi · Mar 17, 2003

Quote from bungrider:

i'm not sure if the learning curve is worth it though, especially if there are easier alternatives..

http://www.smithmicro.com/checkit/fastmovehome.tpl?cart=104792985511132073

BobbyMurcerFan · Mar 17, 2003

I'm considering getting a USB external hard drive just for ~weekly complete backups of my hd using Windows XP's Backup utility.

If the system crashes, I could go into the BIOS and get the computer to boot off this drive, right?

(I'm considering the external route now b/c my ps is only 200W and I already have 1 hd, 2 CD, 1 Zip & 1 floopy. Also it would use it's own power adapter, preventing it from damage caused by a computer ps failure.)

Norton Ghost

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