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Imaging: Ghost, or...?

R

RandysWay

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Mar 5, 2004
Messages
1,595
Just as the title says. What imaging program do you prefer (and/or think is the best); Norton Ghost or....? Thank you. ;)
 
I attempted to try many of the products. I always went back to ghost. However many people don't like nortons due to bloatware. However, what I do is when I'm done using Nortons Ghost, I go into services.msc and disable it, therefore nothing can run without my knowledge. When I need to use the program, I start the process in services.msc. Works for me :)
 
At work I use Ghost 8 Corporate, and that is one great peice of software for managing multiple computers with ghost. No bloatware since its just a small client that gets installed on each client computer and the main console goes on the server. Large learning curve, but once you have it set up It is so easy to use.
 
Vertigo Acid said:
There's really no competition. Ghost or bust
Click to expand...

not quite true depending on your needs

http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/#badalternatives (freeware) from floppy or CD
4.4 Copying a disk locally

If you just want to copy one local disk to another one with no network & server involved, the "copydisk" command is what you want. E.g. to copy the first IDE disk to the second IDE disk, use "copydisk wd0 wd1", to do the same for SCSI disks run "copydisk sd0 sd1".

Beware! All data on the target disk will be erased!

A list of disks as found during system startup can be found using the "disks" command.

4.5 Copying a partition locally

If you want to only copy one local partition to another local partition (similar to what 'uploadpart' and 'slurppart' do, just without the network and FTP in between), this can be done with the 'copypart' command. It takes two partition names as arguments, and copies the contents of one partition to the other. As an example if you found you want to copy your first local partition 'wd0e' to the second one 'wd0f', run:

copypart wd0e wd0f

A list of disks can be found using the 'disk' command, to list all the partitions on a disk use the 'parts' command. Partitions have the form of "wd0d", "w1e", "sd1f".

Be aware that the partitions to copy should have identical size (down to the sector), else funny things will happen. When copying a 'big' partition into a 'small' one, g4u won't thrash the data behind the 'small' partition, but of course the copy is not complete either. Take special note that that case could happen when you restore a copy made that way, and which went fine when you first copied your small working partition to your big backup partition!
Click to expand...

or

http://www.okmoore.com/imagedrive.html w\ http://www.knoppix.org/ (freeware) likely from CD but you could possibly do it from a USB as well

many manufacturers offer rudimentary clone utilities and there are even more freeware aps (of course the above allow casting w\ a server)

while especially Symantec Ghost Enterprise has more advanced switches than a lighting store, how often are they really needed?

Acronis also makes a comparitive edition to Norton Ghost that many like


PS
Rad's Ghost guide is quite famous ;)
http://ghost.radified.com/
 
It was funny to see this thread as I'm back online after restoring an image of my OS drive after a bad install/uninstall. I use Acronis True Image (only had it installed for a little over a month), and it worked as advertised restoring off an external HD. First time I've had the need to restore a backup in quite some time; was very gratified it went so smoothly; no hitches thus far.
 
Nice thread. after seeing that help guide for Ghost i'm going for Ghost 2003. That guy made Ghost 9 sound scary :eek:
 
I need a clarification here; Is Ghost 2003 better than Ghost 9?

Oh, and;
Ice Czar said:
The path of the warrior starts with a single step grasshopper. ;)
Click to expand...

Scored a 101, + programming extra credit (?). Damn, you don't realize how much crap you've done until you do something like this.
 
RandysWay said:
I need a clarification here; Is Ghost 2003 better than Ghost 9?
Click to expand...

Bump for a hopeful answer! If you didn't see the quote.. Is Ghost 2003 better than Ghost 9?
Let me know before I purchase one. :D Thank you all.
 
RandysWay said:
Bump for a hopeful answer! If you didn't see the quote.. Is Ghost 2003 better than Ghost 9?
Let me know before I purchase one. :D Thank you all.
Click to expand...

Norton Ghost 9 is the most recent personal
While Symantec Ghost Solution Suite is the latest corporate version

the differences youd need to look at closely, mostly have to do with backup imaging and casting images across a network, but there has typically been considerably more switches for the enterprise versions
 
old topic, but:

Ice Czar said:
not quite true depending on your needs

http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/#badalternatives (freeware) from floppy or CD
Click to expand...
So if I use g4u (from the ultimate boot CD), I can copy my C partition to the D partition (same size down to the byte). Then later I would just copy the partition back to effectively reformat/reinstall to the old setup? I'm using a SATA raptor if it matters.
 
http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/#badalternatives

4.5 Copying a partition locally

If you want to only copy one local partition to another local partition (similar to what 'uploadpart' and 'slurppart' do, just without the network and FTP in between), this can be done with the 'copypart' command. It takes two partition names as arguments, and copies the contents of one partition to the other. As an example if you found you want to copy your first local partition 'wd0e' to the second one 'wd0f', run:

copypart wd0e wd0f

A list of disks can be found using the 'disk' command, to list all the partitions on a disk use the 'parts' command. Partitions have the form of "wd0d", "w1e", "sd1f".

Be aware that the partitions to copy should have identical size (down to the sector), else funny things will happen. When copying a 'big' partition into a 'small' one, g4u won't thrash the data behind the 'small' partition, but of course the copy is not complete either. Take special note that that case could happen when you restore a copy made that way, and which went fine when you first copied your small working partition to your big backup partition!
Click to expand...

or with Knoppix
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-knopx.html?ca=dgr-lnxw04Knoppix
 
thanks, I just wasn't sure if any other steps were needed, like messing with the boot record or something, I'm a little sketchy on the finer points.
 
I'm also wondering if Ghost 9/10 is better than, or as good as Ghost 2003.

That radified site was a good read, but the guy hasn't even used anything released after Ghost 2003, I think. So it's just what he thinks of the program, and has no experience with it, but it does make sense that running it in Windows would increase the chance of problems occurring.

but, if you have no malware and you are not really using the computer, shouldn't it be fine to create an image? I can't think of anything that would make changes to the registry or anything if you're not even using the computer.

Cause I'd like to use a program that runs in Windows, because I don't like restarting my computer.

I think I'll give Ghost 9 (or 10?) a try and see how I like it though. Unless there's a good reason why I should just use Ghost 2003.
 
I've been using Terabyte 'Image for Windows' , which includes 'Image for DOS', for about a year.

I use it weekly to backup my Windows partition to DVD media (and have restored my Windows partition 5 times in that period).

Some features:
- Non-bloat.
- Fast.
- Reliable.
- DVDs are self-bootable (both IFW and IFD).
- Inexpensive ($28 for IFW+IFD, $18 for IFD).

Good stuff!
 
I got ghost 9 a few days ago, seems to work alright... should I really worry and just use Ghost 2003?


Also I was wondering what the different compression settings meant. There are three settings - none, standard (recommended), medium, and high. Is standard only recommended because it takes less time to compress? I tried high and my drive C backup is like 9.7gb, and when I did standard I think it was like 10.5gb or something. This was awhile ago before I installed all my programs/games though
 
:rolleyes: There's no bloatware in Ghost if it's used as intended, through DOS or on a disc like BartPE or ERD Commander.
 
djnes said:
:rolleyes: There's no bloatware in Ghost if it's used as intended, through DOS or on a disc like BartPE or ERD Commander.
Click to expand...

This is true. Ghost is also much faster at creating images and trasferring them over a network than other solutions I've used.
 
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