Any Norton Ghost users?

[barlowc]

I have a less than one year old Dell Vostro laptop that I'll be wiping clean and reinstalling everything from scratch. Once I get everything reinstalled, I'd like to create a clean image for future restores. I'll probably use Norton Ghost since that's what I used many, many years ago (before Symantec bought them) and am therefore familar with it. My question is, will Ghost likely recognize the DVD burner and let me span the image across discs?

I believe (hope) that I'll be able to boot from the Ghost CD, select the hard drive to create an image of, and span the image across multiple blank DVDs. Does that sound feasible?

 

[dparm]

I'm not sure how the consumer versions work, but in enterprise/corporate editions you typically got a massive GHO file. I'd suggest throwing it on an external hard drive or USB flash drive. Flash drives are cheap enough and big enough that you can easily get a spare solely for this purpose.

 

[SrDriver]

Assuming you have Windows 7, you can use the backup program that comes with it. You can backup to an external USB hard drive and it makes a bootable recovery disk.

You can also use the free for home use Paragon software.

Link To Paragon Backup

Yet another option is the free Macrium Relect Backup software.

Link To Macrium Reflect

You also make an emergency boot CD with either Paragon or Macrium Reflect.

I have done backups and restored systems using all of the programs mentioned.

 

[TxHeat]

Ghost will allow you to do what you want, probably, well most likely, unless it doesn't. Sorry, what I mean to say is that it is supposed to do just what you've said you want, but it doesn't always work properly. Spanning backups across multiple CDs or DVDs is not a suggested procedure, as far as I know, with any of the imaging products on the market even though they may advertise their ability to do so. Even if for some reason you really needed to write a backup to one or more DVDs it's suggested that you first back it up to another drive and then write it to a DVD.

I used Acronis True Image Home for several years. I found Acronis to be a very reliable and, mostly, user friendly product but the last couple of releases added several "features" that I didn't want and took away some abilities that I had come to rely on.

I went to Ghost 15 on my desktop last year after trialing it and have it set to do automatic backups from within Windows every 3 days to a second internal hard drive. It works flawlessly and I have restored from an image a number of times completely successfully.

Because my wife uses her laptop sporadically, and the data on it doesn't change very often, I only image it once a month or so and just do cold images, that is, boot from the disk as you're suggesting and image from there. I use an external hard drive for this, connected via Esata cable. This procedure is really easier with Acronis, at least for me. For one thing Ghost requires the Serial number or Key be input each time you boot from it and Acronis does not.

Recently a neighbor asked that I image her laptop drive onto DVDs as she doesn't own an external drive. Using Acronis I simply set it to make an image in a size no larger than a standard DVD, onto my external hard drive. Acronis split the backup into 7 pieces and I burned them onto DVDs from the external hard drive. This the preferred method over burning directly to DVD. For one thing, should you come across a coaster, (it happens more often than it should), you can simply reburn it as all your pieces are on the hard drive.

As dparm said though, your best option is to pick up an external hard drive or a flash drive and do it that way. If your laptop has an Esata connection then I'd suggest an external hard drive with Esata connection which will be much faster than a usb flash drive.

You might also consider an external hard drive enclosure. One that accepts sata hard drives. That will allow you to use any internal sata hard drive as an external drive. Some of the internal hard drives are very inexpensive, fifty to sixty dollars for ~500GB. Look on Newegg for instance.

Consider actually installing Ghost 15 on your laptop and instead of scheduled backups you could to manual backups from within Windows by creating a task and then invoking the task whenever necessary. With Windows 7 and Ghost 15 there's really no need for cold backups if you don't want to.

Perhaps you already know this but just in case, a word of caution. There is a hidden partition, well 2 of them probably, on your Dell, but the main hidden partition has an image of your system as it was when it left the factory. You can boot into the restore utility and "Restore to Factory" from that partition. If you wipe your disk and do a clean install, that partition and the Dell utility partition will be gone. Should you ever one day want to sell that laptop and want to put it back having that partition will come in handy! I would suggest you get an image of that entire drive before you wipe it. If the time comes that you need it, just restore the entire drive, boot into the restore utility, Restore to Factory, update it and you're set. That has been my m.o. for many years.

Sorry 'bout the long winded response, hope it helps,

Larry

 

[Rand]

I've used ghost and macrim in the past..

I prefer acronis trueimage.

I just use the boot cd and a USB hdd mostly.

Works great

other than some hiccups with some raid stuff boot disc works flawlessly, better than the windows program itself imo
one of the issues I ran into with macrim reflect was
I imaged a 320gb raid 0+1 array(4 hdd)

I needed data out of it.. I couldnt restore it to a 300gb hdd even though the 320gb raid array only had 20gb of data on it...
acronis lets you do this.. and so does ghost.

 

[barlowc]

Originally Posted By: bornconfuzd
There is a hidden partition, well 2 of them probably, on your Dell, but the main hidden partition has an image of your system as it was when it left the factory. You can boot into the restore utility and "Restore to Factory" from that partition.

Unfortunately that's not true with this particular Dell. If that were true, I would have used that method because what I'm trying to achieve is that "from factory" state. The closest I'm going to get is using the Dell discs to reinstall the system and image it from there.

 

[TxHeat]

I see, that's a shame.

Could I ask how you know or have verified that the restore partition is gone?

If you're using Windows 7, click on the "start" orb, type "computer management" without the quote marks into the search box, click on Computer Management and when that comes up click on Disk Management on the left side of the screen near the bottom. If that partition exists it will show as ~10GB fat/fat32 partition, probably at the end of the disk.

If you know it to be gone or have already checked please disregard the above!

 

[barlowc]

Originally Posted By: bornconfuzd
Could I ask how you know or have verified that the restore partition is gone?

Yeah, I checked just as you described, using the Disk Management utility. There wasn't a restore partition. A couple weeks ago I installed Ubuntu on it for a contractor that came to work for me. He bailed and now I'm going to get it set back up with Windows 7 for the next new hire.

Once I get a clean install, I want to create and image so that as contractors come and go, I can restore it to a clean, fresh state quickly and easily.

 

[TxHeat]

Well then, you've done your homework and in fact, a clean reinstall isn't all that difficult. I hope your reinstall disks include the drivers? If not, I'm sure you're aware you can download them from Dell.

Just FYI Fry's has a deal on the Norton Bundle It includes Norton Utilities, (worthless), Norton Internet Security 2011, (very good), and Norton Ghost 15, all free after two rebates. One is a competitive upgrade rebate which will require proof of ownership of any previously owned Norton product or any competitor's antivirus or backup/imaging product.

Well, I just went and checked Fry's Store Locator and see that they don't have a store near you so my suggestion above isn't going to be very helpful. You might keep an eye on that link though, just in case they get some back in stock for shipping while they're still on sale.

Unfortunately it looks like it's unavailable for shipping right now, so you would have to find a store somewhere nearby to make it worthwhile.

There is one other possibility. Have you considered a virtual machine? Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 is available for free here

If your machine has a decent sized hard drive and sufficient hardware, (only 1 yr old it should), it shouldn't take you more than an hour or two to figure it out and have it running. This way, you could back it up with just a copy and paste and never mess with your main os. With a virtual machine you can have internet access, share files and folders with your main os and essentially do all the same things you would do with your main os.

I set one up on a friends 6 yr old Dell Dimension 3000 with a P4 last year so he could run DOS and some DOS software from twenty years ago, worked fine.

Just a possible alternative for you. But your plan will work fine!

Good Luck!

Larry