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Ghost/HDD copying software

Rat

Not bored. Never bored.,
Rat
Joined
May 19, 2003
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It used to be with Ghost that you could just boot off the CD and copy from one hard drive to another; a complete bit-to-bit copy, with partitioning as appropriate if the destination drive was larger. As our old Ghost disk couldn't cope with SATA, I bought the latest version. It does way more than I need it to, but as far as I can tell, doesn't do that. I note that there are two versions, Norton and Symantec (one aimed at home users, and one at business), so I've got the latest Symantec version, and Norton 2005, and neither of them seem to do what I want. Am I being dense?

If I'm not being dense, and this is no longer how Ghost works, is there something else I can use (preferably free, because I'm a cheapskate) that will do this? If I am being dense, how do I go about doing what I need to with Ghost?
 
There is a product called Acronis True Image that approaches your requirement. It will produce a bootable CD and it will copy an entire partition to another local or network drive, but it creates a restore file. You would have to make a backup of the first drive, then restore that backup to the desired new drive. It does make adjustments for a larger target drive.

It is a commercial product.
 
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That sounds perfect, apart perhaps from the cost. I've just bought Acronis something-or-other at work, so I'll see how well that performs. If it looks good, I'll think about splashing out. I'm down to 10GiB on my boot drive now, and can't be bothered to reload Windows on the new one.

Thanks.
 
I think you'll like it, it has a well designed user interface IMHO, and it understands a wide range of drive types. You can boot it from a CD and still access Samba shares on the local LAN. Of course it recognizes USB external drives too.
 
Ghost absolutely sucks. It thinks the backup HD on my XP machine is corrupted, but the disc manufacturer's diagnostic program shows no problems. Spent $70 on that POS software and never got it to work, Norton's support is terrible, they couldn't figure it out.
RANT! And oh yeah, there was that time I made the foolish mistake of letting their support guy take over my machine remotely. It never booted up after that! Had to reformat the HD. :mad:
 
Is there a program that sits in the background and creates something like restore points in another HD which it updates at specified intervals, with the ability to copy those restore points to a removable media and if need arise restore the system/program files and settings from a bootable media using such a restore point?
 
El Greco said:
Is there a program that sits in the background and creates something like restore points in another HD which it updates at specified intervals, with the ability to copy those restore points to a removable media and if need arise restore the system/program files and settings from a bootable media using such a restore point?
Click to expand...

Must ... resist... arrogant reply... ;)

Mac OS X Leopard's Time Machine is exactly doing that, it seems. Don't know about Windows.

:duck: and :runaway:
 
<rant>Symantec seems to destroy everything that they acquire. I gave up on on SystemWorks several years ago because every year they dumbed it down more and removed features that I liked. Norton Disk Edit has saved my ass many times and I still keep an old copy on a bootable floppy in case I have serious problems with a hard disk. I don't know if Symantec even produces it any more. I used to love the PowerQuest programs. There's no way that I would do an upgrade from Symantec. Their anti-virus was a POS until they bought IBM anti-virus and I still wouldn't use it.</rant>
 
Jednorozec said:
<rant>Symantec seems to destroy everything that they acquire. I gave up on on SystemWorks several years ago because every year they dumbed it down more and removed features that I liked. Norton Disk Edit has saved my ass many times and I still keep an old copy on a bootable floppy in case I have serious problems with a hard disk. I don't know if Symantec even produces it any more. I used to love the PowerQuest programs. There's no way that I would do an upgrade from Symantec. Their anti-virus was a POS until they bought IBM anti-virus and I still wouldn't use it.</rant>
Click to expand...

A perfectly lovely rant, dripping with passion, and perfectly well supported by the facts.

I once got a major promotion in the 1980s by using Norton to sector edit a corrupted database, just deleted one end of file marker, a single character (FF) and suddenly I were a genius. It has been all downhill for Norton products since then.
 
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