Any Norton Ghost users?

[LiquidX]

With much time and tweaking my system feels and performs great and I want to keep it this way. I have heard great things about ghost but I have a few questions. Does it make a image of everything...games, music, desktop files, etc or just windows itself? Also if the image is used to do a restore the system back to its original state when Ghost was used will every change made after be lost? Thanks.

[bknblk]

With much time and tweaking my system feels and performs great and I want to keep it this way. I have heard great things about ghost but I have a few questions. Does it make a image of everything...games, music, desktop files, etc or just windows itself? Also if the image is used to do a restore the system back to its original state when Ghost was used will every change made after be lost? Thanks.

If you use Ghost to create a disc image, then it will be an exact duplicate of what is on your drive at the time of the operation. If you have a lot of data you will either need a spare HDD or be willing to span the image across whatever media you choose.

[LiquidX]

Ahh ok. Thanks bknblk. The experimentation begins.

[CaptNKILL]

A friend made me a boot CD with ghost, and I just used it last week to image my old 60gig Maxtor PATA over to my new 200gig SATA drive. VERY fast and has a drive integrity checker to go along with it to make sure its all stable after a massive copy.

I cant imagine installing a new hard drive being any easier... seriously, its an excellent program.

[Vanzagar]

LiquidX. I have been using ghost for about 2 years now, ghost 3, 7 and 9 and it works awesome and I'll never go back. I don't usually ghost games cause they come and go. Here's what I generally do:

Format new drive.
Fresh XP install
Install microsoft office
Install virus scanner, adaware, firewall...etc
Log into all my account so the cookies are set (bank accounts, forums ..etc)
Install other sofware I use all the time: psp, virtualdub tmpgenc, dvd2avi, dvdmaestro...etc
Tweak all my settings in programs and win XP - take away fade effect, turn off system sounds...etc
Update my virus scan software + adaware
Run scans (virus, adaware..etc)
Defrag drive

GHOST copy entire drive, either drive to drive or drive to image file.

THEN YOU HAVE A SNAPSHOT of your entire HD. Unless I change my motherboard I will will burn this image back to my HD about every 3 months. Remember to take stuff off you C: drive as it will BE WIPED out. I don't put anything valuable on my C:\drive but still, watch out for this.

It's the best system ever and work perfectly....

Vanz

ps. As for games I don't ghost them but I will copy the save game directories and just re-install them. I never have a game on for more than a month or two other than Counter Strike, which I do ghost...

[test4echo]

LiquidX. I have been using ghost for about 2 years now, ghost 3, 7 and 9 and it works awesome and I'll never go back. I don't usually ghost games cause they come and go. Here's what I generally do:

Format new drive.
Fresh XP install
Install microsoft office
Install virus scanner, adaware, firewall...etc
Log into all my account so the cookies are set (bank accounts, forums ..etc)
Install other sofware I use all the time: psp, virtualdub tmpgenc, dvd2avi, dvdmaestro...etc
Tweak all my settings in programs and win XP - take away fade effect, turn off system sounds...etc
Update my virus scan software + adaware
Run scans (virus, adaware..etc)
Defrag drive

GHOST copy entire drive, either drive to drive or drive to image file.

THEN YOU HAVE A SNAPSHOT of your entire HD. Unless I change my motherboard I will will burn this image back to my HD about every 3 months. Remember to take stuff off you C: drive as it will BE WIPED out. I don't put anything valuable on my C:\drive but still, watch out for this.

It's the best system ever and work perfectly....

Vanz

ps. As for games I don't ghost them but I will copy the save game directories and just re-install them. I never have a game on for more than a month or two other than Counter Strike, which I do ghost...



Thats pretty much how to do it properly.
Good advice.

Test,

[LiquidX]

LiquidX. I have been using ghost for about 2 years now, ghost 3, 7 and 9 and it works awesome and I'll never go back. I don't usually ghost games cause they come and go. Here's what I generally do:

Format new drive.
Fresh XP install
Install microsoft office
Install virus scanner, adaware, firewall...etc
Log into all my account so the cookies are set (bank accounts, forums ..etc)
Install other sofware I use all the time: psp, virtualdub tmpgenc, dvd2avi, dvdmaestro...etc
Tweak all my settings in programs and win XP - take away fade effect, turn off system sounds...etc
Update my virus scan software + adaware
Run scans (virus, adaware..etc)
Defrag drive

GHOST copy entire drive, either drive to drive or drive to image file.

THEN YOU HAVE A SNAPSHOT of your entire HD. Unless I change my motherboard I will will burn this image back to my HD about every 3 months. Remember to take stuff off you C: drive as it will BE WIPED out. I don't put anything valuable on my C:\drive but still, watch out for this.

It's the best system ever and work perfectly....

Vanz

ps. As for games I don't ghost them but I will copy the save game directories and just re-install them. I never have a game on for more than a month or two other than Counter Strike, which I do ghost...

Thanks alot for that advise rhuala I will do exactly what you said. :)

[lumpyhed]

Seeing as we have some experienced Ghostees in the house, i'd like to ask you all a question. I have a 200GB SATA as my main drive. Its developed an annoying ossilating noise that lowly vibrates the case & is basically the loudest thing in my system. Its not errored or SMART detecting anything unhealthy about it, but as such i would like to RMA it for a replacement.

Of course its gonna be a bitch to reinstall all that! So with ghost could i potentially add another 200g SATA, boot from Ghost and there & then exactly copy my old drive to the new one, shutdown, disconnect the old and expect to boot straight off the new one as if nothing happened?

I already use Ghost at work for setting up new machines, but its always an image already stored on the network & i don't have surplus storage for the image while i install the new drive. Can it be done? :)

[Clay]

I second what rhuala said. Ghost is a huge time saver.

@lumpyhed: Yes, what you describe would work just fine. You wouldn't be actually "copying your old drive to the new one" though. Ghost would make an image of your current noisy drive. You would then restore from that image file (or files if you spanned them) to your new drive.

[lumpyhed]

I second what rhuala said. Ghost is a huge time saver.

@lumpyhed: Yes, what you describe would work just fine. You wouldn't be actually "copying your old drive to the new one" though. Ghost would make an image of your current noisy drive. You would then restore from that image file (or files if you spanned them) to your new drive.

So theres no way of doing it directly? I would need to store the image on a third drive before i could load it to the new?

[Clay]

So theres no way of doing it directly? I would need to store the image on a third drive before i could load it to the new?
No, you could store the image on your "new" drive and restore from that to itself assuming that you have two different partitions on that drive.

[CaptNKILL]

I dont know, I think you can do it just fine. I had my 60gig and my new 200gig in my comp, i booted from the ghost disk and imaged my 60gig to my 200gig and it booted off the 200gig just fine. I dont see why it wouldnt work for you too... Maybe I just dont understand the situation...?

[ynnek]

i know a kid that obsessively uses ghost.. he "resets" his computer like once a week.

[lumpyhed]

Perhaps my wording aint too precise ;)
I've got in and installed my Ghost 9, and img'd my 'C Drive' (F:) and the swap partition to another drive - compresses pretty well. Being as my bootable partition is called F: & the games drive is infact the C: (long story), if i restore just the F: & swap file, it won't suddenly on boot call it C: and screw everything up will it?

Thankies for all your help!