Customer Reviews

Norton Ghost 2003 [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

Bottom line - backup,backup,backup.
I previously had Ghost 2000, and recently upgraded to 2003. I really only use the program for monthly backups of my hard drive. I learnt the lesson the hard way when (2 years ago), I purchased a Dell that had an IBM 60GXP drive. What a mistake that was! I went through two of these drives in six months. Prior to my hard drive failures I did not regularly backup my hard drive. Now, all I do is monthly backup my system and application partition with Ghost. It makes an image which it burns onto about six CDs. The interface has been upgraded now so that the PC user can setup all the options in windows and allow the program to then reboot the PC into DOS and run the actual backup. It also installs the boot files needed to use the backup CD as a boot CD (need to ensure your PC can boot from the CD).

I am happy I have done this as I found out last week that my present Maxtor drive is failing (after a year). Once I get my new drive it will be simple exercise of restoring the image on my new drive! Easy as pie.

Some people still argue that the program is clunky and weaker since it still uses DOS. My view is that it is highly reliable, whereas other programs such as Drive Image, etc have been known to have problems. I highly recommend this program for people who want piece of mind that they have bullet proof backups. Note: this program is not all that flexible for minor regular backups, such as specific files.

update: 12/17/02
I just used Ghost with an external (firewire connected) harddrive. I had recently purchased an external firewire/USB 2.0 drive enclosure, and dropped an 75gig drive I had lying around. Anyway, I was able to save an image of my primary drive to this drive, no problems as the 2003 version of this software supports firewire. Just as a point of note, I had absolutely no problems but my firewire enclosure chipset was an Oxford chipset, which I understand has a high degree of compatibility, so your mileage might vary.
I was also able to boot up with the Ghost floppy and see my external drive, ensuring that I could re-image my backup to any new primary drive.

Ghost works on my system. Quick - easy - efficient. So why only 3 stars? Because Symantec is so heavy handed with the product that I will simply never purchase from them again. All small things but together they leave a bad taste in my mouth.

1. When you first install Ghost there is a required profiling questionnaire. Things like age, sex, job, etc. There is no way to cancel out of this without aborting the install. I'm sorry but that is unacceptable.

2. If you use the download version as I did you must leave the program wherever you install from. If you think you will simply burn the download onto a CD, install and happily use Ghost you are mistaken - it references the install program itself. Why Symantec? Why?

3. There is a system tray app and system service that must be running at all times or whenever you access a folder with a .gho file extension Ghost will attempt to reinstall itself. I guess it depends on how you use Ghost. If you use it for scheduled backups then this is no problem. My machine requires me to boot off floppy or CD to run Ghost. So, in my case this is nothing but a resource vaccuum. There is no choice. If you attempt to remove the sys tray app or disable the Ghost service you will pay the price whenever you access a volume or folder with a .gho extension - Ghost will yet again try to reinstall itself.

The Ghost application itself is a professional piece. It works well and the interface is clean. However, it is the opinion of this user the folks at Symantec need to take a serious look at how they treat the people who are feeding them. I do not find it acceptable to be used as a instrument of social profiling and I want options when I install a program. Bite the hand that feeds you and you will eventually find yourself one hungry puppy.

The new Ghost 2003 supports USB 1.1, 2.0 and 1394 Firewire hard drives and cdrw and dvd-rw drives. You can create a single floppy disk that will let you save a image of your hard drive to a 2nd partition of your hard drive, a 2nd hard drive, cdrw drives ( will span multiple cdr & cdrw discs), dvd-r drive, external usb 1.1 & 2.0 hard drives and 1394 hard drives.

You can restore you saved image from the same single floppy disk.

Ghost will create a virtual partition and boot to pc dos to image your hard drive without the use of a floppy. Caution, if you cannot boot to your hard drive, you must create a bootable floppy or cdrom to restore your image.

I use Norton Ghost 2003 to periodically capture an "image" of one or both of the partions on my computer's hard disk. On that basis I'd say that it's probably worth its price. On the other hand, it's not the easiest program in the world to use.

Ghost has a GUI interface, but the GUI provides only a limited amount of control. To truly use the program effectively you'll need to read about and experiment with Ghost's text-based command lines; this in turn implies at least a basic understanding of Windows batch files. (And some amount of perserverance...)

After you learn how to write the proper command lines Ghost will create images and restore Ghost disk images across "spanned" media, such as multiple CD-Rs. I for example periodically use Ghost to "checkpoint" both my Windows and my Linux disk partitions: If my hard drive ever fails I'll be able to quickly reload the Ghost images on to a new hard drive and resume using my system.

If you are planning to purchase Ghost, I recommend that you first visit Symantec's Web site and verify that your CD-R drive is on Ghost's list of approved drives. I had problems with my CD-R drive which I eventually solved by using a command line switch to slow down the rate at which Ghost wrote to the drive. (I also learned to use the highest-quality CD-R media I can find when I had mysterious problems writing an image to "el-cheapo" media...)

In summary, Ghost is most definitely *not* for a newcomer to computing. If on the other hand you have the abilty and willingness to read a command line reference document and spend a day or two experimenting with different command options, Ghost can get the job done for you.

After 3 days of trying, I still do not have a "backup" of my computer's hard drive.

The manual is jargon filled and does not adequately explain how to use the product or explain errors. The on-line help (and the manual) does not explain error messages. The product itself is a very old DOS based product that is very loosely wrapped to work in Windows. If you do not know what a "Command Line Switch" is, then stay away from this product.

My first attempt was using the "intuitive" windows interface. I got to one dialog that indicated I should install the driver for my USB2.0 external drive. In the next dialog, it said something like, "if you have ANY USB1.1 devices, then you MUST select USB1.1". USB2.0 is about 40 times faster than USB1.1. There is no explanation that I could find that would help me to use the capabilities of the USB2.0 connection.

I chose USB2.0 and after the PC rebooted it hung, so I guess I was supposed to use USB1.1. I then started over and selected USB1.1. After completing the wizard it rebooted and started the backup. It said it would take about 5 hours to back up my 20GB of data/files. It was slowly going along until it got to about 2GB of data backed up. The display showed a strange error message. I looked over the box and started reading the manual that came with the software. It was not until I came to page 64 (!) that there was any mention of size limitations. I needed to go to the "options" section and then find the correct option to enforce "spanned" image files to back up more than about 3 GB of data.

The options are in alphabetical order in the manual, and I needed to visually scan through about 100 different options and their descriptions before finding "-span".

Ok, so I finally get the "-span" option to go past the first 2GB of data. Ghost worked for about 5 hours and the status in the log file says, "Success". I go into the "Image viewer" to display the contents and it says:

Not a ghost image file

That's it. No other information. There are 8 files on my external drive, each one about 2 GB in size written by Ghost.

I go to the "Image integrity check" and it says:

Not a ghost image file

I then go to the support website which indicated that I should update to the latest version of Ghost. I did that and restarted the backup again. Another 5 wasted hours and again the same error message after a "successful" backup:

Not a ghost image file

I went to the Norton Ghost website and did a search on the error message "Not a ghost image file". The message could not be found!

All I want to do is back up my C: drive to an external drive connected to my PC. The software has failed miserably at this relatively easy task.

After reading the reviews for Norton Ghost 2003, I purchased the product with a great deal of trepidation - especially all of the problems people have had with 'unsupported' Maxtor external hard drives (USB). I was very happy to find out that this product was a breeze to install, configure and make back-ups with. I have only used the most basic features (creating an image of my 80GB HD on a 120MB Maxtor 2.0 USB external drive), but I was able to get it done in about 2hrs. with no major problems to speak of. The compression was more than satisfactory as it imaged my 80GB hard drive into a 20GB file on the Maxtor. In order to get this to image to and restore from an external Maxtor USB drive, you have to go to the Syamntec website, get the drivers and copy them to the appropriate directory based on your O/S (Go to Symantec.Com, look under Products (Ghost), Support and then do a keyword search on 'Maxtor' in their knowledge base). I do have one complaint: These drivers are not included in the Norton 'Live Update' packages that are continually pushed to you when you buy a Norton product: TOTALLY stupid. Isn't that the reason for having a 'Live Update' feature - to get drivers, enhancements, etc. so customers don't have to go look for them???? In any event, once I got the drivers installed this thing worked like a charm!

For those who have "Coolstar's" problem (where the backup fails for some reason and you're not able to boot into Windows) here's the fix (the same thing happened to me and I figured out how to fix it by trial and error):

Boot your computer using a startup floppy disk (created using Windows 98/ME for example) and run FDISK (a copy of this program has to be on the startup disk, of course).

If your computer ignores the floppy, you'll have to change the startup order in the BIOS so that it tries to boot from the floppy before the hard disk or CD-ROM (done by pressing a certain key immediately after booting up - this key depends on the motherboard manufacturer... in many cases it is "delete").

Once in FDISK, if you examine the partitions (option 4) you'll notice that in addition to your normal partitions, there is also the virtual partition that Ghost made "active" (so that the computer boots from it).

To boot into Windows, choose option 2 ("Set active partition") and make your system partition - where your operating system's boot files are located (C: drive 99% of the time) ACTIVE. Don't worry about making the wrong drive active - if you get it wrong, just run fdisk again and choose a different drive.

Where you DO have to be careful is if you go exploring option 3 - "Delete Partition or Logical DOS drive." You will lose all the data on whatever partition you delete so don't fool around here unless you know what you're doing!

After making the system partition active, hit escape until you're back at the DOS prompt, eject your floppy, and then reboot.

If you've made the correct partition active, you should boot directly into windows. If you've made the wrong partition active, reinsert your floppy, run FDISK again and try again.

At this point the virtual partition is still there. If you want to get rid of it, you can delete it using "Disk Management" (if you have Windows XP Professional you can find it in the "Computer Management" snap-in, right click "My Computer" and select "Manage"... I'm not sure if XP Home has Computer Management) or some other partitioning software (FDISK might be able to do it too - I didn't try it though).

Be VERY careful with deleting partitions!

If you delete the wrong partition you will lose EVERYTHING on it!

To make things easier (if you have a hard disk with multiple partitions), I suggest giving your different partitions/logical disks unique names (I also made mine different sizes).


As for Ghost...
Yep, the DOS interface is old and clunky but it's nuclear-grade protection. Make an image when you're system is in good working condition. Then...

Got a virus?
Restore the image (it overwrites the boot sector as well on the hard drive).

Run into ANY kind of software problem?
Restore the image.

Hard drive failed?
Restore the image (you DID put it on a different physical disk, didn't you?)


To learn how to the program, google the terms "radified ghost" and you should see a link to a guide at the top. It's the best "How-To" guide on it I've seen (the same site's FDISK guide is also awesome).

Note - Ghost 9.0 (recently released) no longer uses the core that Ghost 2003 uses. Instead it uses the core based on PowerQuest's "Drive Image" - so for those of you who like the old Ghost, 2003 is the last you'll probably see of it. From what I've heard, Ghost 9.0 includes Ghost 2003, though.

Be careful about how you name your images!

I suggest limiting your image name to *5 characters* (even though they can be longer) - in certain cases new image files you create can overwrite segments of old image files.

For example, C1609 (for an image of C drive made on the 16th of September)

EDIT:
Ghost 9.0 doesn't seem to include the full version of Ghost 2003 - the most I've been able to find (looking at a friend's copy) is a utility that you can use to restore images made on Ghost 2003 (you can access it if you boot from the 9.0 CD). I haven't found an executable that you can use to make *.GHO images.

Stay away from this product; it doesn't work at all and I want my money back.

I bought Ghost because I wanted to dump a snapshot of my hard drive to CD-R's, to recover from disk failure without having to manually reinstall everything. I planned to take a full snapshot using Ghost every couple of months, and backup my user files every couple of days using the Roxio easy cd creator(which works just fine).

I installed Ghost, and asked to create a backup of my entire "C:" drive to the CD writer. Ghost reboots the PC into DOS mode, and starts writing to CD-R's,asking for a new CD-R when it fills one. Everything seemed to be going fine, until Ghost crashed while writing the 10th (and last) CD-R.

I rebooted to Windows (XP Pro) and did a "live update", figuring such blatant bugs should have been fixed by now. Then I tried again. Same thing, except this time Ghost crashed while writing the 5th CD. Hey, that's a 50% improvement, right?

To Symantec's credit, this turkey doesn't work while taking backups, so that I know that I don't have a backup, instead of pretending to work fine while taking backups and then croaking during the restore (though I see that another reviewer ran into exactly that problem).

I want my money back, along with 15 CD-R's to replace the ones Ghost destroyed. For the monthly or bi-monthly snapshots, I'll instead buy a new hard drive and do a block by block copy of the old. You should too.

After reading the reviews in here with much hesitancy I bought the program over the weekend, and before I opened it went out to the Symantec website to check hardware compatability (which you should do with any software product these days just to be sure.)
I had used a prior version of Ghost and it was a little quirky (but it did work fine, with high quality cdr's) but 2003 seems to have fixed alot of problems and has some great new improvements. I started out simple and went for a straight image to CDR's.. while not the fastest method it worked without a hitch.. It also works great with USB external drives as well..much faster than cd's even on USB 1.. I've got 3 computers backed up on an 80GB external.. awesome! It does have limited DVD support as a few people mentioned but DVD's are new and it will take a little time to catch up.. I think the reason most people are having problems is not reading the manual, it is a complex program but simple at the same time.. All the answers are there if you look for them, too many people are just used to installing a program and figuring it out as they go along.. If you've ever experienced a hard drive failure or system crash without a backup (as I have) you quickly learn how important backups are.. With Ghost 2003 regular backups are a snap, get a USB drive and along with CDR's you can have 2 sets just in case..

I made a mistake last night and thought I was going to lose the microsoft ebooks I had when I restored my hard drive from an image stored on several cdr disks. It took four hours and 18 cdrs to restore my hard drive. When it did boot I was able to open up all my ebooks.

Norton Ghost 2003 is not the easiest software to use. However since emachines stored the oem setup software in norton ghost format, it was the software I chose to buy once I had a relaible burner. I didn't lose a lot of data because the ghost image was only a week old. I'm going to backup my hard drive once a month with Norton. Easy or not I got my system back the way i had it a week ago thanks to Norton Ghost 2003.