Customer Reviews

Norton Ghost 9.0 [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(44)

 

 

After experimenting with Ghost version 9.0, I can report that Symantec has produced a slick piece of software now that PowerQuest's DriveImage capabilities have been fully integrated into the feature set. Note that Version 9.0 works only on XP and 2000 systems.

For my home machine, I'm using a spare IDE drive to store the backup images. I have set up a regular schedule which will automatically do a full baseline backup once per month, with weekly incremental saves. The backup is performed at the rate of about 1 GB per minute on an Intel 3.20 GHz machine, with compression set to the standard parameter of 40%. I set a limit of 3 baseline images so that the backup drive will never run out of room.

Backup jobs are run within Windows so there is no need to boot to DOS. Backups can also be transmitted to a network server or written directly to CD or DVD devices.

Ghost includes a nifty utility which can open a backup image so that you can pull out a specific file for restoration. Following a catastrophic failure, you can boot from the Ghost software CD into recovery mode and very easily restore an entire drive including the MBR, making the disk ready to boot.

Ghost will also copy a drive while running under Windows. I successfully copied my C-drive, but XP would not boot the copy without permission from Microsoft.

Backups using removable media (i.e. CD or DVD) must be started manually. Backups to a hard drive or a network server can be scheduled for automatic operation. Just leave the PC on at night and it's all taken care of. Ghost will even send notification via email that the backup was completed.

I have been using Symantec products for few years and in general I don't have many complains. For most time, I can live with or work around the problems here or there. You know, I am a computer programmer.
But this time, I am really really disappointed. I used the Ghost 9.0 and had one of my W2K disk images backed up in a network drive, for that part, it went smoothly. It just happened that one of my hard drives crashed and I need to restore the image back to a new hard drive. Started with Symantec Recovery Disk (it came with Systemworks Premier that included the GS 9.0) from CD-Rom, network service started cool. I used the network drive mapping utility to locate my backed up image. Boy, I was happy, but a little bit too early. When I got to the recovery step, it said: Error EBAB0003, This Feature is not implemented. Excuse me, that's not what the user's guide says. There were few options in that screen you can change, but no matter what, sorry, that feature was always not implemented.
The so-called free tech support a joke, basically you go to their web page and there are few useless articles for you to read. If you are buying, make sure you understand you will need to pay near $30 per incident for phone support.
What I am going to try next is to find a way to get the image file to another hard drive and put it in to the same pc to see if I can recover it from there. Please don't tell me this feature is also not implemented.
One another thing I was sold to this is the new incremental backup feature. I hope it is implemented when you want to restore your files.

I'm an advaced user of disk imaging software. Drive Image 5 was great, but it didn't backup to DVDs, so I purchased Norton Ghost. Symantec doesn't tell you in the manual, but you can't just install the program under XP SP2. You have to alter your Boot.ini file first. I did this, but Ghost 9.0 didn't even show an option for backing up to a DVD drive, this despite my drive being listed on Symantec's site as being supported by Ghost. Symantec's free support amounts to a few FAQ articles on thier web site that are worthless.

After a long an painful search, I found an option to e-mail technical support on Symantec's web site. After sending repeated e-mails, I got a response a week later refering me to a "Knowledge Base" article about CD/DVD drives needing new config files to work with Ghost. THIS ARTICLE IS NOT EVEN LISTED IN SYMANTEC'S FAQ FOR GHOST! I tried to search for the articl but it's not there. After downloading the drivers, it solved the problem, only after a week of frustration.

{Update 12/2008) Well, I've been using Norton Ghost for a few years now, and it's been working like a champ. I've done at least 10 restores of my c: drive without any problems. Once I got it to work, it worked great.

I installed this program on WinXp service Pack 2. The program installed incorrectly and was absolutely unusable. I went to the support page and searched the knowledge base. I found that most of the articles were just straight from the documentation, which of course doesn't exactly help when you have errors. I then sent a message to the tech support for help. Its now been 5+ days and nothing. I assume they will never respond. You have to pay to call. So after editing my registry and uninstalling/installing serveral times I think it is now in a usable state. But now I don't really trust the software to back up my data.

I have been trying Ghost 9.0 and Ghost 2003 for about 2 months and reached the following conclusions:

* Ghost 9.0 is buggy.

It has a really nice user interface and feature set. The problem is that it does not give me any confidence about the integrity of its image files.

I installed it on Windows 2000 Professional with English and Traditional Chinese support and used it to create images of 6 FAT16 and FAT32 partitions.

I chose to password-protect the first image file. The image browser crashed when I tried to open the image file. So I gave up on the idea of password protection. Strike one.

I then created 6 image files with no password protection. If I double-click on the image file, the image browser would crash every time. If I start the image browser and then open the image files, it would be ok, though it still crashes sometimes. Strike two.

When I created the image files, I configured Ghost 9.0 to do an integrity check right away. All integrity checks were passed. However, when I spot-checked the content, I noticed that some directories and files were missing in 2 (1 FAT16 and 1 FAT32) of 6 image files! One of my partitions is a FAT32 with only less than 10 folders and subfolders and no files. Its image file contained only the top-level folders but no subfolders. All folders and subfolders have English names. I re-created the image file and re-checked: same problem. Strike three and out!

By the way, Symantec's Automated Support Assistant did not find anything that could cause the above problems.

* Ghost 2003 works but lacks support of newer devices

After giving up on Ghost 9.0, I tried Ghost 2003 that came with the Ghost 9.0 package. Its Windows interface is ok but it's better to stick with the DOS version to avoid the frequent reboots. The image files created were good.

Now the limitations (the DOS version):

It does not support my 160 GB acomdata external USB 2.0 drive. I worked around the problem by mounting the external drive on a second computer and map it as a network drive.

Its mouse driver does not work well with my Logitech mechanical and Microsoft optical mice in the network drive mapping mode: strange behavior with mouse click or double-click. When the mouse driver is loaded, it does not recognize to my Dell Dimension 8250 keyboard.

When the image file size is greater than 2 GB, it warns about insufficient disk space though there is plenty of free disk space. If I choose not to split the file, it would warn when the image file size reaches 4 GB, 6 GB, and so on, and wait for my input. I would have to baby-sit the whole process. The workaround is to let it split image file at 2 GB.

* Recommendations

In short, skip Ghost 9.0 and use Ghost 2003 if you have no other alternatives. If Symantec fixes the bugs in Ghost 9.0, I think it has the potential to be a great product.

I bought Ghost 9.0 (which came with Ghost 2003) for my home computer. I am guessing that they included 2003 as an alternate option because they knew that 9.0 had problems.

I have not been able to try 9.0 because the serial number provided does not work. I searched around the internet and it turns out that a lot of people had that problem. Unfortunately, I am at work during the tech support hours, so I have not been able to contact Symantec. I tried calling three times from work, but after being on hold for over an hour, i was away from my desk each time they finally answered, so they hung up on me.

I tried the 2003 version, which worked ok. But, in order to use it i had to add a drive formatted as FAT32 to save the backups. A FAT32 drive has a maximum disk space of 32GB. So, that is the largest drive i can use with Ghost 2003 for saving backups.

For such a large company I don't understand how they can release products that appear to have little or no quality assurance testing. How hard is it to have someone try installing the software from the box before shipping it?

I'm grateful that I didn't read the reviews for Ghost 9.0 here at Amazon before deciding to purchase. Had I read the reviews first, the purchase would have probably never been made.

I bought Ghost 9.0 because of previous experience with Ghost 2002 and because of an enthusiastic recommendation from a PC Magazine. Simply put, I'm very happy. Ghost 2002 was my main backup tool in the past, but the DOS environment that it utilized was a bit cumbersome. Ghost 9.0 achieves equally impressive results without requiring you to boot from a floppy--it works totally within a Windows environment.

When trying out Ghost 9.0, the first thing I did was back up my C: drive, while booted into that drive, as this is the acid test for a Windows-based backup program. Next, I wiped the drive clean (backing it up first with Ghost 2002, in case 9.0 was as horrible as so many Amazon reviewers had claimed), and booted into the Ghost 9.0 disaster recovery mode, which is accessed via the install CD.

Once into the disaster recovery main menu, I was dismayed--none of my four hard drives were showing up as selectable. Well, so much for disaster recovery with this title...then, suddenly, I recalled a message that flashed briefly while disaster recovery was loading...something about pressing the F6 key if you needed to install a special driver for hard drive access. Sigh, HOW could I have been so dumb? My hard drives are all connected to a Promise ATA 133 PCI controller card...without installation of a special driver, they can't be accessed. The same prompt appears during installation of Windows XP.

I rebooted with the recovery disc still in, pressed F6 at the prompt, and inserted a floppy containing the needed driver for my ATA 133 card when asked to do so. NOW things were looking up! Once into the Ghost recovery menu, all of my hard drives were visible/selectable, and I found myself working within a very friendly Windows environment. I selected the backup file containing my C: drive, specified the drive I wanted it to be dumped to, then waited while Ghost rapidly did its job. And thankfully, I was never prompted to enter a ridiculously long license key before the restore operation would even start--a ritual that Ghost 2002 demanded every time I used it to restore a hard drive.

Once this was complete, I removed the CD, rebooted my computer, and hoped for the best, though fully prepared for the worst...the worst never happened though. My C: drive was back to normal, fully restored by Ghost, with none of the issues that others here have experienced, such as Windows XP no longer "remembering" that it had been activated. ATA controller card problem aside, the entire procedure was quick/painless.

I did update Ghost fully with Symantec's "Live Update" feature before attempting to use it. Maybe that's the reason things went so well...I just don't know. There are folks out there, though, who hate everything Symantec, and I can't help but wonder how many of these reviews were written with a healthy dose of bias.

At any rate, I'm very pleased, and now have a new favorite backup tool. I've used it several times since, with no issues.

Personally, I would wholeheartedly recommend Ghost 9.0. It's as reliable/simple as a backup tool can get.

2 things they don't tell you, but you must do in order to use ghost:

1. You MUST run CHKDSK /F before trying to made an image- one bad file and the program gives you a message that you have a cyclic redunancy check error. (after 30 minutes of running).

2. Running live update, YOU MUST NOT REBOOT when asked to do so!!!! From the words of Norton tech support:

After performing LiveUpdate you will receive a prompt that will ask you to restart the computer. If you respond "YES" to rebooting the computer it shuts down before the installation is complete. I recommend that you please respond "NO" and allow Live Update to complete. Then restart the computer after the patch is completely installed.
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I'm really disappointed with Symentec. I can't understand how symantec sells software that does't work. I installed it and everything since to go well until I tried to activate it. It was IMPOSSIBLE!!!!!! I tried typing the CD Key lowercase, then uppercase and it made no differece. It didn't work. Then I tried contacting Symantec's tech support and i'va got no answer. The online support doesn't help either. It's like the user's manual, so it doesn't give eny new information about.
It's been 15+ days since I contacted Symantec by phone and by email and I haven't received any solution yet. So I think I'll be returning this piece of sh....

For those of you that might be thinking about buying this program, please consider another options first or wait some time before buying it in order to give Symantec the oportunity to solve all the problems.

Drive imaging technology should be able to copy drives, right?

1) if you boot from CD, you can't copy drive to drive
2) In order to copy drive to drive you have to register it
3) In order to copy drive to drive after you've registered it, you have to have a valid internet connection so it can check the validity of your license
4) If you forget to check the "mark drive active" box, but you mark the "copy MBR" box, it doesn't warn you that your drive won't be bootable (even though the only possible reason that you'd want to copy the MBR is to have a bootable drive)

I bought this program to do one very specific thing: copy the contents of one drive to another, ensuring that the destination drive would be bootable. Unfortuantely Norton decided to cripple this product in such a way that what should have been five minutes of set up and an hour or so of waiting turned into an hour of setup and 3 hours of waiting (and I'm not even sure it will work yet).

DON'T buy this product.