Create an identical disk

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Has anyone tried using Norton Ghost? I'm looking for a utility that will
duplicate exactly the hard disk including the OS (XP Pro) in case of a hard
disk crash. Thanks in advance.
 
Norton Ghost is now an incarnation of the old Powerquest Drive Image. While
i haven't used the latest version of Norton Ghost since they took over
Powerquest products i have and still do use powerquest drive image, and i've
never had any problem imaging the whole disk or a single partition. As
Norton Ghost is drive image with a new name and maybe a slight revamp i
would imagine it will do the same.
 
Frank said:
Has anyone tried using Norton Ghost? I'm looking for a utility that will
duplicate exactly the hard disk including the OS (XP Pro) in case of a hard
disk crash. Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Have a look at Acronis True Image:
www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/
I have used Ghost and Drive Image in the past and would
recommend True Image above either for ease of use and
reliability. My main hard drive failed without warning
a few months back and I was back up on a brand new drive
within 30 minutes.
 
True Image 8 does not restore an image exactly as the original. Nor does it
copy a drive exactly as the original. File placement is altered. Don't get
me wrong, the drive will still be functional. It's just that the
pagefile.sys, hiberfil.sys and the MFT zone will be in different locations
and may not be optimal.

Drive Image/Ghost, on the other hand, creates an "exact" image either as a
copy or a stored. It also restores an image file "exactly".



--
Regards,

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard :-)

If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
I agree. I always stick with DI.
If you have the time, browse back through the NGs and see how many vague
major problems include "I'm runnning Nortons ......"
I may be biased, but that name makes me shudder.
 
John Barnett MVP said:
Norton Ghost is now an incarnation of the old Powerquest Drive Image. While
i haven't used the latest version of Norton Ghost since they took over
Powerquest products i have and still do use powerquest drive image, and i've
never had any problem imaging the whole disk or a single partition. As
Norton Ghost is drive image with a new name and maybe a slight revamp i
would imagine it will do the same.
Click to expand...

Yes I've also been using DI. Works very well. I particularly like being able
to schedule backups nightly and get email to tell me how they went. No more
checking log files - just check email. It sounds trivial but it means
backups get done.
 
Richard said:
True Image 8 does not restore an image exactly as the original. Nor does it
copy a drive exactly as the original. File placement is altered. Don't get
me wrong, the drive will still be functional. It's just that the
pagefile.sys, hiberfil.sys and the MFT zone will be in different locations
and may not be optimal.

Drive Image/Ghost, on the other hand, creates an "exact" image either as a
copy or a stored. It also restores an image file "exactly".
Click to expand...
Yes, I read the interesting comparison in here recently. Was it you
who posted it? If so, did you ever send a copy to Acronis tech support
to see if they had any comment?

I accept your points but I would still recommend True Image to anyone
posting in a 'basics' forum. Only on an extreme gamer's machine or a
critical production server would the few per cent performance hit that
could be caused by suboptimal placement of pagefile.sys or the MFT cause
problems.

True Image is cheaper, faster and easier to use than Drive Image and
does everything I need it to do. Those are more important considerations
for a plain vanilla home user, as I am and I assumed the OP to be, than
optimal performance.

[I should say that I haven't used Drive Image since 2003 when they
wanted more money to upgrade my registered copy than the price of a new
licence for True Image.]
 
Yes, I am the person who posted the comparison.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban

If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!


John Coode said:
Richard said:
True Image 8 does not restore an image exactly as the original. Nor does
it copy a drive exactly as the original. File placement is altered. Don't
get me wrong, the drive will still be functional. It's just that the
pagefile.sys, hiberfil.sys and the MFT zone will be in different
locations and may not be optimal.

Drive Image/Ghost, on the other hand, creates an "exact" image either as
a copy or a stored. It also restores an image file "exactly".
Click to expand...
Yes, I read the interesting comparison in here recently. Was it you
who posted it? If so, did you ever send a copy to Acronis tech support
to see if they had any comment?

I accept your points but I would still recommend True Image to anyone
posting in a 'basics' forum. Only on an extreme gamer's machine or a
critical production server would the few per cent performance hit that
could be caused by suboptimal placement of pagefile.sys or the MFT cause
problems.

True Image is cheaper, faster and easier to use than Drive Image and does
everything I need it to do. Those are more important considerations for a
plain vanilla home user, as I am and I assumed the OP to be, than optimal
performance.

[I should say that I haven't used Drive Image since 2003 when they
wanted more money to upgrade my registered copy than the price of a new
licence for True Image.]
Click to expand...
 
Actually Treeman Casper XP is a good alternative, especially since the
latest version allows imaging of partitions as well as the 'full' hard
drive. I've actually beta tested the latest version and found it extremely
good, except for the fact that when you image your drive/partition it also
images the 'freespace' So if like me you have a 20GB partition for XP
wherever you intend to store the 'image' you need at least a 20GB
allocation. It images 'like for like' with no compression. Drive image, on
the other hand, images the contents of the drive thus, although i have 20GB
the installed software is only 6GB. With normal compression (Drive Image)
this creates a file of 3.75GB in size. This takes approximately 5 minutes to
image and around the same time to reimage back to the partition if a problem
occurs. I should say that i have a quad boot system so the 5 minutes to
re-image is achieved by booting into windows xp home and reimaging windows
xp pro back to its original partition from there. Under DOS conditions we
are talking 30 to 40 minutes.
I've tried Acronis and that takes anything up to an hour to image the drive
which is far too long.
 
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