Computer newbies forum: Norton's Ghost program

I hope the person (todde) that said you could make a boot CD from Ghost will let me know how to do that! I have been under the impression with XP you can't do that.

My son has a laptop at school and I bought him an external drive, and ghost. In the time I spent with him I could not figure out how, if we used ghost to back up his hardrive to the external, to recover it if his HD went completely south. It seems to me you would want to boot from a third device that had ghost on it, then recover from the external to a new internal drive. Or would you install enough on the new internal to boot, install ghost, boot from it and recover from the external, wouldn't that write over all the stuff you just did on the new internal? I should would appreicate some advice here.

I think most responders here fail in explaining the difference between Ghost and the system restore CD from Dell. The system restore will just restore the system to how it came from Dell, with JUST those applications on it. Ghost will allow you (supposedly) to back up your harddrive just as it is NOW, with all the applications and upgrades you have installed. Thus a restore from this backup and all your contacts, bookmarks (favorites), cookies, service packs, etc are backed up too. I too frown on backing up to a partition on the same drive, cuz if that drive fails your toast. Note that if you had some virus on your HD when you backed it up with ghost, when you restore, they will be back, so a system restore will give a fresh windows install free from any virus. From what I can ascertain, in the Windows world, reinstalling to flush you system of virus' is more likely needed than a hardware failure.

The above link is non-functional, but you can click here to go to the product page and download version 1.86. Note that version 2.0 has been released, which is why the older version has been made freely available.

Hope this helps,
John

Yeah! Consider getting a huge second hard drive BEFORE you buy duplicating software!!!
I didn't know what to do either, when I was buying my 4th pc.
Then, I decided to have Best Buy install a second hard drive.
My new pc's drive was already 160 gigs!
Best Buy had a separate INTERNAL hard drive on sale.
So, I had them install it the same day I bought my new pc. (The second hard drive was about 180 gigs!!!)
I'm glad I did, because windows can have a tendancy to freak out!
I now save ALL downloaded files to my second hard drive.
This include movies, pictures, images, games, FAVORITES, EVERYTHING!
And, I unpack ALL files onto my MAIN hard drive, and ONLY my main hard drive.
My pc has severely crashed at least 2 times since I bought it Christmas, 2005, but it only crashed my main hard drive.
Everything I saved on my second hard drive was not infected, nor affected in any way.
WindowsXP is way more advanced than Windows98, when it comes to RESTORING the main hard drive.
I did not know this when I bought my new pc!
I asked a friend how to restore my new WindowsXP pc.
I learned that all I neded to do was do a DESTRUCTIVE RESTORE to completely wipe out EVERYTHING on the main hard drive!
WOW! I didn't have to insert a disc or anything!
As for Norton's Ghost program, I am in the dark.
I have never used Norton for anything.
I use AVAST! to stop viruses, etc.
But, just the word GHOST sounds like a DUPLICATING software.
Even if you bought the software, you will still need to copy everything you install every time you install the software, because if your pc crashes in between duplicating, you will lose the most recent programs that have not been copied.
I've just learned to TRY TO BE careful when downloading, but I still occasionally run into a game or something some jerk poisoned with a virus or a bomb.
I LOVE TRYING OUT NEW GAMES!!!
With my 4 pc's I've probably downloaded thousands of simple games, but I never thought of buying a second drive until my 4th pc!
Before my 4th pc I would lose everything!!!
After my other 3 pcs would crash I would try to relocate and remember which games on the net were fun or clean, and if I guessed wrong, BAM, the cycle would run again; another system crash!!!
What a pain!!!
Now that I have WindowsXP, and a huge second hard drive, I move forward in stead of backward every few months!
Well, I hope this helps you, my friend!
SaintlyMic