Norton Ghost 2003

Rating:
Summary: Ghost 2003 Acts more Like a Destructive Virus than a Utility
Review: I have used Norton/Symantec software for over ten years. The dependability of Ghost 2002 encouraged me to buy the supposed upgrade "Ghost 2003."

Three times Ghost 2003 rewrote my boot sector and would not let me restore it. When I run Ghost 2003 in pure DOS mode, the software cannot see either of my two hard drives. I have spent days restoring my hard drives from scratch because Ghost 2003 create its own partition on my hard drive. Typing "ghreboot" does not return the computer back to Windows. At least the three times, I ran Ghost but had to restore my hard disk from scratch because Ghost 2003 left my hard disk in overwritten and unrecoverable (ironic) because this program just does not work.

In researching the issues on the Internet, it would seem that the Symantec help desk, others customer comments, and tutorials simply confirm that my experience is not unique.

If I do not receive a version through the "Live Update" that works as advertised, I will seek legal advice concerning compensation for the misleading advertisements and the hours of time I needed to spend restoring my hard drive. There should be a law against selling a product that does not work as adversited, especially when the previous version did work.

Symantec should be ashamed of itself for releasing this downgrade to Ghost 2002. Calling it Ghost 2003 makes one believe that this is an upgrade from Ghost 2002. This in itself has been misleading.

Symantec software engineers and CEO should feel embarrassed for releasing this product to comsumers who used to have trust in the Norton name. It is products like this that bring understanding to the issue of technology stock has been losing ground. Without trust, what is there?

Rating:
Summary: Where is the compression?
Review: I have used other peices of cloning software and always like making a copy of a new PC that I get so that if it dies on me I can get things back to the way the factory sent it to me. This would be a great product if my software was on a 1400MB HD. There is no compression to speak of and it feels that in the "image" of the data that I have it taking up space for secotrs of my HD that are empty. My machine has a 200GB HD with 186 usable in XP and the image that Ghost 2003 wants to make is around 70GB. I don't even have 10GB filled on the HD with the apps and data I have on it. Some of the features are worthy but feel that I should be able to span the data on a few CD's at the max not need a slave HD that is the same size. Thanks Symantec but I can always mirror my HD without your software.

Rating:
Summary: it restored everything on my hard drive
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: It works if you know how to use it
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: It works if you know how to use it
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Can Ghost 2003 make a bootable drive across a network?
Review: I'm using these discussions to help me decide on purchasing Ghost 2003. What I need to do is change the old hard drive on my Notebook by moving the O/S and installed programs to new bootable hard drive. I would like to "image" or "clone" the Notebook's old drive over my home network to a new hard drive that is installed in an external enclosure and connected to a PC by USB or Fire Wire. I hope to end up with the new drive being an exact bootable copy of the old drive and to then install it in the Notebook. My 5 stars assumes that I can do this. I know that Ghost can "image" across a network to/from USB and Fire Wire but is the final restored/cloned drive bootable? Has anyone done this or is Ghost capable of doing this?

Rating:
Summary: Poor support from Symmantec
Review: I've owned Ghost, and a number of other Symmantec products. Unfortunately, I have found their support to be AWFUL. If you can't find your question in "Commonly Asked Questions" on their website, you're out of luck. If you email a question to their tech support, they simply refer you back to their commonly asked questions (FAQ's) on their website. After becoming thoroughly disguisted with their products, I tried to uninstall them from my computer. That too, is next to impossible as it often requires going into the system registry. If you want to upgrade a Symmantec product, you must completely uninstall and remove any previous version(s). Therefore, you aren't doing an upgrade, rather, you're deleting all your previous saved data and then installing completely new headaches for yourself. Symmantec products, in my opinion, are really BAD news.

Rating:
Summary: Some words about Symantec rebates
Review: If you are thinking about buying norton software simply because they are free after rebates, then reconsider it. Although it's well known Symantec makes reliable softwares, When we talk about their rebates, they are liars. Yes, liars ¨Cthey really deserve this. Based on my personal experience, I even think theirs are worse than the notorious I/O Magic's (aka, Hi-Val, Digital research). I bought several Norton softwares during last December, and submitted the upgrade rebates right away with required items, Guess what, until today I got only one of them, and it has been almost 6 months. I guess they are testing my memory but unfortunately I kept a good record of every rebate I submitted. That's what we should do if we are going to buy Symantec softwares with rebates involved, although the best thing I would recommend is to avoid as long as you can.

Rating:
Summary: Avoid buying Ghost
Review: Installed this on a 2.6 ghz Pentium 4 Gigabyte system with 1.5 gigbyte DDR, two 160 Maxtor harddrives, and a Sony DVD DRU-510A. Took an image direct to the DVD+R and Ghost reports success. Ran the Ghost image integrity check and it fails at 9% with data corruption. Tried this over with media Memorex DVD+R then Verbatim DVD+R. No luck, same results. Sent in complaint to Symantec. Got canned response saying the DVD drive is not on list of tested drives and to take a image to file and use other software to copy to DVD.
Took image to file on my other disk. Ghost reports success so try to do the integrity check which fails with data corruption report again. Maybe some bad memory on my machine, so ran memory test overnight (9 hours) with a stress test. AOK. Checked disk drives using utility from Maxtor. AOK. Gave up on using this product so I used the program Simple Backup supplied with the Sony DVD which worked.

Conclusion: Ghost is not a product that I would trust for my backup. What combination of software/hardware is causing the trouble I don't know. Will go back to Symantec to complain and will report if I ever get satisfaction (money back).

Rating:
Summary: not a backup program
Review: It is misleading to call this a backup program. The program doesn't "backup" files, as is generally understood. It images the disk. Disk copy programs can be had for a lot less.