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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.
Rating: 
Summary: Do you really need this program?
Review: It's easy to get lost in all that is needed for your computer with the ample amount of products offered from Symantec. For the money, I would suggest buying Norton Systemworks as it covers all Norton programs such as firewall,anti-virus,ghost,utilities and much more. Paying for a program such as this separately for the money doesn't seem worth it. Norton's interface/software is very easy to use and well done though I find little use for the Ghost system on personal computers. Most things that can be saved can easily be done on disc and to save a complete system is great, but how often do you do such a thing? Ghost is a great idea if you have the money to spare as you'll have very little use for it on your system. I give it 4 stars as it's a great product, runs well and is put together but as far as usefulness, I would spend the money on anti-virus.
Rating: 
Summary: My Review Of Ghost 2003 Acts more Like...
Review: My experience with Norton Ghost has been outstanding. I had a problem restoring my boss's PC, but it was due to a power loss in the building. After the power came back on, I was able to restore the PC just fine. I would venture to guess the problem(s) encountered was due to the lack of experience of the individual using the program. You have people that profess to be computer experts, but all they are are users. I've programmed, managed mainframes, managed large data centers, was a Database Administrator, and Norton has NEVER gave me problems!
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Summary: It sounds the bees knees, but just does not deliver!
Review: My initial impressions of Ghost 2003 were very good when doing simple backups. However, we needed to clone a new Dell PC running Win2K Server. Backing up to a mapped drive failed to work using the supplied Intel PRO 1000 (this being the exact network card in the Dell) - NDIS binding failures. Backing up to an IOMega USB 2.0 external drive failed - it would intermittently hang. We repeated with different setting (USB 1.1 etc), but it was decidedly flaky. All in all it failed to do the job we needed, and have had to resort to building the other PCs manually. We wasted a lot of time trying this, and now have the prospect of building everything manually!This is a very, very disappointing product.
Rating:
Summary: It does the job easily
Review: My system setup is an Asus A7N8X Deluxe v.2 motherboard with a 160 GB Seagate SATA drive running Windows 2000 with all updates installed. Ghost really could not have been easier. I have never used Ghost and never looked at the manual. I just looked through the choices at the startup screen, chose to make bootdisks first (seemed like the right thing to do) then left the bootdisk in and restarted the machine. The language used buy Ghost is a little confusing but it didn't take a genius to figure out. Anyway, I created the image, rebooted into Windows, stuffed the bootdisk in, restarted and went about restoring from the image - it worked. Then I went back into Windows, copied the image to a DVD (I just used Nero and copied the image over), rebooted and restored again. It worked. So, I'm pleased. Symantec loses points for forcing (yes, forcing) their clients to answer a stupid profiling questionaire that includes your age and current job while registering Ghost. Shame on you Symantec.
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Summary: Does not work with many common DVD +R Drives
Review: Only a limited number of DVD +R drives are supported, for example it does not work with my TDK 420N. Symantec Tech Support's suggested solution: "Buy a different drive".
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Summary: Ghost is ghostware, err, varporware - it doesn't work
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: EASY-TO-USE; YET, UNPREDICTABLE: IT BEHAVES LIKE A GHOST.
Review: Symantec had PC home-users in mind when she designed this "Norton Ghost 2003". It is an easy-to-use utility tool, which works fine if it likes your system configuration, but may furnish you with endless nightmares if it is unhappy with the state of your computer.
Although the software is flexible enough as to allow you freehand in data back-up and system recovery, upgrading tasks are often unpredictable. The documentation manual of this "Norton Ghost" claimed that MS-DOS files in a disk created in Windows XP have no problems with the software, but the reverse is the case. The name of this software was carefully chosen: indeed, it behaves like a ghost! And, Symantec's technical support advisers will either refer you to their haphazard website, or to your documentation manual. Don't count on their support!
Rating:
Summary: Ghost 2003, best hard drive image maker yet.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Essential piece of software
Review: This is a brilliant piece of software that is completely reliable in creating an entirely valid backup of an entire partition or drive that will always restore perfectly to a given partition or drive (unlike it's main rival Drive Image 7 which is very, very unreliable.) Provided, however, that you're aware of it's limitations: It's supposed to backup to a CD/DVD drive but it's list of drivers is very limited and it's very likely that your drive isn't supported (I've had 3 and not one was supported), the only way to create a backup was onto an existing partition on your hard drive. It requires one primary partition to be free on your hard drive so you can only have a maximum of 3 for your own use. This is a major limitation for me. It has to reboot into DOS mode to work, then reboots windows. It has problems reading backups that are on a different hard drive. I had to use special software to unhide the partition. Other than that, it works perfectly and is one of the most important things I ever got for my PC.
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