Rating: 
Summary: No Star If It Was An Option
Review: My primary use for ghost 2002 was to backup my laptop. After extensive research on the Symantec sevice and support website. I was given the impression that a parallel connection is the only way to interface between my laptop and my Backpack CD-RW (suggested by the Symantec CD-RW compatibility list). I followed the Symantec, and Backpack instructions to a tee and everytime (6 times, until I giveup) I received a 12020 error - "failed to write to disk" at different times during the burning process. Now, I understand software has bugs and sometimes it just does work, but at least I would think you could get some free person to person tech support for home/small business users; but with symantec that idea was tossed out the window. Symantec provides an extensive knowledge database and its easy to understand. But when the solution to your problem is not in the knowledgebase they expect you to pay $29 per incident; that's half the price for the software - give me a break. Symantec is a leader in the drive cloning and backup arena and I'll give them this ghost 2002 was user friendly but overall, for my application, it was extremely slow and just didn't do the job. That is why, if it was an option, I wouldn't give ghost 2002 any stars. But what do they care they already have my money!
Rating:
Summary: Good joke, Symantec! "Ghost"...a "phantom" product.
Review: Thanks for making me waste money and about 30 hours of time trying to get this to work. When I finally managed to get two computers connected (don't even bother with trying to get a CD burner connected) I found out Ghost recognizes NTFS drives only if they are the drives you are copying FROM...not TO. Sounds like something the documentation could have mentioned instead of a sly remark telling you that the available destination drives will be those that "Ghost detects". Brilliant! I gave 1 star because Amazon didn't let me give 0.
Rating: 
Summary: Best program in its class, but patience is required
Review: There's no doubt this program has utility. Nor is there much doubt that it does what it claims. You can, in fact, connect two computers to each other and clone the one onto the other. It's a wonderfully safe way to make a transition from one machine to another.But there are two important points to be made. First, the program is not really for novices. With enough time, a novice might be able to understand what's going on, but expect to go into the belly of the Windows® beast. This is one of the most boring, arcane corners of computing. Novices will spend a fair amount of time just reading the manual and/or referring to Norton's website. The truth, fortunately, is out there, but it will take many users several hours to find it. Be advised from the outset that this a tool primarily for IT professionals. Second, this is not a swift process, even after you get everything up and running. The problem comes in the kind of connections you use. You have a choice of parallel or USB connections. Unsurprisingly, the parallel connection option, though the easier, takes forever. To move just a 1.5 gig hard drive image (tiny by today's standards) it will take about 8-9 hours. That's about 4-5K a second. The USB option is faster, something like 20-30K a second, but finding the cable can be a problem. Unfortunately, the proper high-speed USB hookup is not provided in box, and seems available from only a limited number of places. My local CompUSA, for instance, simply didn't carry the highly specialized cord. The manual tells you where to order it, but that will obviously add unexpected time and money to your equation. Put simply, Ghost is a great program, but patience is required. Don't order this product if you're under severe time pressure. Small businesses trying to update a single, mission-critical computer are especially cautioned to build about two weeks into their transfer schedule, so that they can obtain the necessary USB cord and read the manual thoroughly. Whichever connection you end up using, you'll probably have to make the transfer overnight, so be sure you've got someone on staff who can afford to spend an evening babysitting this thing. If you have a really large drive image to move (anything over, say, 10 GB), it might take something like a whole weekend.
Rating: 
Summary: Does exactly what it says it will do
Review: This is a great program. Very clear documentation. I bought it because I have two new Dell computers, and they don't come with a "Restore CD" that will return the computer to a like-new configuration. Instead, Dell seems to be shipping most of its computers with a "Windows Reinstallation CD". This simply re-installs a new copy of Windows over the old one, and leaves everything else on the hard drive unchanged. Old software is still on the drive, but is not acknowledged by the new operating system. (Old junk is on the drive, too.) A real pain. Using Ghost: I installed all the software I wanted on my computer, went to all the web sites to download all the updates, waited while I had to restart my computer countless times. But after I did all that, I used "Ghost" to create a copy of the drive. Now, if my system ever gets screwed-up, I can quickly restore it to this useful state. Only complaint: The manual doesn't have any instructions for changing the BIOS in the computer so that the machine will boot from a CD, as well as from a floppy. This is not hard to do, and makes the process of restoring to a backed-up copy a little simpler.
Rating:
Summary: Does exactly what it says it will do
Review: This is a great program. Very clear documentation. I bought it because I have two new Dell computers, and they don't come with a "Restore CD" that will return the computer to a like-new configuration. Instead, Dell seems to be shipping most of its computers with a "Windows Reinstallation CD". This simply re-installs a new copy of Windows over the old one, and leaves everything else on the hard drive unchanged. Old software is still on the drive, but is not acknowledged by the new operating system. (Old junk is on the drive, too.) A real pain. Using Ghost: I installed all the software I wanted on my computer, went to all the web sites to download all the updates, waited while I had to restart my computer countless times. But after I did all that, I used "Ghost" to create a copy of the drive. Now, if my system ever gets screwed-up, I can quickly restore it to this useful state. Only complaint: The manual doesn't have any instructions for changing the BIOS in the computer so that the machine will boot from a CD, as well as from a floppy. This is not hard to do, and makes the process of restoring to a backed-up copy a little simpler.
Rating:
Summary: Worthless
Review: This is the most difficult and annoying software I have ever purchased. I am extremely computer literate and found Ghost to be very difficult to use. Then after backing up my old PC, it was even more difficult to use to restore to my new PC. AND then after all this I have learned I can't get a refund because I opened the box. Robert Nelsen, Stevens Point, WI
Rating:
Summary: Miserable, difficult to Use, Crippleware
Review: This product caused problems on my system you would not believe. It caused operating systems to not boot, damaged partition tables, and cost me hours of work. I have waisted time and money. I'm sticking with PowerQuests Drive Image.
Rating:
Summary: Scaled down and brain dead
Review: This software is a real MARKETING breakthrough! They have taken away the ability to backup across the network via an ftp or rsh server. I ended up sending it back and getting my money returned. The package promises, "...cloning using home network IP connections..." This is true however you must be running their DOS server software on the server. Also, their server doesn't support NTFS or EXT2 partitions for saving the image. I ended up developing my own system using Linux (dd | gzip | rsh) for FREE! I spent a better part of a week wasted on this product. If you want to duplicate a harddrive in the same machine then it will probably do what you want but don't expect to use your network connection reliably. Also, it comes with a paltry amount of drivers for USB external CD Drives. Not recommended for any situation where the hard drive you want to backup is not in the same system as the spare hard drive.
Rating:
Summary: Obsolete
Review: This version is next to useless. Can't communicate with a USB device, which makes it very clumsy to use. NG 2003 is supposed to fix this and many other problems, but after 5 hours with it last night, I still could not make a back up. It must run from DOS, so you must boot up off a DOS disk, and then try to get the storage device recognized. I suspect it will only work well when backing up to a second internal device, not an external device
Rating:
Summary: Obsolete
Review: This version is next to useless. Can't communicate with a USB device, which makes it very clumsy to use. NG 2003 is supposed to fix this and many other problems, but after 5 hours with it last night, I still could not make a back up. It must run from DOS, so you must boot up off a DOS disk, and then try to get the storage device recognized. I suspect it will only work well when backing up to a second internal device, not an external device
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