Thinking of switching from Norton Ghost

I have used Norton Ghost, version 2003, for the past few years and have always had the occasional frustrating imaging failure. Generally the failure was random locking up of the computer.

I recently bought a new drive 120Gb and cloned my WinXP from a 60Gb drive and everything went fine. Since then however I have not been able to make a successful image of my drive. I have tried various output devices DVD, USB drive, (was a nightmare getting the USB drive to work in DOS mode), and they all would fail at various points throughout the image. More often than not on the NTFS MTF tables at the start.

I tried a IDE second drive, and found that it was getting a little further, (about 2 Gb image file so far). I followed the Symantec recommendation that it was possibly fragmentation, not only of files but the MFT, and following their recommendations used PerfectDisk 7.0 which defrags both files and MFT.

The Ghost image went much further, about 8Gb of image and then crashed again with the undocumented Application Error 29089.

I also work for a company who are constantly complaining of images not burning. They have multiple Dell GX270's and some of them will not image at all.

I am sick of Norton Ghost and am thinking of making it a ghost. Has anyone found that Acronis True Image overcomes these types of problems? I don;t want to just rush out and buy it to find the same problems again.

Bye
Brian

 

I like TI but I use and prefer Ghost 9. Ghost 9 is nothing like Ghost 2003 (which I didn't like). It is an enhanced version of PowerQuest's Drive Image 7 and is one of the best applications I've used.

Brian (another one )

 

I have used both Ghost 2003 and Ghost 9. I prefer 2003 cuz it simply boots into DOS mode and with USB 2.0 support I can make an image and restore it in about 10 minutes. Ghost 9 actually takes longer and you must have the CD in your drive. But from all the backup programs I've seen and tried the one that I most likely would try next is True Image.

 

Why not download the Trial version of TI and give it a go

 

Hello all,

Thank you for interest in Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Acronis True Image is able to create images while Windows is running. We use algorythms that are much faster than those in Norton software. If you perform some changes on your disk without booting Windows Acronis True Image will still be able to include these changes to the incremental image, while Norton software will not "notice" these changes.

If you need more info concerning Acronis True Image backup and restore features please feel free to ask.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

I believe that Acronis True Image is the best imaging and restore software there is. I tried Ghost and it would not work for me with my Sata drives giving an error message when it was in the Dos environment it uses when making an image. With Acronis making an image of my C drive from within Windows XP takes around 6 minutes and about the same amount of time to restore it when I use the boot CD. Its interface is extremely user friendly unlike Ghost which looks like a relic from the days when Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 were popular.

 

Good luck to you I stick to Ghost Corp 8.02 I can create bootable CD/DVD in no time and check for CRC where with TI you have to create your own bootable DVD unless you're willing to risk it with UDF format

 

I'm happy with True Image. You might also look at Terabyte's Image for DOS and Image for Windows, or their BootIt program which makes images, partitions disks and allows you to choose which operating system you boot into.

 

Thanks everyone for their input. My starting point was to upgrade to Ghost 9.0. So far, I have not got one successful image from it. I keep getting the ubiquitous "EA39070A: The internal structure of the PQI file is invalid or unsupported" when I try to verify it. So after three days on the Symantec Help line, have had me do more upgrades and suggestion than you could poke a stick at. The reason I image a disk is because I want to do an upgrade and want to be able to absolutely and totally roll it back if it doesn;t work. Software that itself needs upgrades to things like the .NET framework, and require defragment of the Disk and the NTFS MFT, and disabling, antivirus, firewall, tape back up software does not sit happily with me. My downtime and exposure to a upgrade event risk has been very sad.

Why this thing about having the Imaging software run "online" from within Windows itself. Sheesh, Nortons has a Recovery Disk which boots into Win/2000/XP or something, to allow you to recover from an Image, and it nicely gives access to various drive types, USB, SCSI, IDE, with FAT or NTFS files systems or CD or DVD, so why wouldn't you use the same methodology to create the image file in the first place. Or at least have "offline" an option for those who have problems with "inline"

It seems to me that having your disk imaged away from the vagueries of the itneraction of other programs, and the potential of having data sitting in memory not flushed to disk, make "online" imaging a risk business.

Before I try it and load yet another piece of software on my machine does True Image allow "Offline" imaging?

Thanks
Brian

 

Before I try it and load yet another piece of software on my machine does True Image allow "Offline" imaging?

Thanks
Brian[/QUOTE]

Hi Brian,

Yes, True Image allows "offline" imaging. One makes a CD-R or floppies from which one can boot into True Image (without Windows). I use it because (1) I worry about trying to make an image of Windows when Windows is itself in use and (2) I want to be able to boot into True Image and restore the image of the operating system when I can't make the operating system work.

It has saved my behind half a dozen times.

 

Hi,

You would be hard pressed to find a decent application ever developed by Symantec. The original Ghost was purchased from another company since they never had the ability to develop one by their own. Ghost 9 is an ode to bloat, and it degenerates from a buggy attempt by Powerquest to upgrade their fine product Drive Image 6 (which they had to update since it offers no support for SATA controllers at all). Sometimes I am appalled at the level of ignorance displayed by some posters, and I mean this in the best possible way. Only admitting ignorance one is able to learn. Neither Ghost, nor the defunct Drive Image 6 or 7 boot into DOS, as there is no layer of such to boot into in NT-based OSs. Instead they emulate that environment which is accomplished by Caldera DOS, which has absolutely nothing to do with MS-DOS.

I can pop the boot CD and make an image in ~3 minutes using Normal compression, and restoring is even faster with TI in my experience. The Linux environment is stable and accommodating, and if you take your time to read threads where people complain (with the exception of the ones where their controllers are not supported by ATI yet), you will find that the problems are all self created (not reading the Manual, etc), in essence: PEBKAC, and on some ocassions the poster had the honesty and spine to admit as much.

Another laughable matter is when a user complains about ATI and then you read "XP SP1". Now, SP2 has been out for months, and adds a nice layer of security and general improvements to an already rock solid OS as XP, however these people see fit to complain about a piece of software (99% of the time without RTFM), yet can't be bothered to at the very least keep their systems up to date and patched.

ATI is by far the most advanced imaging software around. No bloat, just what anyone needs. One can even uninstall ATI (leaving snapman.sys in place, of course) , and simply use the boot CD to create/restore images. How's that for convenience? Personally I don't think that any other company gives the level of help and support that Acronis offers to their customers, and for that they should be commended, albeit all of their hard work could be substantially reduced if users simply became a bit more computer literate.