Drive Clone 3 Pro & Norton Ghost 12

Did anybody try new Farstone product Drive Clone 3 Pro??

How does it compare to Norton Ghost 12?

 

I want to upgrade my RIT7 Pro to Driveclone 3 pro but online store doesn't accept my credit card. And Farstone's very very bad support don't answer my mails.

 

I did not have that problem. They usually answer my emails for 3-4 days.

 

I am planning to test both of these backup products very soon... I'll report my findings as soon as I have had enough time to evaluate them... Until then, I would be interested in reading anyone else's feedback on either one.

 

I installed the trial version of DriveClone v3 Pro and created the Recovery CD, but the CD didn't load, because I was not a LICENSED user and I didn't know the serial number and that was the end of the Recovery CD.
So I don't know if DC recognizes my USB 2.0 external harddisk or not.
Farstone seems to think that their Recovery CD is flawless.

Very simple Image Backup software for less-knowledgeable users with everything on it : backup disk/partition, restore disk/partition/file (mount images). I didn't see anything regarding MBR.
Unfortunately the time-schedules are created for incremental backups only. No on-demand schedules.

This was my 4th attempt to get a better image backup software than ATI.

Do I really have to try NORTON GHOST ? Is that possible ?

 

Thanks for the feedback Erik... I'll post what I am able to do (and not do) with Drive Clone 3 when I test it.

At this point I'm not too thrilled about testing Norton Ghost 12 because I can already see that:

a) This software is very bloated (in itself).
b) It requires .NET Framework, which I uninstalled long ago because it is 'bloatware'.

 

I'm not too thrilled either, Norton is like a tattoo, hard to get rid of it.
I was impressed by Drive Clone's simplicity, quite a sober software.
Is DC reliable ? I really don't know, you can only evaluate this after using it for a long time. I never used any previous backup software of Farstone either.

 

ghost 12 is not bloated it only use like 2 mb on my vista pc, and is not hard to get rid of it, you can use Norton removal tool, it does what is supposed to do Whit out errors or corrupt image and is very fast

 

Yes, but you are a beta-tester of Norton Ghost, so your opinion might not be objective.
Concerning speed, ShadowProtect beats them all regarding Backup and is a bit slower in restore.

 

Mata, I can only go by the system requirements specified on Symantec's Ghost 12 webpage:

Those are very heavy resource demands for any program and certainly much more demanding than most other (if not all) disk-imaging products!

 

ok i you guys are adult and you can decide test the product or no, what i don't understand is how your can comment on a product that you dint even try and see how it work, and i mean ghost 12, no version 5,3 8 etc

i have a old pc is a , p4 3gz and 3gb ram and it work fine, i will recomend to anyone

anyways good luck and no hard fellings

 

if someone gives me a download link for the trial and it works on windows 2000 pro SP4 i will be willing to try it.
if it is hard to remove ill restore an image with paragon.
im trying to be more open minded.
the paragon system requiements are as follows.
System Requirements:
CPU: Intel Pentium CPU or its equivalent, with 300 MHz or higher processor clock speed
RAM: 128 MB required (256 MB or greater recommended)
Disk space: Hard disk drive with 40 MB of available space
Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher
from paragon website.

the folowing is the system requiments for ATI10 home:
System Requirements
New! Microsoft Windows Vista
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
Windows® XP SP 2
Windows® 2000 Professional SP 4
CPU: Pentium 133 (and alike) or higher
RAM 128 MB or more
Disk space: 150 MB
Extra space for installation: 25 MB

i thought i would add the system requiments for ATI as a comparison

lodore

 

Farstone or Norton ? OK. Then you get two links.

Farstone's Drive Clone 3 Pro
http://www.farstone.com/software/driveclone-pro.htm
Norton Ghost 12 BETA?
http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice/downloads/index.jsp

 

thanks for the links erik.
are you gonna try norton?
im gonna test it on my old pc.
i can just restore an image if its really bloated and rubbish lol.
ill try em both tomorrow.
i will give symantec a chance. it could be good like people are saying nis2007 is.
lodore

 

Personally i don't care about "very heavy resource demands" when it concern imaging software: main issue is and should be, it perform the job in a 100% satisfying and reliable way.
Imaging software is a like a life belt, and when it save me from a disaster i don't care about minor issues like resource demands.

Regards,

Smokey

 

the problem is most imaging software has example two of three processes that load up everytime you start your pc.
ATI has 4
shadow protect desktop has two but they are completely idle.
norton ghost 10 was preinstalled on my neighbours laptop and had tons of autostart entries.
i dont know if norton 12 is improved.
it could be that norton ghost 10 is like norton antivirus 2003-2006 and norton ghost 12 is like norton 2007.
but you never know until you test it.
paragon has no auto start processes.
it only starts when you want it to.
so resourse demanding imaging software can slow the starting up of your pc.
why would you want your imaging software to show a icon in on the taskbar and autostart with youyr pc if you do weekly imaging?
lodore

 

I was never a big fan of Norton, although Belgium in general seems to like Norton. Each time there is a global attack of some malware, it's always on the news with in the background yellow Norton AV boxes. One of the biggest banks in Belgium uses Norton also and that's probably the reason why Norton is so popular in Belgium.

I hesitate to test Norton Ghost. My favorite is still ShadowProtect, although I wouldn't recommend it to less-knowlegdeable users. Of course ShadowProtect has to improve the loading time of the Recovery CD first, otherwise I'm not interested. So I'm waiting for ShadowProtect v3.
The fact that ShadowProtect is partition-based doesn't mean it has to remain that way. After v3 comes v4.

For less-knowledgeable users I would recommend Farstone's DriveClone 3 Pro, which is a pure Image Backup Software and very simple to use.

 

Hello Erik,
alot of businesses use norton ghost 2003 for there imaging since for them it was the last decent version of it before it was hot imaging only.
im glad its taking shadow protect desktop so long to bring out version 3.
some software example bitdefender 10 was quite quick to come out for the final. but then people complained it was full of bugs.
storage craft s making sure its perfect before the final comes out.
im also glad online armour took along time to come out for the same reason.
most big companies lack quality control.
they want to release the lastest technology before anyone else which means the final is ful of bugs due to eiether not listerning to beta testers or rushing it out.
i did read the version 3 recovery cd will only take 2.5minutes to load rather than the 2.0 version one that takes 5minutes.
it doesnt bother me the time a recovery cd takes to load.
i only use those cd's when windows wont boot.
windows not booting happerns alot with my test pc
since i test alot of beta's on it.

 

OK. I will try it one time for the fun tomorrow, then I have at least an idea how it works. I will create a test snapshot for it, because I don't want any uninstalling problems.
Is there any other candidate, besides Acronis, StorageCraft, Paragon, Farstone, Terabyte, Norton and MS Backup ?

 

well tell me how norton ghost 12 is
there is a program from 0&0 called 0&0 drive diskimage2
it hasnt been out long and i dont know how good it is.
but if its anything like the other programs from 0&0 its worth a shot.
http://www.oo-software.com/home/en/products/oodiskimage/
lodore

 

The freebies

 

I wouldn't entrust Image Backup to freebies on a long term basis.

 

Drive Snapshot?

144KB....no installation required....and has been 100% reliable for me.

It's not for housewives though

Graham

 

Free doesn't mean low quality

 

That's not what I ment. The maintenance of freebies depends on the goodwill of the person or the company, who created it. There is no benefit in maintaining a freebie.
New OS, new hardware, new user demands, bugs, ... require maintenance.