Norton Ghost pro systemworks 2003/Acronis?

My subscription will be coming due for Norton Professional systemworks 2003 which has the Ghost program on it and I also use the System Doctor as well as the A/V.

I always have to get a tech to Ghost it as I tried it once and had no luck. I have a pentium 4, intel, 40 gigs, 24 free, 512 RAM, and 1.9ghz. The tech did a partition of 10 gigs for the ghost.

I get it ghosted about every 4 months and he charges $100 as I simply don't get the concept of the program and what I have to do. I have a boot disk and then several disks that he copied and then the partition with ghost.

What I want is a user friendly program. I'm not computer illiterate, however I am new to apps like this and trying to understand them by the manual and understand what a partition is all about baffles me and so I leave it up to the tech and he charges $100 and so I thought that I would ask if this Acronis is more user friendly.
Now I see there is a Ghost 9 program out and I look at some reviews and they seem to be critical of it.

I have an external dvd burner and am now thinking that maybe I will buy an external 40 gig hard drive rather than try to get into this partitioning etc.

Does Acronis, copy everything, for example I have 6 shortcuts to dial up isp providers that i use when i am out in the field for work and so i was wondering if it will back up all of the phone line settings etc, that are part of the short cut to these dialups so that i don't have to call the isp provider and do the settings all over again.
I am mostly concerned about all of the programs that I have on the notebook rather than documents as I don't save them there.

I need a user friendly program that I can understand. I don't know anything about import/export....copy etc.
That is the stage of my tech knowledge; however I am eager to learn and like to read a lot. (I really need something user friendly)

I look forward to comments.

Regards.

 

True Image 8.0 will copy everything. I'd say it's just as user friendly
as Ghost. It's able to see my raid array when using the cd to boot into
recovery mode which Ghost isn't able to do with out some help from me.

True Image is better than Ghost in some ways, but in other ways it's
worse. I've found it to be a quirky piece of software.

Also, they tell you on the box that True Image 8.0 can create an
image on any type of media, CD, DVD what ever.

What they don't tell you is that you need packet writing software
in order to create images on DVDs. If that's not false advertising,
I don't know what is.
Oh, and it doesn't create images on certain types of DVD's.
That's something else I would've liked to have known before going
out and buying 50 +R blank dvds.

 

Wills, my advice to you is to download the trial version from here. Install it, and try it out. It is not just a demo, it is a working program with just a few limitations, so you can get a good feel for it.

There is also a User's Guide you should check out.

And if you have any questions, I think you will find the people here are more than happy to answer your questions (as long as we think you have made a decent effort yourself, and is not just a lazy b.st.rd that do not read manuals ).

 

Hello blastoff,

You can image direct to formatted DVD+/-RW via most of the common UDF packet writing applications. You can also image direct to "formatted" DVD+R via Roxio's DirectCD/Drag-to-Disk. Alternatively, you can use the two-step method to burn split image compilations to DVD+R and DVD+/-RW using any CD/DVD burning software. Acronis cannot guarantee 100% compatability with DVD-(minus)R although I and many others have had no problems with this media.

Believe it or not, all the above, with the exception of the possible compatibility issue with DVD-R, is clearly stated in the TI User's Guide and the Acronis True Image Online FAQ. So if I wanted to be sarcastic I could say you should have RTFM before lashing out on qty 50 of any type of media. But of course I wont

Regards