Legit Reviews

I have my computer the way I want it, Vista and all. Now I want to back up the OS mainly. I want this simple, just backup to the DVD. Something goes wrong, and I just pop the DVD in and it restores the whole thing back to the way it was when it worked. Will Norton Ghost do all this? I really don't want to drop 70$ on software if its not gonna do that.

Yup, there was a thread in the software section the other day some asked about doing just that with norton. Someone in there offered up acronis as an alternative.

I got the trial, I'll demo it out this weekend. Will this also image the Linux Partition I have on there as well?

I'm interested in this as well.

Seems like I read somewhere that Vista has "Ghost technology" built into it. ???

I know it'll make an image backup of itself onto a DVD. I've done that.
Go into the backup utility and select "Backup my computer".
See if that is what you're looking for.

Edit = I didn't use a DVD. I used an extra internal HDD. But seems like I recall seeing a DVD option in there.

dicecca112 wrote:I got the trial, I'll demo it out this weekend. Will this also image the Linux Partition I have on there as well?

Should, I have yet to find a drive I could not image. I normally put the backup images to a external drive but the option to have a image put to CD/DVD is there.

After having worn my self out trying to figure out how to get Ghost Solution Suite 2.0 to do what you are asking about, I used Acronis True Image Workstation 9.1. However, I think my mistake with Ghost was in using a much "bigger" version than I needed. If I had used just plain old Ghost 12 (or whatever the current version is) it would have probably worked as easily as the Acronis.

One thing that the Acronis does, that I am not sure if Ghost will do or not, is to automatically resize the partitions if you are installing on to a different size hard drive. I used it to make an image of a factory-fresh, uninstalled HD with the ready-to-install XP and the hidden Drive Image LE recovery partition on it. Reinstalled it from the Acronis CDs on to a different sized HD just to see what it would do, and it allocated the partitions in the same percentage ratio of the drive that the partitions on the image drive were. Adjusted automatically and on the fly. Needed a lot of swapping the 3 CDs to do it though. But Acronis warns that it will do that if you opt for it to resize the partitions. I think you can manually set the sizes too, but not sure - reading manuals like Acronis' and Symantec's give me too much of a headache. Ghost can probably do the same thing too.

Acronis offers a free 15 day trial, not sure if symantec does too. That way you can see if it will do what you need prior to plunking down your money, or whatever you plan on doing.

Norton Does a 30day trial. But I'll have to get an external, I just have way way too much information to back up.

The older version of Ghost is much easier and does what you want provided you have a floppy drive.

DX wrote:The older version of Ghost is much easier and does what you want provided you have a floppy drive.

Nope no floppy on the laptop