Talk:Ghost (disk utility)/Archive 1

Free equivalent to Ghost?
Is there a free software equivalent of the Ghost? -- Toytoy 10:33, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)
 * There are many competitors to Ghost, but as far as I know there's nothing with a similar level of features which is free.
 * Many of the free programs calling themselves Ghost competitors are simple sector copiers. This approach has two disadvantages: it's much slower, because these programs copy every sector on the drive, even those which are not used (and as part of this disadvantage, the image sizes are much larger), and it isn't possible to resize partitions on the destination drive (or copy to a smaller drive). On the bonus side, copying in this fashion works with any filesystem, not just a list of supported filesystems. Ghost drops to this mode for filesystems it doesn't understand, such as HPFS or JFS. An example of this type of program would be g4u. I've never run it, I have no idea how well it might work.
 * In a quick google search, I also found Partition Saving which appears to copy FAT and NTFS filesystems intelligently. Again, I've never run this program, I have no idea how well it might work.
 * If all you want to do is copy your home pc, and time is worth less to you than money, these programs may well do what you want. If you are a business, you may find that the multicasting, post-cloning, tape and CD/DVD writing features of professional programs are worth the money. Look at the article on disk cloning for more information on what a (professional) disk cloning program actually does.
 * Hope this helps.-gadfium 18:23, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * FYI, PartImage copies used parts only. I suspect it was like that from before 2005. --KJ 17:34, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

This is one thing that I still do not know why. Backup is a vital and ancient need. There are so many people working for open/free software, so few are in this particular area. I mean file systems are not rocket science. It must be easier than developing an Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Office equivalent. I do believe that open/free software is typically diversified. You may usually find a project, however incomplete, for each particular job that's not too weird. -- Toytoy 01:51, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)


 * Clonezilla. It doesn't copy just sectors, unless the filesystem is unsupported. NTFS is supported. It's a cloning software, not a backup. Family Guy Guy (talk) 23:32, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

OS/2 support
I've removed the following paragraph:
 * Norton Ghost was never properly enabled to correctly copy drives created with IBM OS/2 operating system because it lacked an understanding of the unique extended attributes used in OS/2 filesystems. It also lacked support for the HPFS filesystem.  PowerQuest DriveImage up to 3.0  and Partition Magic 4.0 contained the most support for OS/2.

because it isn't accurate. Ghost supported extended attributes on FAT filesystems created by OS/2 from its early versions onwards, and I don't believe that support was ever removed. It never supported HPFS filesystems other than by doing a sector-based copy of the filesystem. It may well be true that the other programs listed had better support for HPFS, but that's not relevant in this article.-gadfium 23:30, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

restore snapshots
I (well, my father...) got a new computer from Dell that includes a demo version of Ghost. According to their intro video, it takes periodic snapshots of the current disk state and saves them to disk (on this dell, to a d: partition). Does anyone have information on this feature, and if so, can they add info about it to the article? --Phantom784 02:13, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

7.5 and NTFS
Ghost 7.5 also allows an image to be saved on, or read from, an NTFS filesystem, although NTFS is not normally accessible from a DOS program. Whoever wrote this, is s/he sure of this? I am pretty sure that this has been added in 8.0 not 7.5, since we use 7.5 and we can't write to NTFS. We never upgraded to 8.0 because you needed two boot disks from this point one instead of one, because the DOS-based ghost.exe got so big, that it now needs a complete disk of its own. Lofote 06:31, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
 * It looks like you're right, so I've updated the article accordingly. Thanks!-gadfium 08:12, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Just to add on, this is the case. Adam

Ghost 9, 10, 12
These sections do not reflect a neutral point of view with repeated talk of "lazy Symantec rebranding." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.228.234.141 (talk) 15:42, 15 December 2007 (UTC) HOPELESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.198.49.223 (talk) 06:36, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Ghost 10?
This article contains only a single reference to Ghost 10 - its release date - and otherwise seems to focus on version 9 as being the current version. I don't know enough about Ghost to correct this properly. - Brian Kendig 17:26, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Windows 2003 Server Support
Would it be worth describing which Server operating system Ghost supports. The information only describes support for FAT, NTFS and ext family of formatting but I believe that Ghost generally will not work on 2003 Server (SBS or otherwise) without a special version. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 212.159.120.51 (talk) 11:54, 13 April 2007 (UTC).

Corrected Name Acronym
Just went ahead and fixed the name, which had the word "System", not "Software", I know because I stared at the startup screen what seems like a million times in my line of work. Also where Symantec has added a cartoon of a ghost, the original software had a drawing of an atom.
 * It was actually a binary star, since the software was developed by Binary Research.- gadfium 09:19, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Cloning From Booting Ghost CD
Can this be added to the table of release history Just bought Ghost 12, and the support for this isn't there as I need to upgrade my HD. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.36.215.64 (talk) 17:45, 4 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I just purchased Ghost 12 myself and I wish I knew this feature was removed before I did. According to the wiki you can't do a backup from the boot cd. Which is complete bullshit. It's the fucking reason I bought this! My mother only has 20 megs (literally) of HDD space left on her laptop. I was planning to backup from CD to a portable HDD, replace her laptop HDD, then copy the image to her new HDD. Now I might as well get an old bootleg of Norton ghost (one of those ALL in ONE boot DVDs) and do it with that.


 * Every time I BUY software it leads to headache. See people, it's like they ENCOURAGE you to pirate!68.173.144.81 (talk) 00:38, 28 November 2007 (UTC)


 * That sucks. It would have been better to buy a used copy of good old ghost 8.x from ebay. Family Guy Guy (talk) 03:16, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Regarding Powerquest's Languishing Drive Image 7 and Norton Ghost 2003
The titles Ghost 9 and Ghost 10 are described that way, and one must ask themselves about the neutrality of the content in these sections. I have attempted repeatedly to rollback this article to something that is more accurate/appropriate, without any success. I suppose this proves the ineffectiveness of Wikipedia being an accurate and verifiable research tool, when truth and honesty cannot persist in articles! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.195.87.87 (talk) 04:46, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I have reverted the POV edits. To restore an earlier version of a vandalised article, see How to revert an article.- gadfium 03:49, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Brief overview of Symantec Ghost and Norton Ghost versions
I added this link to the article: I found it on the symantec ghost forums.
 * Brief overview of Symantec Ghost and Norton Ghost versions

Disk to Disk cloning POV
Not every version of Ghost has supported Disk to Disk cloning from the Ghost CD...Fact! If you bother to read all of the disscussion page, you will find that this is relivant. See

Cloning From Booting Ghost CD

There are many occasions when it is required to copy the exact data from one disk to another.

1. Forensic Data capture 2. Hard Disk upgrading 3. Retrival of data when a drive is in a pre-fail state.

In 2003 Symantec aquired Powerquest driver image, and implimented their technology into Ghost with the release of Ghost 9.0

A Slightly Skeptical View on Norton Ghost
 * You seem to be mixing up the idea of whether Ghost can boot from the supplied CD, and whether it can clone disk-to-disk. The reference you give above does not cover this.


 * I see you have changed the title of the column to "Disk to Disk cloning booting from Ghost", which has the advantage of being confusing rather than outright incorrect as the earlier title of "Disk to Disk Cloning Support" was. However it is not worth adding a column for a feature that a single release does or doesn't have. Why don't you add a paragraph to the section on Ghost 12 instead, including a source, explaining the limitations of this version.- gadfium 19:46, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

- gadfium 19:46, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Well howabout not vandalising my valid work and doing it yourself, as mentioned above, people buy ghost in the belief that is supports disk to disk cloning, when it does not.

Furthermore I hereby suggest that the Release history table is redundant as this serves no purpose as we are not allowed to add to it, and its already summerised in the Version section so this can be deleted.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.36.215.64 (talk) 00:03, 23 June 2008 (UTC) BY........ARUN