That's right... just like Xerox has become an industry name, Ghost has infiltrated the IT industry the same way. I work in a help desk environment, who always say "Ghost this, Ghost that" instead "image this, image that". It's the same as how one would ask for a "Xerox" or "Xerox copy" instead of just "a copy". Hmm... "Xerox copy"... "Ghost image"... they both have to do with copying stuff, so I guess the analogy fits!

What is Symantec Ghost?
This program does everything any backup jobs can possibly need. What a concept! Instead of just backing up files, just back up the entire drive sector-by-sector! With CD-Rs and DVD-Rs, you can just create a Ghost image of your HD, and burn it on a disc. Too big? Symantec Ghost has the ability to split the image into chunks into the size you specify. Forgot to tell Ghost to make those chunks? You can always use WinRAR to split them instead! Ghost compresses the info as it creates the image, as well, so if you use a compression utility, it won't compress it much more. This allows you to cram more data into a portable storage device such as optical discs, USB flash drive, or even to a smaller external HDD.

Different Ways to Ghost Your Hard Drive
Because it is in the DOS-level, it can be easy or hard to use, depending on the user. For experienced users, this is way cool... you get total control in your environment: networking drivers, installation of DOS drivers so you can use your removable drive in DOS (I've used Iomega's Zip drives in the past), etc. Ghost will be able to image a partition or entire drive to another drive or partition (as long as you are not trying to tell it to write to the partition it is reading). It can also write the image directly to your removable drive (if you are so inclined to do so), network drive, or even through the parallel port to another computer running Ghost.

Ghosting through an internal network is the next fastest thing. Networking environments are great, if you know how to set it up, or if you are in a corporate environment.

Removable media is good, too, if the image is not bigger than the media itself. Most computers now automatically detects USB storage devices as it boots up, thanks to their BIOS. This allows Ghost to see your USB flash drive or hard drive. This would be the 3rd fastest way to Ghost.

The old fashion way is through the parallel port. I can back up my a computer's HDD onto another PC with a larger HDD, and burn it on a DVD or two and have it handy. However, this is the slowest way to ghost, since the parallel port isn't known for its speed.

In Use
Ghosting an internal hard drive to another is very simple. The Ghost disk would boot up and will allow you to choose the drive you want to copy from to the other drive. It also allows you to save it as an image file on the other drive instead. With the resulting Ghost file, you can archive it elsewhere. Transfer speeds is quick, and it depends on the speed of the drive and the interface you are using. If you use compression, Ghosting time also depends on the speed of your CPU, since it will be used to process and compress the data before writing.

Ghosting via the network is the most flexible way of using Symantec Ghost. Using Multicast, you can image multiple machines at once! This is great when you are rolling out more than 3 computers that are the same model. Instead of installing Windows XP and all the programs we need on every single PC individually, we work on making one PC fully functional, Sysprep it, then make a Ghost image of it. We have a server we dedicated for holding Ghost images of different computer models. We use Ghost Multicast on the server to push out to all the computers we are setting up. Any computers set up to listen for the Multicast on the network will receive the Ghost image. You can create a private Ghosting network that can support up to 253 computers so you image them all in one shot.

Parallel port transfers are the slowest at only about 5 MB/min. If you aren't willing to go through DOS-based networking, have another hard drive to install internally temporarily, or have a PC that's too old to recognize USB storage media on boot-up, then this is the way to go. Basically you tell Ghost that you'd be ghosting via the parallel port. The other PC that is receiving the data should also be running Ghost, but is set to listen to an incoming connection via the parallel port.

Getting at the Files
Symantec Ghost also comes with Ghost Explorer. Ghost Explorer basically opens up Ghost image files in Windows and allow you to browse the folders and files as if the image file was an archive (think ZIP or RAR file). Just like an archive file, you'd have to extract the files before you can use it. The image file is not mounted like a virtual CD-ROM drive so that Windows can treat it like another drive. That ability would have been nice, though.

The best use for Ghost Explorer is that you can pull out a few files instead of restoring the entire image to a hard drive just to get at the files. This is a life saver if you used Ghost to make a backup of your hard drive, reinstalled Windows from scratch, then realize you need to get a few files off your old disk image.

Some Limitations
Since Ghost requires DOS to use, it also inherits the same limitations. For example, writing to an NTFS file system is not possible with DOS (unless you can find a NTFS driver out there, which may not be reliable). For people who have switched to NT or 2000, this can be frustrating. It will affect those who want to create the image file on an internal hard drive that was already formated with NTFS (which most large hard drives are nowadays). If you use a Windows 98 SE DOS boot disk, the only file system it will recognize is FAT and FAT32. Acronis's True Image (Symantec Ghost's competitor) uses their own custom OS on their boot media to overcome this limitation (can read and write to NTFS file systems).

Also, unlike Acronis's True Image, Symantec Ghost relies heavily on the BIOS for USB storage device support. If your old PC doesn't recognize your USB hard drive on boot up, neither will Ghost. True Image includes their own drivers to search for USB drives.

Conclusion
The limitations only comes into play when you don't already have a good Multicast solution (a dedicated server with Ghost Multicast running for example). Because of this, it's the best solution in a production environment.

If you are just a freelance techie, your best bet would be Acronis's True Image due to the flexible way it works with older PCs and the more refined on-boot-up program. As far as I know, True Image lacks the ability to broadcast an image to multiple PCs which is sorely needed in a help desk environment.

They are made for different purposes even though they both are disk imaging programs.

In a nutshell, if you image many of the same model of machines, Symantec Ghost is your best friend. If you back up PCs on an individual basis (like a freelance techie), your best bet is Acronis's True Image.

Recommended: Yes