Norton Ghost

[Bglad]

I just bought a NAS hard drive and 3 copies of Norton Ghost 10 to backup computers on my office network. I can't get any one of them to backup successfully! I am so frustrated I could...

I get every error discussed all over the internet about invalid file and file structures. Unlike Drive Image, you cannot force Ghost to restore an image with an error.

So I switched the NAS drive over to USB and tried it there and still not one successful backup.

I got it to work successfully 1 time only and that was when I backed up to a local hard drive. This is not acceptable for my office backup needs.

Next I tried Ghost 2003 but I can't get it to backup over the network. I get error after error when booting with TCP/IP support. I'm not a networking expert, but I'm not a newbie either. Nor are my computers anything out of the ordinary. Dell 400SC's with Intel networking cards in them.

From reading, I have one real complaint with Acronis which is every time it backs up, it overwrites the previous backup. But since Ghost is useless...

Anyone have experience with Acronis, especially over network. If I go spend more money and buy it, will I solve these integrity problems?

 

[nweaver]

I use altiris, best network imaging solution I have used....it's one of several, such as Landesk, and zenworks

 

[networkman]

I wouldn't use a blanket statement and say Ghost is useless; it's a question of what you need it to do. For instance, I use Ghost 8.0 Enterprise at work with a variety of operating systems: WinNT, Win2K, WinXP, 2000 Server, Adv Svr & 2003 Server. Most drives are formatted NTFS. Version 8.0 does everything I've needed it to do, both with PATA and SATA drives, and all SCSI drives as well.

And by the way, yes, you can force Ghost to restore an image with an error, although you would need to set the options beforehand either in the GUI, or via the command line with -crcignore or -fro. Of course, it's quite possible the retail v10 product differs from the v8.0 Enterprise edition.

Edited for spelling.

 

[corkyg]

By and large, TrueImage 9 will beat Ghost at any task - but it really shines at cloning drives using the bootable CD. This prevents shared device problems. TI handles PATA, SATA, (internal and external) SCSI, Firewire, USB. And it is cheaper than Ghost. But the biggest winner is that it is not made or marketed by Symantec! 🙂

I've never used it over a network. I have three systems on my LAN, but each has a copy of the Acronis bootable CD - so why tie up the network?

If you give the target backup file a different name, will it still overwrite? I never do backups - I duplicate the drive because then there is no need to restore. Just change connectors.