Norton Ghost 14.0 [Old Version]

I use Norton Ghost 11 to backup/restore XP partitions, its fast and works great. Boot from CD, choose partition to backup/restore, choose destination partition/file, and you are done. It even compresses the data when doing backup to image file. I tried to boot from the Norton Ghost 14 CD and it gave an I/O error and stopped. Im going back to v11, Ive never had any problems with it.

I spent 4 hours trying to figure out why I couldnt create a Vista recovery point. I called tech support, and after 2 hours on the support line I was told I couldnt back up an NTFS laptop drive to an external FAT-32 drive. Thats nonsense, since Ive done this before. They asked if Id permit them to reformat my external drive (which had other things on it that I didnt want to lose). I said no. Then Nortons case manager called me back to ask if everything had been fixed, and if not to call a certain number. I called that number, and spent another hour and a half. The first technician said Id first have to uninstall McAfee antivirus software (Symantec sells a competitor - good advice? I said no). Then they transferred me to someone they said who could support Norton 14.0 -- hey, I thought thats who I was speaking to. After a total of 90 minutes I hung up. During that interval I uninstalled, re-installed, rebooted a couple times, loaded updates, rebooted again... and now the software appears to be working. But who knows. And if you ever need tech support, forgetaboutit.

with the Norton Ghost,scheduled to backup weekly to my external hard drive, I dont have to worry about computer crashes and losing all my data and photos.

Ive been a Norton user for more than 10 years and had never experienced any issues other users reported until I came across Ghost 14. I upgraded from Ghost 12 to Ghost 14 six months ago and had been doing a drive backup every two weeks. Recently my laptop was stolen and when I try to do a restore, I found out certain files were missing from the every archive Ghost 14 created!!! During each backup session, Ghost 14 never gave any indication that some files were not backed up. Luckily the missing files were rarely changed and I was able to restore from the last Ghost 12 archive. Because of this, all my Ghost 14 backups made during the past six months are now questionable. Ive no idea what other files Ghost 14 failed to include in the archive.

All I can say is it plain didnt work. All I wanted to do was a simple system backup to a new hard drive and replace the old one with the new one. The system would not boot with thew new drive. Tried the same process with a free download of a different software and it worked with no problems at all. Norton/Symantec is allowing feature creep to destroy their products. Hey Norton!... users want products that are simple and effective.

I have an older pc with an outdated version of Windows XP. After contracting a virus that forced me to wipe my computer clean, I decided to get Norton Ghost because I dont want to have to call Microsoft every time I need to reinstall the operating system. Its the peace-of-mind in knowing that even after a catastrophe, I can restore my computer to a save point. I havent had to use it, yet, though, knock on wood.

Ive been a fan of Norton products since the old DOS based Systemworks days and have also been a fan of their antivirus product. In the past few years, theyve made some acquisitions in order to offer complete security products. Their firewall didnt play nice with the antivirus so I ended up dropping them for competing software. With Ghost, I decided to give them another chance to see how it does backing up my hard drive. I have to hand it to them, the process was simple and smooth and easy to understand. For a simple backup program the procedure was painless. Backups using Ghost are much quicker than straight copying. I was able to copy about 100GB of data in about 30 min and the resulting images take up about 20% less space. They also include options to backup your My Documents folder and MSIE favorites links (why no Firefox?) If you believe your computer was infected with a virus, you also get an antivirus scanner as part of the recovery tools. That said, it has to be Norton AV in order for you to get the most recent updates or youre stuck with the older scanner on disk. Another nice feature is a driver verification feature that scans the drivers in your computer to make sure any necessary drivers in your computer are included on the recovery CD in case your computer fails. If something is missing, you can burn a custom recovery CD that will include all the drivers you will need. Scheduling backups is a simple and easily configurable process but they want you to image your backups. A drive to drive copy utility is included but it doesnt seem as automated as the imaging process. Plus youre not allowed to use it during trial mode. They do include utilities that assist you in copying to external drives or an offsite location via FTP. Another utility is included that will browse your image if youre only looking to recover a few files or folders. As long as your computer will boot from CD you should be able to start the recovery process via the recovery CD. Gripes: 1) My firewall kept notifying me Ghost was trying to connect to the Internet during the installation process without giving me a reason why. My refusal likely added a few extra minutes as it sat there trying to connect. Eventually it did install without problems. 2) Micro$oft has included a security feature which will cause the recovery to automatically reboot after 72 hours. In other words, you only have 72 hours to fix your problem if a drive fails. 3) In spite of all the recommendations about testing the recovery there doesnt seem to be any real way to verify backups were done properly unless you do a complete recovery. These seems strange to me but perhaps Im missing something. 4) Once installed Ghost is always present and running. They dont give us the option to shut down the program manually. While I didnt experience any problems, if it turns out the program or one of their running processes interferes with another one of your programs, tough luck for you. 5) Not allowing you to test the drive to drive copying method before registering is pretty retarded. UPDATE 3/22/09: The subject of restoration I wanted to address this issue specifically since this is where Ghost is getting a lot of complaints. Restoration does work, at least for my aging system and its EIDE hard drives. However the process itself is confusing and not very intuitive, much of the problem is caused by the program itself. I had an opportunity to play around with the program extensively as one of my hard drives failed. With a new hard drive and a lot of extra space to work with I decided to see how well it works restoring my Windows XP system. I started by making a number of incremental backups of my system drives. I then restored the latest incremental backup to a formatted drive and the complete system transferred successfully and was able to boot. The problem I had was, once the restoration wizard started, there was no way to get additional information from the help files about the process unless I cancelled and started over. Yes, even a simple help button was missing. This can lead an unexperienced user to make a number of mistakes, i.e. Restore original disk signature? Uh.. I dunno. Another retarded exclusion by Norton. They need to expand on what happens when you do or dont select each option. Ghost needs to guide the user through the process, not assume they know everything. Finally, once the process was finished I also noticed the drive letters were rearranged in my system. This may or may not be the fault of Ghost as Windows XP has an annoying habit of doing this, but it can create problems with programs that are searching for files or folders in a specific drive letter. Once that was fixed (Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management) the recovery worked fine. My experience with drive-to-drive copying was not so successful. Perhaps that was why they didnt let us test it out in trial mode. The copy was performed successfully, very quickly in fact (about 17GB in 9min), and the system did boot. The problem was the system drive became a different drive letter. Frankly I dont even know how to get the drive back to the standard C:. It even stuck the system paging file on one of my other drives that was renamed C:. There also seemed to be some problems accessing the boot.ini file using the tools on the recovery CD. Any time I tried to access the file the program would crash. So where does this leave us? At this point Im torn. I do like how quickly the backups are done and the compression done by the imaging system is nice in saving space. My initial experience shows Ghost does recover a system drive with some fussing. However I have been using another program called Casper XP for years. It does exactly what you want it to do, copies a partition or an entire drive without any hassles whatsoever. You dont even have to change the cables around inside your computer. If your main system drive has a problem, simply make your other drive the boot drive (usually a simple change in your BIOS) and everything boots up perfectly. Until Ghost finally gets it right and works as well as Casper, I dont think Ill switch. Since Ghosts imaging system does save disk space, I may keep it around to backup nonessential files on a periodic basis. Hope the review helped.

Despite the friendly face on the cover, this is far from user-friendly software. It seems simple enough, and, when you begin to use it, looks like it should be a breeze. Once you get going, however, be prepared with your telephone and some ibuprofen. When I tried to use it to backup my PC running Windows XP, I ran into so many problems that I spent over an hour on the phone with customer support. After jumping through a few dozen hurdles and reconfiguring a few dozen files, finally we had success. Overall, there are so many easier and more reliable programs out there that I simply cannot recommend Norton Ghost 14.0.

If what youre looking for is a complete backup utility, thats reasonably easy to use, this one might suit your purpose. Installation, update, and activation are easy, similar to other Symantec programs. (This one also uses Live Update.) I do have an objection to the fact that Symantec never does a full uninstall -- they leave around stuff in the registry, as well as LiveUpdate, and it requires extra work (and some technical skill) to remove everything. I take off one star for that. The setup is quite simple, especially if you follow their procedures. A full system backup is recommended, and the program will nag you about your system being at risk if you dont set up the full backup. You can in addition set up backup jobs for selectively backing up some of your files and folders. So for instance you might want to do nightly backup of your key folders, and weekly or monthly backup of the full system. I would recommend that you use a network disk (NAS) for your backup -- there are many not-too-expensive products available, and Ive been quite happy with the Buffalo products. You can also use this program to do remote management of other computers on your network, but be aware that each computer needs its own license for the program. One thing I dont like is that the backup files are not copies, they are in a compressed format. For daily backups I prefer to be able to make normal copies of files, so that I can go quickly to the backup folder and find a backup copy I might want. This optimizes my time and convenience over computer time and disk space, and this is how it should be. Or at least, this should at least be an option. I take off another star for the nagging about full system backup, and the unavailability of a simple file backup or file sync (backup by copying selected files/folders directly from one disk to another). But overall a solid program that does what it says, and does it competently. Just make sure what you want is what it wants to do. :-)

Ive used Ghost for a few years. It usually works fine. I use off the shelf PCs and do not have any trouble restoring (luckily only once in all this time). Recently, I added Network Attached Storage (NAS) to my home network. Ghost 10 and 12 worked for a while then had problems doing incremental backups. This newest rev seems to have solved whatever the issues were as I have been doing incremental backups fine for a few months now.