Norton Ghost 14.0 [Old Version]

OK, as an Amazon Vine member I requested, and got this, free. Turns out that was a bad idea. I have used Norton Antivirus, etc., software for years and it seems to work pretty well, although it probably slows up my computers operation a little. So I thought, hey, a strong, function-rich backup program! And all I have to do is install and review it. How sweet is that? But when I mentioned that I had scored Norton Ghost 14 to two people far more knowledgeable about computers and software than I, both IMMEDIATELY and VISIBLY shuddered, and recommended that I not even try installing it. One of these people, an IT professional who makes his living going from site to site fixing the foulups of other IT pros, told me it was buggy, poorly documented, and did nothing much that light-to-moderate users would need anyway. He pointed out that Windows XP has built-in basic backup capabilities. My son -- who runs his own Website, plus blogging and gaming online constantly and maintaining a home network with four monitors, multiple hard drives and god knows what else -- told me he never runs anything Norton anymore because it has become bloatware that slows him down. So I didnt install Ghost 14.0. (Beat me, Amazon Vine! Scourge me if you must! I have failed you, although I may have saved my computers.) I did read the manual. Folks, here is a clue: it takes Norton 9 pages of 6-point type to tell the end user what he/she needs to run Ghost, and how to install it. Not a good sign for ordinary domestic users. Some of this is repetition, but most of it is somewhat technical information about what you need to install and run Ghost 14.0, and what may happen during installation. You do need to read this carefully. I did, and it succeeded mainly in convincing me that I wasnt going to even attempt an installation unless my daughter -- also an IT pro -- was on the phone with me. I may yet install this and then update my review. For now, however, a perusal of the many, many negative comments already posted here, plus my examination of the software manual, were enough to put me off.

I bought this software thinking it would have more capabilities and functions. Had I not gotten a good deal on it, it would not have been worth purchasing.

The only reason I gave Ghost 14 four stars is because during the backup screens you do not see all the partitions on your hard drive in the default configuration. A novice user would not know that other hidden partitions exist on their computer and would probably not backup them. If the purpose of Ghost 14 is to backup an entire computer then the user should see all partitions that exist on their hard disks as the default configuration. Let the user hide any partition as an option since I know hidden partitions are important too. If your hard disk fails you do want everything back including the hidden partitions. In my opinion the menu configurations of Ghost 14 are more complicated than what it needs to be for the average user. Gone are the days of Ghost 2003 when Symantec would allow a home user to backup all his computers at home with a single copy of Ghost. Now we must all purchase one license of Ghost per PC. The only Reason I purchased Ghost 14 was because DELL messed up their bios on my new laptop so Ghost 2003 would not work with their USB ports. Ghost 2003 would allow you to create your own boot CD disks if you knew how to create boot CD disks with Nero and knew how to modify batch files. You were able to boot Ghost from a CD and backup your entire computer to an external/internal drive or burn a CD or DVD backup. Ghost 2003 is still able to backup all my other computers with Windows Vista and Windows XP (32bit and 64bit versions). The Ghost 14 bootable CD only restores images and does not have any backup software available so it behaves like a rescue CD. All backups in Ghosts 14 are conveniently done when logged in to a Windows XP or Windows Vista account unlike Ghost 2003 which requires you to use a bootable CD, USB Drive, or floppy disks.

Great product, does what it is supposed to do, once it is installed, but the installation!!! Once I found the link that allowed their tech to figure out what was wrong, and that took me some doing, after I had tried to install it a couple of times, including using the Norton Utility that is supposed to clean out old Norton installations, it took the tech about an hour to figure out what the problems were and fix them. He was excellent, superb, obvioiusly in South Asia, and you have to be willing to allow them to take over your computer, but why was it so difficult (I run Windows XP on AMD Athlon) to install, and so hard to find the on line tech support link?

I bought Norton Ghost 14 to use to migrate my Thinkpad T60 to a larger hard drive. I spent all day trying, only to learn that this product wont do that! I ended up just downloading a free product, HDClone, and it worked perfectly. If you want to do routine backups, you can buy Ghost. If you need to clone a hard-drive with hidden partitions, look elsewhere.

Unfortunately not able to use it, as it had expired. I purchased this in the US, while on holiday there, but it was more than a month before I was able to use it in my computer in Australia. Never the less, Amazon gave me a complete refund, including postage for sending it back to them. Amazon is a great retailer, no wonder they are very successful. Thank you for the great service.

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.

I bought Norton Ghost to make disk images in the event I had a disk crash -- which I recently had and spent two days getting my system running again after reinstalling drivers, printers, network attached storage and programs. Oddly enough, the evaluation download from Symantic let me make a backup. Then I bought the full version and suddenly was unable to access the drive that had the backup, even to make another backup, much less restore the first backup. Ghost had a terrible tendency to hang up my computer and freeze all activity. I finally uninstalled the program, but even that normally simple process was complicated for reasons that are still not clear. I would say that this software was a big disappointment.

This is one of the few software apps available that can backup your system AND help you upgrade to a bigger internal hard drive. Usually when attempting to swap out your entire main hard drive (C: drive with the operating system on it) you can only upgrade to an identical size partition, so what is the point?!. Norton Ghost lets you back up your current main C; drive on a separate disk, even a USB drive!, swap out your main drive to a higher performance and bigger drive, and then load your backup to the newly installed hard drive. Norton at this point lets you select if you want to make the new partition use the full new drive size, then it works flawlessly to do what it says. I updated an old laptop with a 32gb drive to a 250gb 5400rpm (PATA) drive and my performance improved 6 fold. Highly recommended. Oh yes, the incremental backups are fast too after you capture the first disk image.

I have been using Ghost for years, back to the good old day when it was PowerQuest. Though there are some other application that are much stronger and have more functionality then Ghost. Symantec has let Partition Magic go by the way side, as after XP it not longer is useable. Do your research before purchasing it.