Norton Ghost 14.0 [Old Version]

Unlike the older version I have, Ver. 14 does not include the ability to clone a hard drive over a network.

Ive used both Ghost 12 and 14 for years. For making a backup to an internal partition and restoring it to the original or new drive partition, Ive been quite pleased. Just be aware that to restore your system partition onto a new drive you first have to create and format the partition using the Windows install disk. It is okay if the target partition is bigger than the original, that is usually the point of a new drive. Non-system partitions can be formatted using the Windows Disk Management utility in the Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management section. I have not tried to use Ghost 14 with a networked drive nor have I tried the Copy my hard Drive function that other reviewers complained about. The user interface is not as intuitive as older versions. The Home screen does not include the One Time Backup method that I prefer. I found it under the Tasks icon instead. All the funtionality of previous versions is there if you look for it, but it really pushes the scheduled backups that I prefer to do manually. Once I had it installed, upgraded and working I disabled Live Update. Symantecs Live Update corrupted my copy of Ghost 10 right around the time my license expired. If it works, leave it alone and it will continue to work for years.

This product is not for the novice. The start-up book that accompanies the CD does not provide sufficient instructions to the novice. I had to have a friend help with the gosting of my small hard drive to my large hard drive. He used a five year old copy of Ghost to accomplish this effort.

I have enjoyed using Ghost 9, and for some stupid reason, decided to upgrade to 14. It installs a menu system that dumbs down and limits your options. Major problem using if you have an IDE, SCSI, or SATA drives, especially if you installed a Promise type card to get more drive slots. If you need support, all their 800 numbers go through (even during USA daytime) to India or Philippines for support, and they are all following scripted answers. If you try their CHAT they want to have you install software so they can remotely control your desktop in every case, and they still dont fix the problem, or know what is going on. The Gear Software drivers do not work in many cases. If you have other products that use drives/burners like Nero, AnyDVD, etc., you will have conflicts. The price at Nortons website is $70 and it will take more than 10 days if you select the most cost effective method of shipping box. I have wasted almost 5 hours in chat, endless on hold, ridulous telephone routing qeues, and there are no phone numbers to speak with anyone at Symantec in the USA. I will never use another Symantec product again for the rest of my life...and returned this Ghost 14

Works well and reliably. I upgraded from version 9 which worked well for many years, but isnt compatible with Vista. Norton support was there when I needed them. I can only compare it to MS back-up which never worked for me when I needed it. Dont bother with MS.

excellent

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.

The reviews say it works with Windows 7, but dont believe it. After a reboot it did try to finish, but I wouldnt trust the program on Windows 7.

The default backup for Vista Ultimate works OK but it sometimes make my computer unusable. It uses so much disk activity that everything is extremely slow. Norton Ghost has the capability to slow down the backup so it will not interfere with the user activity. In addition, you can schedule it to backup what you want, when, from every hours to once a week. I liked it, although the UI is a little too slow to start up. One caveat. I do not use this software to recover full disks (although it says it can). I do not believe that things like that are reliable. There is always something that go wrong. If things go wrong, usually it implies that my hardware is broken, which translate to a new computer, so the old driver would not work.

works