Ghost - pros and cons

I've always had a mild distrust of the program Ghost. Consequently I've never used it. I've always had the impression it has its uses but it also poses problems. Using an image to make clones of PCs could certainly save time however.

I've always harbored the thought that cloning might create problems if the hardware you're cloning to is not identical. Also I seem to recall some problems back in the day (NT4) with ghosting a machine that had already joined the domain, you wound up making PCs that had an identical CID on the domain. There are other issues I've heard of where information points to data that resides on one physical location on the ghost image hard drive doesn't have the same physical address on the new hard drive, etc...

I think I'm just being a stick in the mud though, the first few people I heard touting Ghost were mostly techie wannabes with more mouth than ability so I lumped my impression of ghost in with my impression of them.

Anybody use it much? is it the best thing since sliced bread? Are there any real issues people have commonly had to deal with when ghosting many clones for a big rollout?

I use it A Lot and love it.

I never used it with NT - mainly because I've never used NT :)

but for all other OSes I like it very much. With win2k and XP, you can use sysprep in conjuction with ghost. after ghosting the pc and firing it up, it will walk you through a little mini setup and generate a new CID, computer name, the whole deal.

It does indeed work best with identical hardware but in the corporate world that is best pratice anyway . . . . buy from one company and buy lots of identical models. makes troubleshooting and deploying exponentially easier. so we have one drive here at work on the network that keeps our 10-20 ghost images and when a computer goes down, or needs reimaged, the appropriate ghost image is reloaded. no problem.

I have used ghost in conjuction with 98 on non identical systems by deleting the enum key before taking the image. after loading it and restarting the pc, 98 finds all the new hardware and I install any drivers I need. It works pretty well, but lately I've been playing with preinstall procedures for 98 and like that equally as much.


I use it as a backup type device too. On builds I partition the drive into c: d: and e: c: holds OS and apps. d: holds my documents mp3s favorites OE store etc e: is hidden and contains the ghost image of the system when it left my hands. I give the users a floppy disk with a batch file to reload the image with NO user intervention other than to hit a button when asked if they are sure they want to re-image the pc. saves me a ton of troubleshooting. doesn't lose their data favorites or email. it's a beautiful system. ghost is good software, but to use it well you have to have an understanding of both ghost and the system you are deploying as well as your enviroment. If you do, ghost will work great for you, if you don't then it won't.

Like Kato we here at work also use Ghost with Sysprep...working pretty well so far......we have 3 different types of hardware here so we have images for each....helps alot as Kato stated for troubleshooting purposes and automation...throw SMS into the mix and my reloads and new machines are a breeze....

**Side note: We used RIS for awhile, I much prefer Ghost.


And as we speak (or type/read in this case) I am pulling a ghost image back down onto a machine that I just replaced the HDD on.....

WHAMO...no total reload....:D :D (l)user gets laptop back and knows no different because all the proggies and settings they had previously set are still there....:thumbs2:

Cuts way down on the ?'s and hassle that I have to deal with.

I use it every day and I love it :)

I ghost windows 3.1, windows 95, 98, nt 4, 2k, winxp, linux, windows server (nt/2k)

I can ghost one system to another system with different hardware specs no problem..

Sure Ill have to reinstall windows sometimes (nt4 is good not blue screening so I can just go in and install the drivers I need)

It does not matter if the hardware is different, just ghost it. I could care less if the hardware is different, the one thing im looking for is the software and its files...

so rebuilding windows is nothing and its fast. Also installing a driver for some hardware that didn’t have a driver from the image is not hard...

I sue the corporate edition of ghost, so I can ghost systems over the network on to our storage server

Back in the NT days you would use the program ghostwalker to change the SID on the computers. Ghost is an awesome program for saving time. Another program recently reviewed by MaximumPC is by Paragon called Drive Backup 6.0 which will allow you to image partitions other than the "system" partition while the computer is running without requiring a reboot. Ofcourse as this is being done no one can access the partition until you re-enable it. It also has some other cool features that I like. Take a look at it on www.paragon.com they have a working demo also. At work we make a ghost image of a certain computer setup then burn it to a bootable CD. Ofcourse, you only have to boot off that CD once in the wrong computer to make sure you thoroughly label that CD :D

I think I am going to switch over to using it for my servers.

Tony

I've always loved ghost. Many people thinks this is one of the key software programs needed for the IT world but I think it's great for my home use as well. I always keep a ghost image of my PC for backup purposes. The image I have is Win XP pro with all the drivers loaded and all of my always needed software programs (photoshop, winamp etc. etc.) loaded.

Sounds like I should hop on the bandwagon. Some good inputs, thanks all.

I'm glad everyone else loves ghost, but I am getting more and more upset with them. We recently upgraded our switchs to cisco 2950's and ghosting basically stopped. It takes anywhere from 5 to 9 hours to send up a ghost image of about 1.5GB and almost 15 hours to pull the image back down to a machine. Symantec seems to not have a clue on what is doing it or how to fix it.


But thats just me.

Did Cisco have any input on what the problem could be?

Tony

to make it nice and simple..
Norton Ghost 2003 rocks !! :)

Lots of Pro-Ghost comments here.

Any thoughts on Drive Image?

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Originally posted by Miq
I'm glad everyone else loves ghost, but I am getting more and more upset with them. We recently upgraded our switchs to cisco 2950's and ghosting basically stopped. It takes anywhere from 5 to 9 hours to send up a ghost image of about 1.5GB and almost 15 hours to pull the image back down to a machine. Symantec seems to not have a clue on what is doing it or how to fix it.


But thats just me.

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Sounds like you may have a loopback problem on one or more of you switches. I.e. two or more connections between two switches. You may also want to check the switch docs for setting to allow "multicasting" which is how Ghost loads multiple machines at once. Some switches have a setting called branching or spanning that can affect multicast packets. Turning this on or off may fix the problem.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Miq
I'm glad everyone else loves ghost, but I am getting more and more upset with them. We recently upgraded our switchs to cisco 2950's and ghosting basically stopped. It takes anywhere from 5 to 9 hours to send up a ghost image of about 1.5GB and almost 15 hours to pull the image back down to a machine. Symantec seems to not have a clue on what is doing it or how to fix it.

But thats just me.

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I have that same issue if the NIC isn't locked down...they don't allow autodetect here on the switches so if the NIC isn't locked down on the boot disk there are $hitloads of errors atht ehswitch level...... the images complete, but just take their own sweet time doing so.

Just a thought for you.....

Cisco has not called back yet about the problem. On calls to Symantec I have tried locking the card down to a specific speed, tried auto, tried slow and fast speeds, nothing working. They had me create new boot disks with drivers and configs they sent me, added paramater switches that the engineers won't tell me what they do :p, and just about everything else.

The switches are set correctly (had our ccie up in atlanta set all that stuff up). We have tried ghosting with spanning both on and off with no results. We have also turned on (I am pretty sure this is the right acronym) igmp on all switches.



As for Drive Image, I use it on one machine here on campus and so far it works great. It hasn't been tried for a large multi-machine rollout but it seems to work fairly well.


Miq

I use ghost almost every day. Ghost is the shizznit, yo! Backing up systems, reloading systems, you name itm Ghost kicks bootay, G!

just make sure you are ghosting teh right way. You don't wanna wipe out a HD that you need to get the data off becuase you were dumb and sent it down instead of Up. (people here do that once in a while) :D

Cisco2-
Not to flame you, but you must be running an 8088 in a cave somewhere. Norton Ghost is the only way to go! If you load systems from scratch, then you need to either jump into this decade or hope that your employment has lots of job security. It takes a great amount of difference between hardware of the ghoster and ghosted to pose a problem when booting the new system. If you get the BSOD, then simply put your 2k or XP disc in and run a repair—it’s as good as new. Yes, there are some other programs available to do the same thing as Ghost (Casper, Acronis), but most don’t compress the image file. Most people don’t have hundreds of gigs of server space to put 5-10 80gig images of their different software loads. The fact that Ghost will compress these allows me to do weekly back-ups of the import machines in my company and store them on my portable USB drive. Speed is an issue for us, and because of USB2.0, we can Ghost to a local machine from image in under 2 minutes! Anyways, this was just to spout a little about why every productive tech needs Norton.

Quote:

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Originally posted by LordTech
Cisco2-
Not to flame you, but you must be running an 8088 in a cave somewhere. Norton Ghost is the only way to go! If you load systems from scratch, then you need to either jump into this decade or hope that your employment has lots of job security. It takes a great amount of difference between hardware of the ghoster and ghosted to pose a problem when booting the new system. If you get the BSOD, then simply put your 2k or XP disc in and run a repair—it’s as good as new. Yes, there are some other programs available to do the same thing as Ghost (Casper, Acronis), but most don’t compress the image file. Most people don’t have hundreds of gigs of server space to put 5-10 80gig images of their different software loads. The fact that Ghost will compress these allows me to do weekly back-ups of the import machines in my company and store them on my portable USB drive. Speed is an issue for us, and because of USB2.0, we can Ghost to a local machine from image in under 2 minutes! Anyways, this was just to spout a little about why every productive tech needs Norton.

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Interesting, you work for Symantec then?

Actually we just upgraded from 8088s last week, running some 8mhz 80286s now. Planning to add some Hercules CGA adapters so we can get 4 color goin on. After than I'm thinking of popping some more memory on the motherboards to make the move to 640k RAM. Toss in an AST Combo card and we wont have to set the clocks every time we boot up anymore! Moving up to DOS 3.2 and Peachtext will take a bit of time to plan the rollout though.

Seriously, I work more with low level hardware problem resolution and defining technical solutions. I used to be a network admin but I got tired of the pager and the late nights long ago. So I don't have to do many OS and application reloads, I mostly leave than to our network admins. I do a few to keep from gettin too rusty or behind the times but not enough to make ghosting a real critical time saver. I will probably buy a copy and play around with ghost and sysprep some, more out of curiosity than need however.

I do a lot of changing and modifying my main system and consequently have problems ocasionally. I have a ghost backu on DVD-R and can have the system back up and running in less than an hour. Much better than spending 3 days of spare time to get everything up and configured! I occasionally build or reinstall systems for other people when thier Kaza and other questionable downloads destroy their system> make a backup of the system using Ghost temporarily installed on the system. In about an hour I can have it up and going. Great time saver!
Jim Cook

Quote:

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Originally posted by The Computer Valet
Lots of Pro-Ghost comments here.

Any thoughts on Drive Image?

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Yeah, I LOVE IT!!!!!! Its easier to use IMHO, and one of the versions will allow for you to make a compaq style quick restore cd so the user doesnt have to do anything cept stick in hte cd and hit ok

One of the versions?

Which version?

m