Ghost - pros and cons

[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.

[NooNoo]

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.

Interesting, you work for Symantec then?

[cisco2]

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.

[jaimicook]

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

[Radical Dreamer]

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

Any thoughts on Drive Image?

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

[The Computer Valet]

One of the versions?

Which version?

m