Norton Ghost 14.0 [Old Version]

After wasting two days trying to copy my old hard drive to a new hard drive, I gave up using this tool for that purpose. I think the problem was the new HD was formatted incorrectly to be a bootable drive. The software has a Copy Master Boot Record option, but it never made the drive bootable. This software never tells you the result will not be bootable. Even if it did there is no option to repartition the HD with either Ghost or plain XP options. If you want to migrate your primary HD to a new larger HD, use Acronis Migrate Easy since it is half the price and has the ability to adjust your partitions to be bootable. I think Norton wants this to be purely backup software. As a backup software its buggy. If you have SQL Server installed, you probably run into the COM Surrogate error. I hate the way the software is presumptuous. I didnt need a LiveUpdate in the control panel. Ghost gives you a startup tray app that scans HDs on startup. This slows up the bootup and I dont see how you can turn it off. Since backup software comes with Windows not sure this is worth $70.

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.

After my experience with Ghost v 3.0, I should have known better, but I figured by 14.0 they would have gotten it right. My laptop drops its wireless Internet connection for a few seconds every 15 or 20 minutes - an unsolved problem for many users as a result of yet another piece of crap from Dell. Genie 8.0 does the same thing, but runs the second time. Plus its free. Because Im backing up to a network drive, Ghost just issues an error message and dies. Theres absolutely no tolerance for even a second or two of interruption to the drive connection. So now Im trying to back up using a direct hard-wire connection to the router. It goes along fine, then suddenly it ejects the Ghost disk and says it cant write to it. Huh? Why would it try to write to the Ghost CD? It says insert writeable media. So I take out the Ghost disk and put in a blank. It says writing tracks. Then it ejects the disk with an error and dumprep locks up the cpu for 20 minutes. I put it back in and it sits there for a few hours. Finally I cancel. The disk has nothing on it, but its ruined and cant be rerecorded. I try again. Same thing.

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.

I must admit, Norton is getting better. I agree with most of the other comments below - this version of Ghost is better than previous versions, with much more efficient backup & friendlier user interface. But while it might do a quick, decent backup, it is not reliable in restoring your system. I simply cannot recommend any Norton/Symantec products. And for the life of me, I cannot understand how they have held onto a reputation of being the PC security/backup/recovery company. There are many, many better products out there that are free. Just to name a few security/recovery programs (that every PC user should use): ZoneAlarm or Comodo, AVG, a2, spybot search & destroy, AdAware, and every PC user should download and install the HOSTS files from MVPS-org. For backup, use a combination of these programs, and look on life hacker, boing boing, zdnet, and other forums for a backup/recovery system that works best for you. Do NOT rely on the Vista backup system, either. Or, buy a 1-touch external hard drive. Or perhaps my best advice would be, move to a Mac, or get Linux (I am especially enjoying the new Ubuntu version on my Asus Eee). But I strongly suggest avoiding the temptation to get ANY McAffee or Norton products. None of them work well.

System Requirements: Norton Ghost works with computers that have Vista or XP. You must have a 300 MHz or higher processor; 512MB of RAM; 400MB of available hard disk space; Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher; and a CD-ROM or DVD ROM Drive. Installation: Norton Ghost is very easy to install. If you want, you can choose custom install, which has the following options: 1) User Interface 2) Backup Recovery Service 3) CD/DVD Support 4) Recovery Point Browser 5) Live Update 6) Change Using it: It is very easy to use Norton Ghost. You have several options for backing up the computer. You can do a one time backup or you can set it to do backups at set times. Each time I turn on the computer, Norton Ghost asks me if I want to back up my computer. If I decide to do it, it backs up very quietly, with no interruption to what Im working on. Once the back up is done, a check mark shows up on the Norton icon at the bottom of the computer screen to show its done. If I decide not to back it up, thats not a problem. You also have options as to where you want to back up your computer to. I use an external hard drive, but you can back up files to a CD or a web site. Recovery: I created a custom Symantec Recovery Disk (SRD) and tested it and it worked fine. Bottom Line: Norton Ghost is easy to use and install, although it takes a fair amount of memory and space. Having lost an entire hard drive on my last computer, which I was unable to recover, I will be using Norton Ghost for back up quite frequently.

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 product works great for backups and for recovering a PC that is infected by a virus. My PC was recently infected by an Internet Virus. The ones that scams you to pay them so they can remove it. I did have antivirus software running but it did not catch the infection, or my family could have said yes to one of those scam popup. The Virus is smart and very elusive so I ended up having to reload windows and spend the next few days putting everything back together. If it happened to you, then you know what I am talking about. If I had Norton Ghost 14, it would have been an hours task. Purchase this software and immediately create and image of your PC to an external Hard Drive. Keep it up-to-date with the Norton utility, and you never have to worry again. Get the CD version so you can boot from the CD to do the recovery. It works and you will be a hero with your family or business. If your PC is infected, or you loaded software that you should not have, just boot from the CD and re-image the PC to the last time you backed it up. Not to mention it works great for normal back and restore functions.

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.

Did not live up to hipe. Too difficult to use and too slow to do the job. Look elsewhere, for a good backup and clone program.