Several answers to several points:
1. This depends on a variety of factors, e.g. CPU speed, HDD speed, CD burner speed, etc. The systems you work with must be really slow. In Ghost there is no noticeable
difference, whatever method one uses (besides the compression rate, of course).
Ghost can multicast an image within the same timeframe you mention, not much
difference there.
But, as I said, imaging to HDD suck big time since v6.0. Until v5.0 everything worked fine. Then something went wrong with their NTFS implementation during imaging to
HDD. NTFS Imaging to CD/DVD works as a charm, though.
2. I'm not in any way defending Ghost, I'm only trying to be fair. As you mention yourself, I'm beating the program for not supporting its features correctly. Also I'm
beating some Ghost users a bit, because to my experience people that can't make the program work are usually those who haven't read the manual. Also, I'm pretty sure even
Acronis has some bugs/features built in ;)
3. What optional feature are you talking about?
My only comment about BartPE was a warning not to involve it (or supported/similar progs) into serious, corporate business as a secondary remark. Today
convenience/lazyness is taking more and more space at the cost of data security. Some of those boot-CD proggies leave a pretty nasty footprint, hence a sound corporate
policy would be to avoid them in general. That's all.
4. The reason for excluding e.g pagefile.sys in Ghost is that a win32 system won't boot if it's present - I don't know, but could be the same thing with Acronis. Besides
that it's a space hog, as you mention. I don't know why Acronis include those files by default, since the rational approach would be leaving them out by default. These
files are rarely needed, anyway.
Yes, I use Ghost on a regular basis, because I know how it works (and
especially doesn't work! ;) I also use other programs.
My only claim is that before claiming that Ghost doesn't work, it might be a good idea to read the manual. What it does, it actually does pretty good. And this is burning
an image to CD/DVD flawlessly, time after time. Also, files can be extracted individually from an image, if needed.
Acronis have a history of data corruption in some of their earlier versions, which could indicate that the program is not yet fully developed. Ghost is far past that
point, meaning that the features that work, they work flawlessly. Don't get me wrong here, I'm actually very tempted to give Acronis a run for the money on my personal
network. But as a quick and dirty on-the-spot back up solution, I believe Ghost will still be my no. one for some time to come. Until someone can show me a fast working
DOS util that does an even better job.
//soren
Greg Sevart wrote:
Several points
1. Sector by sector copies are amazingly space and time inefficient. I'd
much rather have a product that was intelligent enough to process a volume
from a logical perspective. By the way, Acronis can do sector-by-sector as
well....as can most imaging products. I don't have the time or space to work
with sector-by-sector images. I can push a base image to a new PC in less
than 6 minutes from the network.
2. I find it interesting that you are so adamantly defending a product that,
by your own admission, has components that don't (and never have) work
properly.
3. You're using an purely optional feature (using with BartPE) that Ghost
doesn't have as a pro for Ghost? I'd be curious as to your reasoning here
actually. I hope it's something more than "it isn't officially supported",
because neither is changing the SID outside of sysprep, which both Acronis
and Ghost offer. For the record, I don't use the BartPE or the SID changing
functionality.
4. You do realize that the ability to exclude files is an optional,
off-by-default configuration setting, right? There are plenty of good
reasons to do so...like excluding pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys, which can
consume tens of GB for useless files that Windows will recreate upon
startup. The default option is to include everything.
Bottom line: I used, and loved, Ghost only up until I tried Acronis version
9. No way I'd go back now. The Universal Restore technology especially is
unrivaled. You clearly use and still love Ghost, and it meets all of your
needs and requirements. That's great, but don't knock Acronis when you
clearly haven't given it the level of research and detail that you proclaim
one must give Ghost to make a fair assessment.
Greg
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:hardware-
[email protected]] On Behalf Of Soren
Sent: Friday, September 04, 2009 8:51 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [H] cloning drive
If the system has no hw problems, and everything else is working OK,
here's what I see during several days of the week:
Ghost 10 allows back up from both Win and *nix, if "copy sector-by-
sector" is selected. Creation of a boot sector on the first CD/DVD is
also supported, and it works, too.
Here's the culprit most people experience: When running Ghost from a
floppy or from HDD it doesn't work as advertized. Nope, it doesn't, and
it never has.
But it surely does, if one runs it directly from the CD-ROM. From
System Works Pro CD, e.g. cd /support/ghost/ghost.exe
Used this way, Ghost still kicks Acronis deeply in their semi-Greek
balls ;)
BTW, do NEVER trust a program that supports BartPE or alike for
corporate use.
"...Provides imaging with removes (ie, clone but don't copy *.tmp' or
whatever)..." someone wrote.
Honestly, either it is an image, or it's not. Further, a clone is what
the word "clone" means: a clone, a complete copy.
If a clone is not an excact image, it is not a clone, but instead a
bunch of mediated marketing BS.
Personally, I'd never buy any software from a seller that cannot
distinguish between "clone" and "sort of clone", but that's probably
only me ;)
About Ghost I want to say one thing: RTFM (Read The Fine Manual).
/soren
