Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 12:17:48 -0700 (PDT) From: David Chien <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Norton Ghost 9 Notes
1) The latest 2005 version of Ghost, V.9, is basically Powerquest's V2i for Desktops repackaged and renamed after Symantec bought it. 2) The old DOS command line Ghost is now gone from this version. 3) Sadly, after a brief inspection of the manual, no way to initiate a proper DOS backup of the entire HD. If it's in there, I must have missed it. Sadly, it does not work for older OSs either, so you'll need W2K or higher to run this program. IT does come with Ghost 2003, which is the older (good) version that will backup every OS out there. --- Because Ghost V.9 must be installed to backup the OS, and then, only a live backup of the OS, I would NOT recommend this to any Libretto user today to make a working, perfect copy of their HD to CD/DVD media. There is no way Ghost V.9 can make a 100% unaltered backup of the HD since it has to be installed before a backup can be made -- as a result, it will alter the OS on the HD, and can not be used in cases of an OS that has crashed, infected with virus, etc. and can not properly boot or install another application. In this respect, if you do want a backup program that can help you when the system goes bad, or to make a perfect backup after just installing the OS + apps + drivers, avoid Ghost V.9 and use the recommended Ghost V.8/2003 instead. --- On the other hand, if you do live live backups and don't mind the possibility that these programs won't backup an identical copy of the OS (since the OS is running, just how does it determine which copy of a file that's being modified during the backup is the one to backup?!?), Acronis TrueImage 8 is the prefered backup utility to use. It CAN run under Windows 98 and above, and has been tested and picked as one of DOS/V Japanese computer magazine's top picks among backup programs you can buy today. --- Still, the idea of a backup is to make a perfect duplicate of the current state of the HD so that you can always go back to that w/o worry in the future. The ONLY way this can be done is offline (ie. through DOS) and not while the OS is running (ala Ghost V.9 or Acronis) since none of these programs can 1) backup offline 2) backup w/o being installed (correct me if I'm wrong here and they do have a DOS command line backup utility) 3) know which state of a currently modified, open file is to be backed up during the live backup process (eg. this can be tested easily simply by having any download in progress during the backup -- at what point does it make a proper backup of this file?!?). Anyways, thankfully, Ghost 2003 is still available and worth the purchase for anyone wanting to make backups of their PCs in an extremely reliable manner. It has worked from the older pre-Symantec days (before they bought Ghost) until today, has never ever failed (restoring a backup from a recovery CD set that had been verified after writing), and has always worked regardless of OS or drive or PC I've used Ghost on. Aside from the older Drive Image, it remains one of the few DOS only, fits-on-one-floppy-disk backup utilities availabe, and the only one I know of that'll fit on two floppy disks and offer USB & FW CD/DVD drive backups. ===== adorable toshiba libretto The latest news and information for the Toshiba Libretto owner. http://www.silverace.com/libretto/ _______________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today! http://vote.yahoo.com
