Which product is best for Ghosting XP Pro hard drives? 1

[mikesh27]

I've only used Norton Ghost when preparing batches of Windows 98 PCs many years ago, having had a few problems when ghosting "2000 Pro" boxes.

Could someone advise me which software is best for XP Pro? Is Nortons still ok and do they still have to boot off a floppy, most PCs are no longer supplied with these.

One of my clients tried ghosting 3gb used space on XP and ghost showed 11gb.

Thanks,

Mike

http://www.abccomputersolutions.co.uk

 

[Rick998]

mikesh27,

We use Ghost with Win XP Pro at work and haven't had any problems. We use the Enterprise version of Ghost as this supports batch scripting.

We've been using Ghost 7.5 Enterprise for the last year or so, compressing XP Pro disk images from approx. 3.5Gb down to about 1.7Gb. For laptops without floppy drives, we just attach a USB floppy disk, boot from that then carry on cloning as usual.

I'm trialing Ghost 8.0 Enterprise at the moment as this version, amongst other things, extends USB support. The most noticeable difference so far is that the Ghost Boot Disk Wizard now needs 2 floppies, not one 'cos the Ghost executable had grown in size.

I'm also trialing host-powered USB hard disks to see if I can get to a point where IT staff can wander round with a bootable USB hard disk with a DOS menu to all our Ghost disk images. This way they'll be able to clone/re-clone both standalone and network-connected PC's/laptops (without reliance on network bandwidth).

I must admit I've not had much luck with this so far. It's not a problem with Ghost but more a difficulty sourcing fast (i.e. 7200rpm), small hard disks than can run via USB 2 when only powered by the host. I can get high-capacity drives but they're mains powered.

Anyway, hope this info helps...

Rick

 

[mikesh27]

Thanks Rick,

I will try out Rnterprise version.

Best regards,

Mike

http://www.abccomputersolutions.co.uk

 

[Rick998]

mikesh27,

Had a look at your website and noticed that, like us, you use Compaq products.

You need to be aware that there's an issue with Ghost v7.5 (don't know about v8.0) and a clash between the Broadcom Gigabit adapter and SATA controller used in the D530's. We get round this by moving the SATA controller to a different IRQ in the BIOS before cloning.

Hope this helps...

Rick

 

[mikesh27]

Rick,

Only intend ghosting our own PCs for now.

Thanks anyway,

Mike

http://www.abccomputersolutions.co.uk

 

[bcastner]

All should be aware that with Symantec's purchase of the PowerQuest product line the whole personal and corporate versions of Ghost are being/have been redone.

I think it a better product.

But update.

 

[Empeethree]

I like acronis true image.

http://www.acronis.com

you can make an image file, then if you need to mount that image file and pull stuff from it like a drive.

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Trying is the first step to failure
Homer Simpson
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[bcastner]

Ghost 9 offers the same mounting feature.