Backing up with Norton Ghost -- How To
no-...@sonic.net
a bloated, buggy piece of crap?! Why, I've only had to comletely reinstall
Windows once because Disk Doctor hosed the disk! I've only had to rinstall
WinFax Pro a dozen or so times and contact the *fee based* tech support
twice to get WinFax working about 25% as reliably as my 10-year-old,
entry-level fax machine. And I record a bare max of 20 system crashes
due to WInFax Pro. And it's various componets and services only use
about 12MB or RAM even if you're not actually using the software to
send faxes. And PCAnywhere has only "synched" the contents of two
2-gigabyte disk drives with a whole new set of data files where
*every single directory and file name was missing the first letter of its
folder/filename* once. Heck, that only took about 2 hours to clean up!
Some people just have too high expectations.
x...@x.com wrote:
: On Fri, 14 Jan 2000 16:38:48 -0600, beef*nym.alias.net <> wrote:
:>====================================
:>Backing up a drive with Norton Ghost
:>====================================
:>
:>Norton Ghost allows you to backup your hard drive to another hard
:>drive or to another partion on the same hard drive. It allows
: snip....
:>Tools required:
:> -- A disk defragmenter such as the one provided with the
:> Norton Utilities
:> -- Partition Magic
:> -- Norton Ghost (these instructions tested with version 6.0)
:> -- A CD burner
:> -- CD-R or CD-RW blanks (use a CD-RW for your experiments)
:>
: I think you may be interested in the following....
: Few remarks on Ghost performance and a comparison against Drive Image:
: first of all, for a long time I also used Ghost and was very happy
: with it, but after experimenting with Drive Image I think I will stick
: to Drive Image... Why?
: Well, the following are the relevant points:
: 1. If you use Norton Defrag program (Norton Speed Disk), it
: usually offers to optimize the windows swap file as well. Especially
: with a fixed size swap file, Norton Speed Disk places the swap file at
: the very beginning of a hard disk (This issue becomes important if
: your swap file is on the partition where you have your windows system
: files - i.e. the boot partition. However the point becomes moot if you
: have placed your swap file on another partition, so you can skip to
: point-2)!
: When you use Ghost and Drive Image to create the compressed image
: files of your boot partition, both programs seem to treat the swap
: file differently, which also contributes to the differences in
: performance speeds as well. But the main difference between the two
: programs becomes more apparent when you restore your partition from
: the created image file....
: If you use Ghost to restore the partition, then you will find out that
: your swap file is not anymore at the beginning of the partition, but
: it is placed right after the last file. This means you have to run
: Norton Speed Disk to perform a defrag, and during the defrag
: operation, the swap file will be placed at the beginning of the
: partition. Extra work and time wasted to restore your partition to its
: original condition when you have made an image file of it!
: OTOH, Drive Image faithfully restores your partition from an image
: file. Your swap file will be placed at the beginning of the partition.
: As far as I can tell, all the other files will be placed in their
: original location as well (checked this by doing random checks on file
: location under Norton Speed Disk - without performing a defrag, but
: just clicking on the blocks for files - after a restore operation.
: Seems all the files get placed exactly the same spot as they were when
: the image was taken!).
: 2. Both programs support varying degrees of comparison. With
: Ghost you can manually set the compression to "-z9" which is the
: highest, and with Drive Image you have 3 general options, the maximum
: compression being "high", which you can choose in the GUI of Drive
: Image. Seems Ghost "-z9" and Drive Image "high" settings are kinda
: equal to each other. However performance of both programs can differ
: as much as 4 -6 times. Results of my test for both programs are as
: follows:
: Boot partition - 2 GB, with 300 MB of data and 200 MB of Swap file
: present, defragged with Norton Speed Disk!
: Creating an image file with highest compression on both programs-
: Ghost: 46 mins (total time to create an image)
: Drive Image: 12 mins (total time to create an image)
: Ghost image file size: 234 MB
: Drive Image image file size: 175 MB
: Restoring the image file to recreate the boot partition-
: Ghost: 25 mins (total time to restore the partition *)
: Drive Image: 14 mins (total time to restore the partition)
: * The time reported is only the restoration time for Ghost program.
: However extra time was spent to defrag and optimize the partition
: using Norton Speed Disk, to place the swap file back to the front of
: the partition. Therefore you have to add extra 5-6 mins to the process
: for the defrag operation as well! Drive Image restored the partition
: faithfully, without requiring the use of a defrag operation!
: Of course depending on the size of your partition the performance
: times and image file sizes change but it seems Drive Image is always
: the faster of the two programs, and compresses better!
: Both programs have varying types of functionalities as well. For
: example the windows explorer type Ghost Explorer allows you to restore
: individual directories or files selectively to any location on the HD
: or inject new files into an existing image file, whereas Drive Image
: (AFAIK) lacks this functionality. Both programs support spanned
: images... and so on and so on.....
: Therefore, I do not mean that one program is better than the other,
: but that there are some very obvious performance issues when it comes
: to the basic operation, i.e. the creation of an image file and
: restoration of a partition! Thus people should consider carefully
: their requirements before comitting to either of the programs!
: sincerely,
: nobody in particular!
--
change "no-spam" to "jaybird" to email me...