According to Symantec’s website, Norton Ghost 9.0 will be available in late August and is “enhanced with Drive Image technology”.  New key features include “hot imaging” and scheduled backups (both currently available with Drive Image 7) plus incremental backups.

What’s the buzz on Ghost 9.0?

Symantec bough Powerquest some time ago. They make Ghost biggest competitor, Drive Image, and also Partition Magic.

It appears Symantec has merged Drive Image with Ghost, as many speculated.

Seems they are making Ghost more of a BACK-UP product than the CLONING product it was initially designed for.

Not sure if I like the hot-image feature. It would always be safer to  image following a fresh reboot.

Incremental and scheduled back-ups might be nice, but there are many products that do this already. Cloning and imaging will remain Ghost's key features.

Symantec didn't update Ghost since 2002, when they released the current version, 2003. So this will be like Ghost 2005, which it sounds like they're calling 9.0

Press release

http://www.symantec.com/press/2004/n040802.html

Features: http://www.symantec.com/sabu/ghost/ghost_personal/features.html

I looked at it and hurried to order Ghost 2003.  They have incorporated both the good and bad about Drive Image.   The bad being you need to install the 40Meg of Microsoft .Net stuff.    To me this is just lazy.   It allows them to do neat stuff in the GUI, but heck a lot of companies to this with out Microsoft .net.

Ghost 2003 is included with this new version 9.0

Will Ghost 9.0 be included in SystemWorks Professional 2005 (as is currently the case with Ghost 2003 and SystemWorks Professional 2004) - or, will the user need to purchase the product separately?

P.S.:  By the way, I have been using Drive Image 7 for several months and, from my perspective, it is a vast improvement over the archaic Ghost 2003 for image backup.  I eagerly await Ghost 9.0!

I sent Symantec an email and asked about including Ghost v9/0 with NSW 2004/5 Pro. I'll post back when I hear from them.

Could someone refresh my memory what the difference is between Ghost 2003 as a standalone product vs. the Ghost that comes with Systemworks?  I know there's some limitation to the one that comes with Systemworks but I can't remember what it is.  Maybe it has something to do with it being able to write to NTFS partitions?

No diff.

I'm 100% sure that I read there's a difference between the two.  Anybody?

Then you are 100% wrong, my friend.  :-*

There is only 1 difference.

That is the media.

Ghost CD = bootable ghost media with tools for troubleshooting and even capability of Ghosting.

NSW CD = requires bootable floppy with CD support to be able to be used for anything worthwile.

Will I still have my Ghost.exe file?  I wonder what size it will be?

Does anyone know whether Ghost 9.0 will be included in SystemWorks Professional 2005 (as is currently the case with Ghost 2003 and SystemWorks Professional 2004) - or, will the user need to purchase the Ghost 9.0 separately?

I sent this question to Symantec over a week ago, but have not yet received a reply.

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Symantec Online Customer Service.

In your message you wrote: > Can you tell me if the new Ghost v9.0 will included with either Norton System Works 2004 Pro or 2005 Pro.

I acknowledge your concern regarding this issue. Please note that Norton SystemWorks 2004 PRO include Norton Ghost 9.0.

For further assistance with all Norton 2005 purchase options, please contact a Symantec Store Customer Service representative by one of the following means:

-- On the World Wide Web, at the following URL:

http://www.symantecstore.com/question

-- By telephone,
1-888-366-5487
If I can be of further assistance, please let me know.

Regards,
Suman
Customer Care Specialist
Symantec Authorized Online Customer Service  

Rad note: I don't hink he's correct. I think Ghost v2003 comes with NSW 2004 Pro. Can anyone confirm?

I know that Ghost v9.0 will also include Ghost v2003.

As an owner of Norton SystemWorks Professional 2004, I can confirm Rad's conclusion that Norton Ghost 9.0 is not included therein.  The Symantec Customer Care Specialist is clearly wrong on this point.  Only Ghost 2003 is included in Norton SystemWorks Professional 2004.

I called the Symantec Online Store (888-366-5487), but they had no information whatsoever on the product definition of Norton SystemWorks Professional 2005.  I also called the Symantec Authorized Service Center (800-441-7234) and received the same answer.  Their best guess is that Norton SystemWorks Professional 2005 will be announced in late September, 2004 – at which time the inclusion/exclusion of Ghost 9.0 will be known.

Thanks.

A description of Norton SystemWorks 2005 Premier now appears on the Symantec website (www.symantec.com/sabu/sysworks/pro), and Ghost 9.0 is included therein.

Therefore, it's probably a better value to purchase Norton SystemWorks 2005 Premier rather than the Ghost 9.0 application alone.

I read the Ghost 9.0 User's Guide this weekend.   And, although I not actually used Ghost 9.0 yet, it sure appears that Ghost 9.0 = Drive Image 7.0 + Incremental Backups.  In other words, the 'only' significant difference I see between Ghost 9.0 and Drive Image 7.0 is the addition of the incremental backup feature (a very nice improvement, no doubt).  Symantec has clearly chosen Drive Image as the platform for Ghost, discarding the legacy Ghost 2003 framework.

The official Symantec site says


Quote:

Norton Ghost 2003 is included to back up and restore data to: Windows 9x, Me, NT; Linux®; and DOS systems.

http://www.symantec.com/sabu/ghost/ghost_personal/features.html

I don't think Drive Image is an upgrade to Ghost. So if you have Ghost 2003 and plan to use it, there is no reason to upgrade to Ghost9.

Couple of years back I frequently used ghostpe (From Ghost 2000 edition) and I was able to
1. create a bootable floppy to run the ghost utility
2. Clone the C:\ partion of WinNT server to another spare disk within the system.
3. Boot another identical Proliant server with ghost floppy and restore the ghosted image.

Now I have Ghost 9.0 with me (I am in another organisation now). To perform similar tasks as above, I don't see any option to generate a bootable floppy. I dont want to install this software on my server. What I want is clone a server.

Any help is appreciated

No way to create a boot floppy? That doesn't seem right. What does Symantec say?

Ang

Don't know about Ghost 9.0, but Ghost 2003 stand alone on a CD is a bootable CD and you can run Ghost directly from it.

Also, reading the 'readme.txt' on the stand alone Ghost 2003 CD, it says:


Quote:

========================================  4. Installation CD layout and contents ======================================== The installation CD has several folders containing files that you might find useful. - The Support folder holds all the DOS Ghost programs that can be  run without installation.

And, I found the following on Norton SystemWorks 2003's CD in this directory:

CD-Drive Letter:\SUPPORT\GHOST

'GDisk.exe'
'Ghost.exe'
'GhReboot.exe'
'GhstWalk.exe'

So the DOS programs are there for 2003 versions of Ghost and Norton SystemWorks that can be copied to floppy and used without installing the whole Windows based program on the HDD.

Just create a bootable system floppy.  Copy the Ghost.exe to a second formated floppy.  After booting system with boot floppy, switch to second floppy with the Ghost.exe program and type 'Ghost'.

If you look in similar places on the Ghost 9.0 version, you might find the same solutions.  

If you need the system files for a boot floppy, you can find things on the internet, such as here:

http://bootdisk.com/

NightOwl, Thanks for your lenghthy response.

I could not locate those files on my CDROM copy of Norton Ghost 9.0

What I did is, I booted the server using my old copy of floppy (V7.5) and I could execute ghost command. I see all the partitions. I selected to take an image of C:\ partition. But I don't see any target partitions to save as they are NTFS.

Ang.

RAD edit: Don't ask for files. There are other places for that.

Ang

Ghost prior to v8.0 or Ghost 2003 can not save to NTFS partitions.  See here:

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/docid/2000012811284125?


Quote:

I could not locate those files on my CDROM copy of Norton Ghost 9.0

I'm curious--do you have just a CD with a copy of Ghost's v9.0 exe program file--or do you have the 'retail' CD from Symantec that allows you to install the Windows version of Ghost?  I've seen reference that Ghost 9.0 was going to have Ghost 2003 included--in which case the Ghost.exe for DOS should be there.

I am back to some basic questions...

The requirement is: I have a Proliant server running W2K. I
have to take the C:\, D:\ and E:\ partitions to F:\
partition as C_IMAGE.GHO, D_IMAGE.GHO and E_IMAGE.GHO and copy these images to a CDROM. From these images, I want to build another identical Proliant server. Is this
possible? What is the best approach? (All my partions are NTFS)

Ang


Quote:

identical

That's the issue.  If you transfer the images to a new HDD and put it into the same machine--you will probably have no major issues.

But if you're transfering the images to a HDD on a different machine--then it's more likely not to be an 'identical' machine, and information in the registry no longer matches the hardware components and their settings and problems occur.

See here:

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/8f7dc138830563c888256c2200662ecd/a5042fdb5bbe78f688256880005b8ec6?

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/docid/2000012111391925?

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/docid/1999012209340925?

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/docid/1999070716282425?

To answer your question, if it's 'identical' hardware--use a partitioning program to create the same partition layout as you had when you made your images--they do not have to be the same size, but large enough to hold the data that you imaged for each partition-and then transfer the image of 'C' to 'C', 'D' to 'D', and 'E' to 'E' using a separate ghost procedure each time, and 'F' will be empty until you store more Ghost images on it.

Thank you for sharing some important links that clears most of my doubts.

Regarding the identical machines, let me share my experience from the past. I had Two different models of Compaq DeskPro running WinNT 4.0 server. I have applied the image taken from one system to another and run ghostwalker. The second system booted successfully but the display was not proper and unable to see the network. So I had to download and apply the appropriate drivers for video and NIC then the second system was perfect.

wrote on Aug 16^th, 2004 at 4:01pm:

Features: http://www.symantec.com/sabu/ghost/ghost_personal/features.html

this article pretty much sums up my thoughts: Article 2