Ok, I know how much everyone, including myself loves whatever flavor of Ghost they're using (thanks to Shadow for turning me on to Ghost 11.5).

I was trolling the internet over the past week and checked a post in this subtopic about Image for DOS so I checked it out. What I found was that Image for DOS works wonders, if you have multiple USB controllers, if not and you're using a usb mouse/keyboard, when it accesses the USB controller for drive access, you lose said mouse/keyboard functions.

The work around, Image for Linux. Same easy to use interface albeit some slightly different language. You need to have a basic understanding/familiarity with how linux says things and identifies drives both native and usb attached. Other than that, the software works as advertised. What's really fantastic about Image for Linux is as you are selecting your options, you actually have the option to NOT copy over the pagefile.sys and hyberfile.sys which as most of you know, dramatically and needlessly increase the overall size of your install and image. That scored pretty high points for me. To do the same thing with Ghost 11.5 i'd have to either remove those files prior to ghosting from within DOS, or after ghosting using Ghost Explorer. Not an uncomfortable venture, just a few extra steps nonetheless.

Here's the numbers:

Ghost 8.0 from with BartPE to USB 2.0 SATA 120gb Hard drive - Speed to write image = 850mb/sec +/- 10 imaging a 2.5gb image (fast compression used). Source drive was 5400rpm Western Digital Caviar 10gb drive. Time to image, 8 minutes. Image integrity checked. Restore speed BACK from USB 2.0 SATA 120gb = 750mb/sec +/-10 with switches -sure -rb to immediately test image funcationality.

Ghost 11.5 from BartPE to USB 2.0 SATA 120gb Hard Drive - Speed to write image = 800-850mb/sec +/- 10 using same 2.5gb image with fast compression. Same source drive. Time to image = 9 minutes give or take a few seconds. Image integrity checked. Restore speed BACK from USB 2.0 SATA 120gb was at same speed.

Image for Linux from boot CD to USB SATA 120gb Hard Drive - Speed to write image = 950mb/sec +/- 15, same 2.5gb image with Normal Compression. Same source drive. Time to image between 6-7 minutes. Image Validation ran and confirmed.  Restore speed BACK from USB 2.0 SATA 120gb without including image validation was at the same speed.

What I like about this obviously is the throughput of the product. It's also a good thing to mention that after each image creation/restoration process the image was tested for functionality of installed software, checked for registry issues/errors and overall, put through the paces. Also what I like about Image for Linux, is that per TerabyteUnlimited, it will image any drive, any format to include x64 which is the direction alot of manufacturers are heading. Your test results may vary but here are mine.

Hope this helps anyone looking for Ghost alternatives.

*NOTE* This is not a hack, but if you download the 30 day trial and create the ISO, it works unlimited as advertised.*NOTE*


**NOTE**System used to test products was custom Intel Pentium 2.4gh with 768mb PC2700 Ram, EIDE native drive on Asus P4B533 mobo**NOTE** In that aspect I consider the above to be good numbers.

Hellsbones,

Another advantage of IFL is that it can image and restore over wired and wireless networks.

Images created by IFL, IFD or IFW can be restored by any of the three products. You can also change geometry and partition alignment when you restore the image.

Hellsbones wrote on Feb 19^th, 2009 at 1:20pm:

Ok, I know how much everyone, including myself loves whatever flavor of Ghost they're using (thanks to Shadow for turning me on to Ghost 11.5). I was trolling the internet over the past week and checked a post in this subtopic about Image for DOS so I checked it out. What I found was that Image for DOS works wonders, if you have multiple USB controllers, if not and you're using a usb mouse/keyboard, when it accesses the USB controller for drive access, you lose said mouse/keyboard functions. The work around, Image for Linux. Same easy to use interface albeit some slightly different language. You need to have a basic understanding/familiarity with how linux says things and identifies drives both native and usb attached. Other than that, the software works as advertised. What's really fantastic about Image for Linux is as you are selecting your options, you actually have the option to NOT copy over the pagefile.sys and hyberfile.sys which as most of you know, dramatically and needlessly increase the overall size of your install and image. ... *NOTE* This is not a hack, but if you download the 30 day trial and create the ISO, it works unlimited as advertised.*NOTE* **NOTE**System used to test products was custom Intel Pentium 2.4gh with 768mb PC2700 Ram, EIDE native drive on Asus P4B533 mobo**NOTE** In that aspect I consider the above to be good numbers.

A few questions about IFL-

1) What filesystem(s) did you image ? i.e. was it ext3 > ext3 or ext3 > NTFS or some other combination ?

2) If the downloaded ISO is free, then what additional features would the paid version offer ?

3) Is there an option to browse through the created images (and selectively restore files/folders) ?

4) What is the appx compression ratio, for a 'normal' compression option (corresponding to the  'fast' compression option for Ghost) ?

zmdmw52,

Just a few comments about IFL. The download is a fully functional one month Trial version. It's called IFL because it can be installed in Linux. IFL, IFW and IFD can all image and restore Linux and Windows partitions and can use each others images. You can browse images with TBIView and extract files and folders from the images.

My Ubuntu image has been compressed to 50% using Standard compression. WinXP has been compressed to 60%. Windows 7 has been compressed to 35% but the large page file (not present in the image) makes this compression look too good.