When building any kind of bridge, it is absolutely imperative to assess the footing at both ends of the span .  This can be realized quite painfully when compatibility issues arise while attempting to attain satisfactory performance with Norton Ghost 2003 on an internal HDD mounted in an USB 2.0 external enclosure kit.

In my experience, the "footings" are illustrated in the aggregation of hardware and matching software controllers outlined below:

























As time goes by, I will append to this thread some results of my successes - and failures - in performing Ghost 2003 Backups and Restores using external HDDs.  Eventually, results using both FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394a) and FireWire 800 (IEEE 1394b) should prove available as my inventory of varied enclosure kits continues to build up.

I should mention here that - for external HDDS - my of Norton Ghost 2003 performance is the complete 'disk-to-image'/'image-to-disk' BackUp/Restore cycle.  To my utter disappointment, I have found on more than one occasion that performance of a successful 'partition-to-image' procedure followed by a positive Integrity Check does not ensure that any given external HDD set-up can be fully relied upon.  However, to add a hopeful note here, the same Norton SystemWorks 2003 Professional Suite OEM CD housing Ghost 2003 has the Norton Disk Doctor utility which for me corrected file system anomalies and rendered an erratic external HDD stable.

Just received Macally PHR-100 ACB /FireWire 400/USB 2.0 'combo' external HDD enclosure kit to match up with my SIIG Model NN2660 PCI-to-/FireWire 400/USB 2.0 'combo' Host Adapter Card.