I'm tired of all the errors I'm encountering with Ghost 2003 (see my other postings).  What is a good alternative?

I don't like the idea of paying for another Symantec product because of all the grief I've had with Ghost 2003, but is there a good alternative?

I'd like:

(1) Ability to exclude folders from the backup to keep the images small
(2) Password protection
(3) Easy creation of an Image on a bootable DVD for restoration
(4) Easy verification of the image
(5) DVD & External USB drive support

I do NOT need a program that runs in Windows.

I have BackUP MyPC, but have read horror stories about it not working when you need it.

I've read on this forum about horror stories also with True Image

I was leaning toward Drive Snapshot but it looks like it falls short on ease of image verification.

-- Aching Back

Brian, thanks for your reply.  I have not taken any action on getting a replacement to Ghost because I've been fighting other PC problems & because my budget has been tight.  However, I just encountered another series of errors today with Ghost.  I only try to create back ups once every month or two, but since January I've encountered the following problems with Ghost 2003 in WindowsXP

(1) I cannot write to DVD and specify a password.  Error Number: (566) Message: Error Accessing file, please check media and retry

(2) Cannot create bootable DVD

(3) Error Number: (19235) Message: Decompression error -3

(4) Error Number: (19235) Message: Decompression error -5

(5) Error Number: (40213) Message: @FIND could not find the image file

(6) Error Number: (40204) Message: Can't find drive with specified disk identification. You may need to load additional drivers to access this drive.

That's a lot of errors, particularly for an infrequent user.  I encountered the last two errors today in five attempts to back up to a new external USB drive

I admire the tenacity of El_Pescador who, in April 2004, wrote:

"I probably have put forty or fifty hard hours into overcoming the @find ABORT 40213 error message with every conceivable permutation repeated multiple times in fruitless attempts to perform a Ghost BackUp procedure"

He posted this at http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=10828...

I've searched this forum but have not found solutions that would apply in my case for the two most recent errors.  I've spent 4 hours today dealing with this Ghost 2003 crapware and am giving up.

I don't really expect to find solutions for these errors.  I just need to let off a little steam.

  -- Posted with sincere feelings by AchingBack

AchingBack

Quote:

I have been using Ghost 2003 (Windows and DOS versions) for about 4 years now, on at least 7 different systems, with Win98se, WinXP Prof and Home, and with multiple combinations of optical writers, USB external HDD's, RAID controllers, Firewire external enclosures, different NIC cards and network configurations, etc. etc. etc.

I have encountered a number of hardware/software incompatibilities along the way--but, for the most part, there have been workarounds that have worked--took some detective work, and a bit of trial and error in some cases--took almost 3 years to figure out I had to physically turn off the machine before re-booting with NIC networking support on a floppy disk before the DOS drivers would successfully configure the NIC card's Plug-and-Play settings so I could Ghost over a home network (apparently it's a BIOS issue--re-booting without powering down the system does not re-initialize the NIC card's plug-n-play settings)!

My point is--Ghost 2003 is a complicated program with multiple ways to utilize its functions--is it compatible with every hardware/software combination--No!  But the software works for most folks most of the time--you are having an unusual number of problems--but I suspect it has something to do with the combination of system components you have, other software you have running along side Ghost's, and perhaps how you have tweaked and adjusted your Windows setup that is causing problems.

It looks like most of the problems are occurring using the Windows interface for Ghost 2003--sounds like most of the errors are concerning optical drive issues--you may have a optical drive that is not compatible and might have to consider a replacement drive that is compatible--have you considered switching to the DOS based Ghost 2003 boot floppys or bootable optical discs to by-pass the Windows errors--might turn out to be the easiest work-around?

regarding alternatives to ghost .. i should note i've listed every "ghost alternative" here:

http://ghost.radified.com/ghost_1a.htm

.. list begins ~ 1/2 way down the page.

the list used to be much shorter.

I'm sorry that I've missed much of this thread, as I've just skimmed it.
But errors with Ghost 2003?  Gee, I never have any, unless I do something really stupid.
That's ME. (not you)

First, Never load Ghost on your PC.  That's totally redundant and for a tech working on hundreds of PC's that he may want to make Ghost backups of, it just isn't practical. (and maybe not legal either)
Ghost 2003 (Ghost.exe) is a DOS program, not a windows program and should only be run in DOS.

Prepare a bootable DOS disk, either floppy or CD, or even Flash Drive and install Ghost.exe and mouse.com (so you can use your PS2 mouse with the program) on it and you're good to go.
Hey!, that's all you need to run Ghost.

Now, having a hard drive partition that contains no errors (run scandisk, or chkdsk to make sure) and is free of as much crapola as possible also helps.
Then run Ghost in the "Partition to Image" mode.  Let Ghost put the image on a second HD or second partition with FAST compression or on a DVD with Maximum compression, to  save DVD's.

If you boot up from a boot floppy, Ghost will offer to put itself on the DVD as the boot sector, making the DVD self booting.  That's great if you're Restoring to a brand new hard drive (after a major crash).

My custom boot disk for Ghost has a few batch files and an Ansi-Color menu on it, so I can do some needed cleanup on my FAT-32 hard drive before running Ghost.  That saves me about 2 gigs of space in the resulting Image files.  I delete the Pagefile, old Restore Points and of course all junk files. 

With careful HD management, I'm still getting a Ghost Image of C: on just one DVD, with Max compression. 

Ghost 2003, is easy, clean and very effective if run properly.
My Software Guru tells me that he uses my Custom Boot Disk with Ghost 2003 to back up his Linux Server.

I've also used it to backup my new AMD, AM2 based Vista Ultimate 64 system.  Piece of cake.

Clean up your system and run Ghost 2003 as a DOS program, from a boot disk, like it was originally intended to be run and you'll have no problems.  Try to cut corners or get weird with it and it will make you sorry you did.

Cheers mates!
The Doctor

DrWho2006 wrote on Apr 1^st, 2007 at 5:38pm:

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