I am interested in ghost software for creating full image backups of a couple of my computers.  I am looking for one-off backups performed manually every few weeks or months.  I have a 1.5Tb NAS I will be saving the images to.  The NAS has USB connectivity, so it can be connected and will appear like any other USB drive.

My question is, which product should I get?  I'm not interested in any sort of "live" backup, or even installing any ghost software to the machine.  I'd like to power down, stick a bootable CD into the CD-ROM, power back up to a back-up environment, and create the image to a network or USB storage device.  A definate bonus would be the ability to select (or rather, deselect) certain folders from the image, though this is not a must.

From the browsing I've done, it looks like Norton Save & Restore is the closest option?  With NS&R I can boot from the CD and create a ghost image to a USB device without installing any norton software to the local machine?  And boot from that same CD and restore from the image located on said non-bootable USB device?

DirkNerpin,

Another choice would be Drive SnapShot run from a BartPE CD. You can image and restore from the CD environment and it's compatible with network shares and USB devices. You can also deselect folders from being imaged. Nothing needs to be installed to your computer.

http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/