Let me just slip in this:  I am so grateful for this forum.  Thank you - you know who you are.  You have done so much to enrich my life - sounds corny - but tough.  You fellows have helped me so much.  THANK YOU!

I have used Ghost for years - all the versions: Hot-imaging, cold imaging.  It has been generally OK.
HAving seen a post on the Ghost forum, I switched to ShadowProtect.  The ability to restore to different hardware is GIGANTIC.  Has anybody ever heard of a laptop being stolen, or a motherboard frying.  In most cases, Ghost is useless except for disk issues.

Finally, I just can no longer forgive Symantec for providing H O R R I B L E support.  ShadowProtect provides fine support.

Chck out this article:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2259168,00.asp

Rad: You understand that I'm just providing a link to an article I read.  Yes?  I'm not getting the Pleo joke.
Ghost 14?  Haven't used it.  Wasn't even sure it was out yet.
Does Ghost 14 allow you to restore an image to a different computer than the one it was created on?

Rad wrote on Apr 7^th, 2008 at 11:50am:


I believe you are correct.  What from what I have read SP uses and licenses WinPE 2.0 from Microsoft which is the latest Windows Pre-Install environment boot cd.  It's the one that Microsoft uses for Vista I think.

Bottom line summary:  we probably all remember different versions of Windows install (boot) cd's that would recognize "most" but not all motherboards and chipsets.  I'm not an expert in this area, but I believe that's what is going on here.

It is actually very logical:  For example with Ghost's boot cd, or linux cd, or BartPE cd, etc. it recognizes all the devices that are packaged with that cd.  Thus the application works with those chipsets.  We all remember the issues with Ghost boot cd's not recognizing usb drives.  And I'm sure NightOwl can tell long stories about drivers needed for DOS boot diskettes.

So, yes, I'd like to see a universal boot cd that works with *all* chipsets myself and ability to take image backup from Asus motherboard's hard drive and restore it to Intel motherboard harddrive.

Licensing WinPE 2.0 adds to the cost of the software package.  That's why from what I've read, some (True Image, Paragon) use linux.

Remember Symantec has had several versions of boot cd's:  Ghost 9 was a Symantec proprietary one, and then Ghost 10, 12, etc were different.  In Dos days, you had to add motherboard drivers to your boot diskettes, but in those days, motherboard manufacturer's didn't put additional bells and whistles in the mb's that made them unique, or required unique software.

Rad wrote on Apr 7^th, 2008 at 12:51pm:


I'm sure you remember with DOS and earlier Windows versions, they wouldn't support scsi and you had to press F6 to load additional drivers at boot time.  And then motherboard vendors had to load additional Windows 9x drivers to support their hard drive controllers to get optimum throughput.  (In my opinion) this is the same thing going on today -- how to ensure that a boot cd/dvd or spx update contains drivers for *all* possible computers.  Pretty difficult task.

FYI, there's an interesting thread which I have been following for last week or so on True Image board:

Must Acronis abandon their Linux Boot and Use Bartpe/VistaPE?
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=205014

Symantec, Acronis and StorageCraft have their own methods to image and restore to different hardware. It can also be done with standard imaging software. John and I have discussed this in the past.

Last week I imaged a one year old Dell Dimension with SATA HDs. The image was restored to a nine year old Compaq DesktopPro with IDE HDs. That's certainly "different hardware." On first boot there was "nothing." A blank screen. Not even a blinking cursor. After a Repair Install from a WinXP CD, the Compaq booted and seemed fairly normal apart from running slower than the Dell. That wasn't surprising.

I've used this method with other old computers and no failures yet.

Brian wrote on Apr 7^th, 2008 at 4:28pm:

What is the Symantec method?

Where is the thread where this was previously discussed?

Quote:

I have restored a few ShadowProtect 3.1 images of a Windows Vista system to a VMware Workstation 6.0 virtual machine (VM), and it works quite well.  The chipset on the VM is an Intel 440BX based motherboard, whereas the backup image is of a HP xw4600 Workstation with an Intel X38 Express chipset.

By the way, one of the nice features of the Windows PE 2.0 environment used by ShadowProtect is that you can “hot load” device drivers at any time, and the Recovery Environment recognizes devices that are “hot plugged” into the PC after the environment is already booted.

Rad, VMware Workstation 6.0 doesn’t allow the user to configure the virtual machine (VM) with a choice of different chipsets – the Intel 440BX is the only hardware supported, to the best of my knowledge.  Of course, the performance that you see with VMware is dependent upon the processor of the physical PC on which the VM is running.  In my case, that's a 3.00GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor.

For purposes of this thread, though, the key point that an image of one PC was successfully restored to a second PC that employed a different chipset, using ShadowProtect Desktop 3.1.