Ghost was first released by the original authors in ~1997 (or there round- abouts).
Making a backup of a HD is as simple as turning on a light.
You just have to formulate your backup plan, and then work the plan.
With one hard drive, probably in one partition, you have only a few options, , , , you can back up to an external hard drive or a DVD (s).
You can't run Ghost 8.3 from a floppy disk.....it's too big.
The last version that would fit on a DOS boot floppy was (is) Ghost 2003.
So, you get Ghost.exe version 8.3 onto a Boot CD or Flash Drive and you run it in DOS mode. You tell it you want to make a "
Disk To Image
" copy, and you specify your DVD burner as the output. It will name the Ghost backup image file for you so don't mess with that. If multiple DVD's are required it will automatically stop and ask you for the next DVD when the first one if full. Just follow the prompts and do what it tells you, till the job is done.
You'll need that Ghost boot disk when you want to do a restore, but a "Disk to Image" backup will have everything needed to make even a brand new HD boot properly.
Then put that Ghost backup DVD in a very SAFE place.
Remake that backup regularly, to incorporate any new files, etc., that are added to the HD.
I do my own Ghost backups once a week at the very minimum.
I still run Ghost 2003 from a DOS Boot Floppy, so Ghost can copy itself to the DVD, thus making it bootable.
There's nothing worse than having to do a Ghost Restore with an image file that's months old, and Loose everything that's been done on the PC since then. So avoid the tears and do a Ghost backup
OFTEN!!
Cheers Mate!
The Shadow