norton ghost?

[SIRCOOKS]

to anyone who has this program before, is this easy to use, i wanna back up some music i have, in what format does it save this image, how much space will i need to save the image, can i burn the image to lets say a dvd and if those drives get formatted accidentally, use the cd top restore the files...send me a link to something that can better describe this software for me, i allready checked symqntecs website...holla back

[Faustus]

For file backups your better off with more traditional backup software.

Ghost is mainly designed for entire drive images.

Its ease of use? well when you boot the floppy the options you pick are not exactly... uhm.... well named. But once you know what to select its damned easy to use.

[SIRCOOKS]

well, name some traditional backup software i can use..

[DVD_Ripper]

Sircooks,

When I needed to backup selected datafiles (music, video, etc) I just fired up my cd creation tools (Roxio, etc) and created a new data disk. Copy files done.

Now if your data files are going to change daily you can set up scheduled back routines via the backup function in windows ... Or you can write some batch files to copy files to a "drag to disc" CD.

[SIRCOOKS]

i totally understand what your saying, but to avoid using all those dvds, ill try antyhing..holla back with some suggestions

[Jayhawk]

Acronis TrueImage 8.0 does image or file, complete hard drive or incremental (files that have changed). It's a little more Disc/Folder oriented but you can boot to the CD/DVD backups and restore everything (or partial if you like). It works from withing WIndows or by booting to it's own CD. $50 at www.acronis.com

[dxj40c]

DVD_Ripper had the best suggestion, that way you could play directly from the back up disk. But, you said you don't want to use "all those DVDs", you must have a huge pile to save. Ghost will compress the files if you like (to about 2/3 the original size, maybe greater) and you will have to use a boot disk to restore. If you've got that many files why not use an external fire wire/usb hard drive? It seems that you would want to have 'easy' access to those files.

[SIRCOOKS]

jay hawk:- do i have to have Acronis TrueImage 8.0 on another comp or atleast on the comp i want to put the files on when i want to regain lets say after an accidental format.
also guys, yes i dont want to use all those dvds, thats why im looking for something like this to back upagainst, you rtalking about 500gb here on 2x250gb maxtor hds, i just wanna protect my info, and hard drives can be so un reliable nowadays thats why i dont wanna just put it all together on another external drive.
Hell yea if it comes down to it, ill just put it all on blank dvds, but ifi can avoi it, and get it onto something smaller, ill try that....holla back with more suggesttions

[ViRaL1]

Do you have an extra 500GB (maybe a little less) of storage space to back all this up to? I know you don't really like the idea of using DVDs, but at least you can put them away somewhere in case things go wrong. Plus if your DVD player plays MP3 DVDs then you can listen to them on there as opposed to the computer. If your drives fail you can just copy everything back over from the DVDs. 500GB of storage is less than $50 in blank DVDs even if you use high quality (which I recommend). Nothing else is going to come close in term of cost per MB.

[SIRCOOKS]

no i dont have an extra 500gb of staorage to back this up to, i iwll use the dvd is i cant accomplish what i wanna do with the imaging programs,. what is it with the imaging programs like ghost and acronis, that you guys want me to stay away from?..holla back

[ViRaL1]

Not trying to keep you from using them. But in order to use them, you need storage space for the image. If you don't have it then there's no place to put the image. An image (especially of compressed data like MP3s and video) will usually take up almost as much space as the original data.

[SIRCOOKS]

see, i didn't understand it to be like that, now that that was said, i might as well, just burn them to dvd..thansk man

[Craig Tucker]

DVD_Ripper had the best suggestion, that way you could play directly from the back up disk. But, you said you don't want to use "all those DVDs", you must have a huge pile to save. Ghost will compress the files if you like (to about 2/3 the original size, maybe greater) and you will have to use a boot disk to restore. If you've got that many files why not use an external fire wire/usb hard drive? It seems that you would want to have 'easy' access to those files.

You dont have to use a boot disc to restore. You can run ghost from within windows to restore. The boot disc is there for protection against your system crashing and being able to restore to a working image if your PC wont boot up correctly.

[SIRCOOKS]

sol ets say i have 500 gb i want to back up, how many gb on the side would i need, to back all that stuff up....holla back

[Jayhawk]

jay hawk:- do i have to have Acronis TrueImage 8.0 on another comp or atleast on the comp i want to put the files on when i want to regain lets say after an accidental format.

The TrueImage boot disc is entirely self contained and will restore the image to a crashed drive. I keep it on Windows for ease of backups and minor restores. In a crash or rebuild situation, I use the boot CD. It is not computer dependant.

[SIRCOOKS]

cool....do u hane anui dea what kinda storage ill need for the image of 500gb of data..holla back

[Craig Tucker]

It depends on how compressible it is. As you are probrably aware some stuff compresses much better than others.

[IAIHMB]

cool....do u hane anui dea what kinda storage ill need for the image of 500gb of data..holla back

I have no idea where people are getting the idea you can add certain files and folders, I can only chose from drives and partitions. The compression isn't to bad, if you read CNets review the compression is better than Norton Ghost 7. Also, Acronis has one thing that blows Ghost away, it can assign images to drives so you can explore whats in that drive and to top it off it can do all of this without restarting the computer. Norton Ghost 9 has "drive image technology" but I refuse to buy anything before I have tried it. :P

[SIRCOOKS]

wel, ill have to figure this phenomenon out...i have recently bought acronis 8.0 and i am cureently testing it..ill tell yall how it goes