Norton Ghost 2002

The latest version of Norton Ghost, 2002, now supports WindowsXP Home/Pro along with 2000 Pro/NT WS/Me/98 and 95. It also supports FAT, NTFS and Linux EXT2 file systems, which means you can create clones for virtually any type of

machine.

The actual software has to be run from a boot disk, which is created after installing Ghost. You can create three different types of boot disks, which differ in their support for various devices. For example, you can create a boot disk with CD-R/RW, LPT, and USB, which will let you directly burn your backup image on to a CD-R or CD-RW. This is very useful if your organization has PCs with the same configuration, because once you have an image of the system you can use that same CD to restore any PC within minutes, reducing downtime. You can also create a connection between two PCs via the Parallel or USB port to backup or restore data between these PCs. For example, you can store the backup image of one computer and store it on the hard drive of the other and visa versa, so if one system crashes you can always restore it from the other.

You can create various types of boot disks ses NORTON GHOST 2002  Price: Rs 2,400 Meant for: Offices Features: Supports Windows 95/98/Me/NT WS/2000 Professional/XP Pro/XP Home; supports FAT, NTFS, Linux EXT2 file systems, cloning supported via USB, Parallel and IP; supports direct writing to CD-R, CD-RWs, Iomega ZIP and Jaz drives, disk spanning, data compression Pros: Easy to use, attractive price Cons: None Contact: Symantec. Tel: 022-5960238. Suite # 801, Sentech Centrako,MMTC Building, Bandra Kurla Complex, Bandra (East), Mumbai 400051. www.symantec.com/region/in/ E-mail: jitendrag@ techpacindia.com

Other types of boot disks possible are Peer-to-Peer Network boot disk, which has support for TCP, for PC-to-PC cloning via IP connections, and a CD-ROM Boot disk in case you want to restore an image from a CD-ROM drive. Norton Ghost also supports disk spanning, so if your image file is very big it can be split up into segments and stored. For example, an image 1.2 GB in size can be stored on two separate

CD-Rs.

Ghost uses Cyclic Redundancy Checking (CRC32) to ensure that the original data and its image file are exactly the same. The ‘32’ indicates that it uses a 32-bit value to store the checking information. It also has a small and easy to use utility called G Disk, which lets you do command-line partitioning and formatting. You can also use it to hide or unhide partitions on your hard disk, which you can then use to store your image files.

We did a few tests on the Ghost and were pretty impressed with its performance. First of all we created an image of a 4GB partition out of which 850MB was used up, with maximum compression and stored the image file on the other partition of the same drive. The task was completed in 4.5 min and took a mere three min when we stored the image on a separate hard disk attached to the same computer. We then attached a 16x Asus CD-ReWriter and took a backup without compression, this time on to CD-Rs. Two CD-Rs and 6 min was all it took. Finally we restored the entire system from the CD-R, which also completed quickly in just over 4 min. Another good feature here is that you can easily add or remove files from the image by using the Ghost Explorer utility through

Windows.

The CD, which contains Ghost, also has five interactive tutorials, which help you learn to use some of the features of Ghost 2002, like cloning a PC through a LAN and USB, creating clones on CD-RWs. Overall, a price of under 2,500 is very much justified, considering its features and ease of use.

Sachin Makhija at PCQ Labs