Norton Ghost is a leader of backup and copy software for computer systems but may not be the best program in town according to some reviews but I had no problems putting Ghost through its paces.
Ease of Use, Performance: 20/25
Look & Feel: 19/25
Features 24/25
How much I enjoy 22/25
Total: 85/100
Norton Ghost 15 is the latest version of the Symantec backup and copy software that has plenty of well worn features and a few new ones like Cold Imaging. I have used several different backup and copy utilities and Norton Ghost stands out as a good overall program that I did not have any major problems with and only minor ones that were nothing but annoyances.
I started off reviewing Ghost as a disc imaging and full copy program for a hard drive to perform some reviewing on a registry cleaner program so I wanted several copies of a Windows hard drive. Installing Ghost took a few minutes and without any problems so I could get right to the meat of a full disc copy.
The program has a good interface and main pages that are easy to use and navigate so finding things you want to do is simple and getting to the what you want is quick. When you first install the program the installation goes right to a few quick questions about setting up backups so you can get right to the various tasks.
Norton Ghost 15 has a program feature you can use without even having to install the program called Cold Imaging which works from computer startup using the Norton Recovery Disc, the disc the program comes on. You simply insert the disc into your computer and startup the computer from the CD disc and follow the instructions for recovering from external drives or storage media.
Another thing you can do, and really should, is validate drivers before starting backup routines which ensures you have the required drivers for network and storage devices for recovery operations. If you have all the necessary drivers on the CD that came with Norton Ghost you do not have to do anything but if you need some for a device like a hard drive you should get them installed on a CD for recovery purpose before you need them.
Norton support will help with this if you need it according to the popup when you run the validation tool directly from the disc. I did not have to do this but if your validation does not find drivers you simply copy drivers for your external drives or network drives onto a CD for use by the recovery program.
You can also create a custom recovery disc that will include the drivers you need using the program once you have this installed and it will include both the recovery program and drivers for your hardware. I think many of the problems people are having with Norton Ghost Cold Imaging comes from not having the correct drivers on your Norton disc ready for network storage.
If you don’t have these drivers the program will have a hard time finding the network storage devices connected to your system so having them before you need them is important. Once you start the computer from the Norton CD you can recover files or a whole disc image from an external drive or a CD, DVD or Blu-ray disc.
Installation on two systems, Windows Vista and Windows 7, went just fine for me and I had no problems at both Cold Imaging and regular copy through Copy my Hard Drive. I recovered a drive using Cold Imaging with full Windows Vista without incident and used it for a couple of weeks as well as used a regular disc image from copy using the regular Norton Ghost image copy.
Using the Copy my Hard Drive feature from the main menu page of Norton Ghost which is the first page that comes up when you open Ghost you can copy a full drive, either a C or system drive or another. Both the copy and backup routines that I tried out worked well except for a few problems with some corrupt drivers but these were nothing but a minor inconvenience as the drivers are odd ones for small hardware.
The copy feature works well and I had no problems copying the full drive without any problems and only had problems copying files and folders containing drivers for some odd hardware. I am not sure what happened but some files were corrupt that are for drivers of odd hardware like a USB sound card and a USB 3.0 drive enclosure.
After copying a folder of files from the internet that are downloads of drivers I tried installing them and these two were corrupt but others were just fine. I also recovered photos, documents and sound files that were just fine and of course my important things like email folders and copies of my reviews.
I also allowed the backup routine to run for weeks without problem in both creating the backup files and using them after a couple of weeks of recovering some. I had no problem running both the backups and drive copies other than a couple of drivers corrupted which is not that big a deal.
Other files were not corrupted of which the files like email folders and documents, photos and files that are the usual things people want backed up all were fine. I had no problem recovering files and using the program even for the slightly more difficult Cold Imaging function.
Norton Ghost works pretty well and for regular backup and copying I think it works very well and is pretty reliable using both Windows 7 and Windows Vista. I did not have any serious problems using Norton Ghost and think it is a good program for backing up important information and as a image copy program for duplicating entire drives.
I have been running the backup routine which is easy to set up whether your backing up full drives or just select folders, you can select a few different backup routines using Ghost. You can define backups by extension type, folders or things like My Documents and more form a checklist when you enter the Define Backups routine.
Most of the Norton Ghost runs pretty easily and only a few things need a little more knowledge and a bit of preparation before any disaster strikes like the Validating Drivers and a possible recovery disc creation. If you’re serious about backups and making sure your information is safe you need to plan ahead for the possible or inevitable failure.
Norton Ghost is a good solution for backing up your valuable information and safeguarding your files easily and quickly at a good price. I highly recommend Norton Ghost for an easy to use and pretty reliable backup and disc copy program that costs only about $30 for a 1 PC single user license.
