Norton Ghost 10

Reality Bites · 27 Jul 2006 at 16:09

being a complete noob at this bit of software, can someone please give me a brash crash course in it?

i'm on the hunt for a new job at the moment and plenty of places are asking for experience in it, but i've never used it.

I always thought it was simply a tool to create an image of one machine so that you can then install that image on another?

TriedandTested · 27 Jul 2006 at 16:49

http://ghost.radified.com/

bledd · 27 Jul 2006 at 19:16

if you've got 2500 posts, you'll be able to figure it out, unless you're a GD whore

pretty much, next , next, create image, next

restoring, you boot from the cd, then tell it where the image is stored and you're done

if its in a large business, they'll tell you where you're supposed to save your images and will give you a once over i'd like to think!

Reality Bites · 27 Jul 2006 at 19:20

bledd. said:
if you've got 2500 posts, you'll be able to figure it out, unless you're a GD whore

pretty much, next , next, create image, next

restoring, you boot from the cd, then tell it where the image is stored and you're done

if its in a large business, they'll tell you where you're supposed to save your images and will give you a once over i'd like to think!

was kinda hoping it was that easy.

I've got a test machine in the garage and i'm going to have a go with it tomorrow.

i usually find that if something seems too easy, i've usually missed something very important :rolleyes:

thanks for the replies

bledd · 27 Jul 2006 at 19:22

ghosting is best to do on a 'fresh' system, ie, one with windows installed, updates installed and drivers

companies will want they're prefered programs on there to, so you can deploy the images onto computers really efficiently

they're compressed too, and get restored from about 5-20 mins depending on pc speeds etc

Reality Bites · 27 Jul 2006 at 19:35

bledd. said:
ghosting is best to do on a 'fresh' system, ie, one with windows installed, updates installed and drivers

companies will want they're prefered programs on there to, so you can deploy the images onto computers really efficiently

they're compressed too, and get restored from about 5-20 mins depending on pc speeds etc

i get that bit....just wanted to get used to creating images and them doing the restore process.

i've got a blank system in the garage, will test and play with that rather than my own.

bledd · 27 Jul 2006 at 19:38

what part of south wales mate?

you might wanna check its not been nicked

Magsy · 28 Jul 2006 at 14:51

At home you are probably going to ghost a machine to disk or cdr/dvdr, but in business they might well want you to ghost across the lan (P2P or a server) or from usb. Both of these can be a pain in the ass, you end up need dos drivers for the NIC or USB - headache

Also you cannot ghost a machine and then put that image on multiple machines of the same spec. Each Windows installation generates a specific ID (a SID) and it should really be unique on all machines. (It will work but it is a bad idea)
To create unique SID's you would be required to use a MS cmd line utility called 'sysprep' to prep the main machine before imaging (which put the machine back into a mini install process) or using the ghost tools to generate a new SID upon deployment.

Companies will use ghost in very different ways, if it is a small place you will probably use it like a home user but if you have a couple hundred people it should be properly scripted and being fed by a server.

Also there are many applications like Ghost and whilst the principals are similar they don't all work the same way.

There are other things you may want to look at too, like MS RIS server, which provides a network boot and automated installation of Windows on multiple machine configs. There are some lovers and haters of RIS but it works pretty well for me.

Reality Bites · 28 Jul 2006 at 15:01

Magsy said:
At home you are probably going to ghost a machine to disk or cdr/dvdr, but in business they might well want you to ghost across the lan (P2P or a server) or from usb. Both of these can be a pain in the ass, you end up need dos drivers for the NIC or USB - headache

Also you cannot ghost a machine and then put that image on multiple machines of the same spec. Each Windows installation generates a specific ID (a SID) and it should really be unique on all machines. (It will work but it is a bad idea)
To create unique SID's you would be required to use a MS cmd line utility called 'sysprep' to prep the main machine before imaging (which put the machine back into a mini install process) or using the ghost tools to generate a new SID upon deployment.

Companies will use ghost in very different ways, if it is a small place you will probably use it like a home user but if you have a couple hundred people it should be properly scripted and being fed by a server.

Also there are many applications like Ghost and whilst the principals are similar they don't all work the same way.

There are other things you may want to look at too, like MS RIS server, which provides a network boot and automated installation of Windows on multiple machine configs. There are some lovers and haters of RIS but it works pretty well for me.

thanks for the response.

I'm going to have a play around with it just to see how i get on....best way to learn i guess.

I see what you mean about the SID's too.....would have thought norton had a way of putting all that on the boot CD?

ns400r · 28 Jul 2006 at 16:25

Some versions of Ghost can also reset the SID for you as it creates the image. Not sure it v10 does but if you check the help file it should tell you.

silversurfer · 29 Jul 2006 at 03:13

I didnt find norton ghost that easy to use, try true image. ghost is more a option to backup with

Matt-Page · 29 Jul 2006 at 08:09

It's quite simple to createand restore images. At my company we use a DHCP server which loads to a CMD line. We then run Ghost.exe and image it fro the GUI.

We still use Ghost 7.5 though, not because were lazy, but because it does what we want.

It's by far bettyer to do it from a server than CD's.

ns400r · 29 Jul 2006 at 13:24

It's by far bettyer to do it from a server than CD's.

Not if your trying to do 50 PC's at the same time it isn't.

Steve Watford · 29 Jul 2006 at 14:53

ns400r said:
Not if your trying to do 50 PC's at the same time it isn't.

Mmmm... Lagtastic.

As far as im aware Norton Ghost 10 doesn't boot from CD, you have to do the restore from a realtime enviroment which is a pain if your HD failed and you cant boot into Windows. Although you could use a Windows Live CD then restore it from there, but thats another pain. I prefer to use pre Ghost 10 to create my backups as it gives me the option of a DOS restore, which is easier and less hastle.