Is norton ghost risk free to use?

[Yaka]

having only done a fresh install of xp pro recently and and installed apps/games etc i realy dont want to go thru installing xp and everything again. and my current ide drive is making clunking noiseys now an agian. i have been told ghosting everything on this drive to a new sata drive is trhe best bet. but how reliable is it?

 

[Jonty]

Hi Yaka

Although I have never created a 'ghost' image of a drive before, I do believe it is fairly reliable process, particularly with well-known software such as Norton Ghost.

I'm lucky enough to own a lovely Dell laptop which effectly has some form of backup image stored on a partition on the drive (although I'd personally prefer to have an original Windows XP CD ). Formatting the drive and restoring the image literally takes just a few minutes in this case, so it's certainly a time saver in that respect.

Anyway, I'd personally go for it, although Norton Ghost can cost a fair bit.

Kind Regards

Jonty

P.S. I'm assuming the change in drives, from IDE to SATA, wouldn't actually upset Windows is the image were restored in the event of your IDE drive failing, but I'm not sure given that I'm a n3wb1e when it comes to this

 

[smurkin]

Ive used it lots. Its good. I've got an old version that works off a floppy. My version even ghosted my old RAID 0 without a hitch (which its not supposed to be able to do). Makes a flawless copy of a disk...os and all.

 

[xane]

Ghost has saved my arse before, I wrecked a Windows XP re-install and it wouldn't go anywhere unless I reformatted, Ghost brought it all back safe and sound to have another go.

Never had any problems with it, I can back up to DVD+R and it will even boot and restore from them !

 

[xane]

Jonty: in my experience, if you transfer to another drive and it goes tits-up, a Windows non-destructive restore normally does the trick.

 

[Yaka]

k thanks guys popped into pcworld and parted with my cash, hope fully all being well i will have done by tommorow night

 

[Jonty]

Jonty: in my experience, if you transfer to another drive and it goes tits-up, a Windows non-destructive restore normally does the trick.

Thanks for letting me know, xane, I shall add that to my 'knowledge base'

Hope it all works out, Yaka.

Kind Regards