Norton Ghost 14.0 [Old Version]

Ive given up on Symantec products. Norton Ghost 14.0 has worked erratically from the start, on a variety of machines with a variety of hardware and OS configurations. The tech support staff in Bangladesh invariably conclude that uninstalling and reinstalling is the answer to your problem, no matter how many times youve done it. Youll get similar responses for Norton 360, which is even worse. I wash my hands of it, and I hope you never get your hands dirtied by this product.

] Norton Ghost is supposed to be a top-of the line backup program. I got it from Amazon for a steep discount. It requires matching the drivers on your computer to the drivers contained on the software CD. IF your drivers dont match or if your CD/DVD drive does not use GEAR technology, you cant perform the function I bought the software for -- creating your own system recovery disk to recover your system in the event of failure. This version is supposed to have both 32- and 64-bit drivers on its disk. it apparently had some 64-bit drivers, because I passed its driver validation test with the exception of my WAN miniport driver. My system is 64-bit. The program told me that I couldnt create a system recovery disk because my drivers didnt match the drivers on the Norton Ghost disk (32-bit drivers). It wanted me to add my own 64-bit drivers from my own system to its disk. I couldnt find all of my own drivers. If I did, how am I going to know Ive found them all and none were left? Oh, also if you dont have an external hard drive to save backups on, Norton Ghost 14 thinks youre screwed. Also, my CD burner stopped functioning while NG 14 was installed... Tried to send Symantec feedback using their feedback feature in the software and they timed out my connection before I finished. I gave up and uninstalled NG 14.0.

I had previously used Norton Ghost product in older versions (around Ghost 5 or so). Recently my parents computer had a hard drive crash. After successfully diagnosing the problem and correcting it, I decided not to trust it in the future... and that I would ghost the old drive to a new, larger drive. I had a limited amount of time, and wanted to get the now running PC returned, so I went over to the Norton site and paid full price for a download version of the software. Ghost 14 is very different than the older versions. First, it installs several services on your system. Second it comes with an iso image for a recovery cd. The recovery cd has no ability to copy a drive. The only way to do it is through the windows drive copy function. Well, I tried this several times and the imaged drive would not boot into windows, and it froze before reaching the welcome screen. After several attempts at re-imaging I gave up and made a few phone calls. One of my friends came over with a CD boot disc made from Acronis which worked flawlessly on the first try. It seems Ive wasted $80 on some useless software. This might be okay if you are looking for a program to automatically backup files to a second or external drive... but theres freeware programs that do that just fine without the need for all the services. PASS on Ghost 14.

Norton Ghost is in essence backup software for those who did not get an operating system that already has backup software on it. That being said, even though Im running Vista Ultimate, I decided to give Ghost a try to see what it offered. I actually like Ghost a great deal. I found the interface to be easy to set up, and the alerts that it is doing its duty each night is very reassuring. I havent had any problems with getting the files back again. Now I do have to say that I would NOT ever try to restore an entire operating system from old backup files. My home PC is running a number of large, complex software packages. If I had some sort of catastrophic hard drive failure, I would start from scratch, install those software packages fresh, and just get my data files from the backup. I imagine some small home users might enjoy the idea of restoring an entire system but for me its just not reasonable. I have hardware level protection, but if the system really does hose, Im starting from scratch to ensure everything goes on fresh and clean. So if your aim is to have your entire computer including OS and programs backed up, Id look more into hardware level (RAID etc) protection to give you the security youre seeking. I realize Ghost says it can do it - but there are so many variables and issues involved that it cant be fool-proof. I would really only use this (and any back up software) to back up data files that are changing. Organize your data files so that they are stored logically, then back them up nightly. You can always re-install Word - but you cant re-install your diary files and important correspondence. Now, that being said, why go with Ghost rather than say Vista Ultimate? I happen to love Vista Ultimate and havent had any issues with it at all. I love its functionality, and its run super smoothly with all my software. But if youre someone who wants to run an OS without a built in back up, I would definitely go with this to supplement. You want backups. Somehow computers know when you are NOT backing up, and that is when they choose to crash. Dont subject yourself to that pain. Whatever you go with, make sure you are backing up your data files.

Ive been using Ghost for backups for a few years now and this version works great. It has saved me from hard disk crashes and possible virus infections (restore to backup just prior to infection). The backups are encrypted, incremental and can be easily copied to portable media for off-site backups (portable USB hard disk). The file-level backup works but isnt as user friendly as the full disk backup. You can even mount the full backups as drive letters for read-only access, and you can import the backup images into VMWare should you decide to turn your backups into a virtual machine. Overall the product is not perfect, but it does work and I would recommend this for someone else to use.

This product works great for backups and for recovering a PC that is infected by a virus. My PC was recently infected by an Internet Virus. The ones that scams you to pay them so they can remove it. I did have antivirus software running but it did not catch the infection, or my family could have said yes to one of those scam popup. The Virus is smart and very elusive so I ended up having to reload windows and spend the next few days putting everything back together. If it happened to you, then you know what I am talking about. If I had Norton Ghost 14, it would have been an hours task. Purchase this software and immediately create and image of your PC to an external Hard Drive. Keep it up-to-date with the Norton utility, and you never have to worry again. Get the CD version so you can boot from the CD to do the recovery. It works and you will be a hero with your family or business. If your PC is infected, or you loaded software that you should not have, just boot from the CD and re-image the PC to the last time you backed it up. Not to mention it works great for normal back and restore functions.

Norton Ghost from Symantec. Symantec bought this great little DOS back up program and made it greater year after year. And I really loved it. There just wasnt anything better for a full system and program and data backup recovery from a disaster of any kind. I think 2005 version was the last good year before they ran it in to the groud trying to do everthing for ever body and take the place of windows system recovory points. I bought and tryed Ghost 14, what a mess. It would destroyed my Operating System ever time I tryed it. I went back to 2005V. and had an old backup that got me back up and running, however I had to do alot updating Software. I must say it is tempting to try Version 15 for the BlueRay backup. However I think Ill let others do the testing before I will buy any more of their products of any kind. Symanttec do away with incremental backups and make a good soild Backup progam with things like BlueRay, ext harddrives, good usb support,Bootable backup of all types like USB bootable thumbs drives. Come on Symantec Raise the real Ghost again with down to earth improvements that work stay out of others garbage cans. Just remmber you only have a limited time before people find you out.

The default backup for Vista Ultimate works OK but it sometimes make my computer unusable. It uses so much disk activity that everything is extremely slow. Norton Ghost has the capability to slow down the backup so it will not interfere with the user activity. In addition, you can schedule it to backup what you want, when, from every hours to once a week. I liked it, although the UI is a little too slow to start up. One caveat. I do not use this software to recover full disks (although it says it can). I do not believe that things like that are reliable. There is always something that go wrong. If things go wrong, usually it implies that my hardware is broken, which translate to a new computer, so the old driver would not work.

I use nothing but Norton products. I received this product extreemly fast and was exactly as described. I would suggest to everyone to buy from this seller!

Norton Ghost 14 is very helpful to me. it has helped me backup my operating system and files from my computer to an external hard drive in case the computer crashes. im sure there are other features that Norton Ghost 14 has to offeer that i am not aware of. all in all Norton Ghost 14 is a very beneficial product.