Dell data safe/Norton ghost = best backup ever.....

Zatrix · Aug 3, 2006

Dell installs norton ghost on most new pc's

A brief summary of this is : They install 2 hardrives. Ones a primary the other is strictly a backup drive. Norton ghost for the 90 day trial lets you make any restores you want and stores them on the 2nd drive. After the 90 days you cant make any more points BUT you can still revert back to any previous ones you have made.

So in a nutshell instead of reformatting you can just revert back to your first restore point and have exactly all the info you had at that time. This isn't just a restore its A EXACT copy of your hardrive at the time you made whatever restore you made. So you are getting every file, every game EVERYTHING at that time and losing whatever you have currently.

Best imo

now hes my question

I understand I can defrag my main drive BUT should I chance defragging my 2nd drive? Im not sure the effects of defragging the drive because its setup in order of restore points so defragging might mix files and such?

Since dell online isn't on now im wondering if any of you guys have any ideas on this?

Fr3@k3r · Aug 3, 2006

...............

why use norton ghost when you can use acronis true image?

http://www.acronis.com/

acronis has been far far more superior to norton in my hands on tests between the 2. Ive never had one problem with acronis before.

Zatrix · Aug 3, 2006

well besides personal tastes in programs what about defragging a backup drive? From what i googled its bad and should not be dragged because the files are in exact order

JimmyG · Aug 3, 2006

Zatrix said:
Dell installs norton ghost on most new pc's

A brief summary of this is : They install 2 hardrives. Ones a primary the other is strictly a backup drive. Norton ghost for the 90 day trial lets you make any restores you want and stores them on the 2nd drive. After the 90 days you cant make any more points BUT you can still revert back to any previous ones you have made.

So in a nutshell instead of reformatting you can just revert back to your first restore point and have exactly all the info you had at that time. This isn't just a restore its A EXACT copy of your hardrive at the time you made whatever restore you made. So you are getting every file, every game EVERYTHING at that time and losing whatever you have currently.

Best imo

now hes my question

I understand I can defrag my main drive BUT should I chance defragging my 2nd drive? Im not sure the effects of defragging the drive because its setup in order of restore points so defragging might mix files and such?

Since dell online isn't on now im wondering if any of you guys have any ideas on this?

Defragging will not mess up the image. Norton Ghost makes a file structure image and the files are ordinary file copies that are concatenated in large file segments. If you look at a Norton Ghost image it consists of multiple ordinary large files (about 2 gig per file as I recall). I have defragged these many times with no ill affects to the ability to restore.

attack · Aug 3, 2006

Well the fact that dell partitions your HDD and hides it so you lose 5-10gb's of data...I don't think it's cool at all. Also, for me, a ghosted image of my OS isn't that great because if you swapout mobos, or you change/add HDD orders your image isn't any good or fresh anymore.

You also have to pay for any good ghosting program

ponkan pinoy · Aug 3, 2006

I read that the recent versions of Ghost do the imaging straight from windows, ie a dynamic environment (not the best thing). I've heard that Ghost 2003 is still the best, since it reboots into DOS to do the actual imaging (though it can be configured from windows, if you want). Only bad thing about it is that you might have trouble backing up to an NTFS drive, though there are DOS drivers for that.

Btw shouldn't this be in the Applications and Software forum? I'll go ask a mod.

Mr.Guvernment · Aug 3, 2006

i still use ghost v7 - trimmed down fat free no extra crap, does what is needed.

and AJ, not alot of people do change out mobo's and if it is a dell, and you need a replacement - you will get the same mobo, so yes, ghost is fine for all of those times you would normally reformat and take hours to get your system back to the way it was, or take 30mins to image back a 4G ghost image.

mdcomp · Aug 3, 2006

ponkan pinoy said:
Btw shouldn't this be in the Applications and Software forum? I'll go ask a mod.

Moved.

Matt

JimmyG · Aug 4, 2006

ponkan pinoy said:
I read that the recent versions of Ghost do the imaging straight from windows, ie a dynamic environment (not the best thing). I've heard that Ghost 2003 is still the best, since it reboots into DOS to do the actual imaging (though it can be configured from windows, if you want). Only bad thing about it is that you might have trouble backing up to an NTFS drive, though there are DOS drivers for that.

Btw shouldn't this be in the Applications and Software forum? I'll go ask a mod.

There is no problem backing up to an NTFS drive with Ghost 2003. I have been using it for years on an NTFS drive.

Dell data safe/Norton ghost = best backup ever.....

Zatrix

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Fr3@k3r

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Zatrix

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JimmyG

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attack

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ponkan pinoy

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Mr.Guvernment

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mdcomp

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JimmyG

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