Symantec Norton Ghost 2003

Despite always playing catch-up to PowerQuest, Symantec's latest version of its hard disk imaging and cloning software now offers a similar level of features to that of Drive Image 2002. Along with a new Windows interface, Norton Ghost 2003 includes support for USB and FireWire devices, the ability to write images to NTFS partitions, plus support for mapped network drives and Linux EXT3 file systems.

Bringing USB connections into the imaging equation gives Ghost 2003 an edge, as Drive Image 2002 doesn't support this. However, because the USB specification defines a connection type, there's no guarantee Ghost 2003 will work with all devices. We achieved some measure of success during testing, since we succeeded in writing images to a USB Zip drive attached to a Pentium III/800 notebook and a Freecom CD-RW connected to another notebook. However, the CD-RW only worked after the BIOS had been upgraded, and attempts to use the Zip drive with a USB 2 controller card in an older Pentium II/400 server all failed.

The new interface looks a lot smarter than previous versions and is separated neatly into three areas. The Basic section covers simple backup and restore imaging processes, and these are accompanied by plenty of Wizard-based help. Ghost 2003 can use any storage device to which DOS can assign a drive letter, so you just select the source and destination drives and leave it to get on with it.

It's here that one of the biggest differences with the competition surfaces, as Ghost 2003 carries out all imaging operations from DOS and thus always reboots the system. Drive Image 2002 can image and restore non-system partitions from within Windows, allowing you to continue using your PC, which is just as well as it's a lot slower. We created a backup image of a 15GB partition from one hard disk to another, which Ghost 2003 completed in 15 minutes, including reboots before and after the job, whereas Drive Image 2002 took 26 minutes to complete the same task.

If you're not using an internal hard disk as your destination, you'll need to go to the Advanced section. Ghost 2003 supports extensive peer-to-peer connections, so you can image directly to another PC over suitable parallel or USB cables or a TCP/IP network connection. The latter requires an appropriate NDIS2 or packet driver for the network adaptor and details such as an IP address, user name and workgroup or domain name. Whichever method you choose, both systems will be booted into DOS and must be designated as master and slave from the simple Ghost interface. Note that Ghost 2003 doesn't come with any cables and Symantec doesn't guarantee support for peer-to-peer connections using USB 2 controllers.

Both Ghost 2003 and Drive Image 2002 are undoubtedly the best (and probably the only) worthwhile imaging products on the market, but your buying decision will be determined by a number of factors. If you want USB, FireWire and extensive peer-to-peer connection support plus higher performance, Ghost 2003 is the best bet. But if imaging from within Windows, a basic version of PartitionMagic and task scheduling are more your cup of tea, Drive Image 2002 is the one for you.

Author: Dave Mitchell