Norton Ghost 2003 is last representative of the original like of Ghost. althouth still a DOS program it has Windows shell that can launch it directly from Windows, reboot PC to DOS using a virutal partition with DOS execute backup and return to Windows.
ghost 2003 boot cd download iso
The speed of Norton Ghost 2003 in disk to disk operation is really amazing: approx 10 min to backup a partition with 4G of data (many small html files) with the image size slightly over 2G and just 3-4 min to restore this partition. For typical windows XP C drive (say 10G of data) Ghost 2003 takes approximately 25 min and produces image approximately 7G in size. For comparison to create a RAR archive for the 4G partition takes over an hour on the same computer. I still feel more comfortable with Ghost 2003 more then with Ghost 2004 (Ghost 9). IMHO Ghost 2003 has value of its own due to its DOS roots. For example if your computer is infected with spyware it should be restored using DOS boot.
Norton Ghost 2003 (Ghost 8) and earlier is unable to create image in Windows mode and needs to reboots to DOS. That might create several problems for which Norton Ghost 9 and 10 can be a better solutions:
Note: Older versions of Norton Ghost (2003 and earlier) cost almost nothing and are still quite capable for users with regular desktops (less so for laptops). With the current double layer DVD technology there is a possibility to write an image of C drive on one double layer DVD. It makes a perfect backup solution: you can create a compressed image of the disk partition and then burn to DVD each week. In most cases "clean" image of the boot drive (usually around 10-12G for a typical Windows XP installation) can be compressed by Ghost into the image that is 7-9G. Absence of a set of "recovery" Ghost images can be considered as one of the most dangerous mistakes any PC user can make and can cost many hours of troubleshooting even if you know windows reasonably well.
The Ghost 2003 Retail CD is itself bootable, along with the Ghost v9.0 Restore CD. With v2003, using the -ghostoncd switch copies the executable (ghost.exe) to the root of the CD. The -bootcd switch bypasses it asking for a floppy and just copies it directly from the CD boot image. See this thread for more.
But you won't be using the latest version of Ghost with the bootable CD, since the ghost executable (ghost.exe) is updated via the Symantec Live Update feature (online), and you (almost) always want to use the latest version, which implements bug-fixes and adds features (such as support for Serial ATA drives). Back in the day, you used to have to do it this way ( Partition > To Image">screen shot], you select your burner as the destination for the image [screen shot]. After you select compression [screen shot], Ghost will ask if you want to copy a bootable floppy to the CD-R [screen shot]. Then it will ask if the floppy disk is in the floppy drive, so you need to have your bootable floppy disk handy. Then it will ask if you want to proceed with the backup to CD-R [screen shot]. 2ff7e9595c
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