Alternatives to Norton Ghost

I am tired of formatting & reinstalling Windows every so often because my PC gets clogged up with games and files, that a virus scan, defrag etc doesn't make a difference. Is there any software, like Norton Ghost that will take an image of my PC and allow me to restore it back to that time? System restore isn't good enough for what i need really Thanks 'Bob

Hi Bob,

As you read around the Forums here, you will notice that more Members are benefiting from the protection afforded by Drive Imaging software, and Techs have been recommending the practice for years.

The two major commercial players are
Symantec's Norton Ghost 12.0
Acronis True Image 11

others include:
Paragon Drive Backjup 8.5
Shadow Protect Desktop 3.1
FarStone Backup Recovery or DriveClone
DiveImageXML
(There are others)

Commercial products allow for creation of emergency rescue boot CD for restoring from the saved .iso
Free products can also create such a rescue disk but you will need to be more savy about building a bootable CD using UBCD or BartPE.
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As for me, I've been following the utility development and use for a few years now.
I can easily recall the cries of horror from users of early version products who found that their .iso image was corrupt/not validated, and would not restore. It's not a pretty picture to believe that your machine is completely imaged, and then find that the stored image will not restore when you need it.

Be sure to create the .iso image to be saved to external media. It makes no sense to have an image backup on the same HD that is being protected.
My practice is to also have a spare Hard Drive, per machine.
Then when I image my system, I take the extra step (about 25 minutes) of actually using the recovery rescue CD to boot up may machine with a fresh blank Hard Drive installed and restore the image from external HD, for assurance that it will actually work.
I've had a few "catastrophic losses", but my drive image .iso backups have always had me back up and running.

Since my Son is away to college most of the time now, Dad is no longer immediately available at all times for repairs.
I set him up with external HD, spare laptop HD, created rescue CD, and imaged his system.
He can either pop in the other already restored HD, or use the rescue media and externally saved .iso to be up and running again within a half hour.

I'm comfortable with Acronis and have versions 9 & 10
Browse around the net via a search engine to find a version available at reasonable cost (often about $29.00US)

Note: If you are inclined to experiment with various of the utilities….. don't install more than one on the same computer !

Hi Doug, Bob

My experience: Long while ago have used Norton Ghost an oldtimer v8.2 (now v15!). I’m very satisfied. This tool saved me from disaster a few times. I have two partitions on HDD. On C: system files and OS, and D: data files. I make image files from C partition to D from time to time. Data backups on CD/DVD.

This is very important topic. I’m new member on WTT forum and I saw so many painfully situations and disasters, can’t believe. Recommendations are backup your registry, make restore point,…

Think that making backup image of system files and OS have no competitor. This is very simple and safe method. After that you can be relaxed even you want to make experiment or testing software (only advanced users).

This can be interesting - Paragon offer Backup & Recovery Free Edition. I've not tested this tool, but think that Paragon is awarded brand name.

Some features:
Support for Windows 7
Complete Backup - Create an exact copy of your PC including the operating system, applications, user settings and all data
Support for all existing backup techniques, including disk and file level backups with differential or incremental updates
Any backup destination - including external storages, CD/DVD/Blu-ray discs, network as well as the secured hidden partition
Support for GPT (GUID Partition Table) disks - back up and restore not only single GPT volumes but entire disks with the option of resize during the restore operation
Support for the latest hardware as well as hard disk partitioning schemes
Differential backup to a sector image to only archive changes since the last full sector-based image, thus considerably saving the backup storage space.
Restore an entire disk, separate partitions image
Create bootable USB Flash drive, CD or DVD to recover your PC on demand
Check Recovery Discs: checks the recovery media for integrity and boot ability
Create, Format, Delete Partition
Check File System Integrity

Thanks Doug & arTech, I'll check out the suggestions made. For the time being, i've found that Windows 7 has it's own built in recovery system similar to Ghost, so i've formatted my machine and configured it as i like (taken quite a few hours!) And i'm in the process of burning all the data onto DVD's. As i say, i'll check out the alternatives, you can never have too many backups! Thanks alot, 'Bob EDIT: Windows own recovery imaging didn't work…typical Microsoft product. It said it couldn't fit on a DVD, a bit stupid because it asked me for a DVD, i suspect it'd work on a dual layer but i don't have that facility. I am going to try buying the Paragon Drive software, it sounds like it's the kind of thing i'm after.