Norton Ghost 2003 and 9100s

I've had no problems with norton ghost on my 9100. Backed up my harddrive to another USB harddrive with no problem.

Agree

i have backed up to an external usb2 hdd as well. hardest part was creating a ghost bootable CD lol. after rebuilds i just use the cd, didnt install ghost (as part of systemworks pro) back on winxp as a utility application.

havent used the image to rebuild the laptop again yet though :P

I've read many times people extolling the virtues of Norton Ghost. I did a bunch of seaching (muli-forums and google), regarding Ghost 2003 and 9.0......alot of people just write 'Ghost' and I'm never too sure which one they are talking about. I know Ghost 9.0 includes Ghost 2003, but what else?

What I would ideally like to do (if I correctly understand the whole Ghost concept) as well as backing and catastrophic system restore, it to be able to restore my computer to a state and not have to reconfigure XP and Word and Excel and Norton Internet Security and and and....ad infinitum. If I bugger things up, or for whatever reason I decide it's time for a 'fresh' (note quotes) XP install, can I simply use Ghost (2003 or 9.0) to accomplish this? Or does wanting a fresh install mean always a complete reformat and install and configure, then drivers, then software and configure...? The 'Radified Guide' suggests that Ghost 2003 can accomplish this. Can anyone confirme this? Anyone....?

PS I have XP and Applications on separate partition.

a ghost would return everything back to the state it was at before. i have 3 ghost images, 1 with xp, office, norton and all updates...i call that clean.
another with many more softwares installed, clean 2.
the third copy is the one i overwrite about once a month.

if i go back to clean, it will be the same thing as having reformatted completely and reinstalled. i would have lost everything i had done since then...all applications, all personal documents etc. its the same as turning back time.

something i do extra is this: back up all critical documents to the usb2 external drive...maybe once a week.

this is the simplest way i achieve this:
1. i created a folder in c: called Ali's Documents.
2. from \documents and settings\ali...i MOVE my documents, favorites and desktop folders to Ali's Documents.
3. I backup other critical data to Ali's Documents too. This way everything dear to me is within one folder. Only exception is wwwroot folder.
4. then i created a batch file that mirrors everything over to my external drive with the click of one button. with my script, i overwrite the external storage, so i never delete anything from Ali's Documents that i might want to keep. Anything i want to archive, i manually burn then to cd or dvd and put away.

The "backup.bat" file contents is:

@echo off
rmdir /s/q "E:\eXdell Files\WWWRoot"
xcopy /i/s/e/h/y "C:\Inetpub\wwwroot" "E:\eXdell Files\WWWRoot"
rmdir /s/q "E:\eXdell Files\Apps"
xcopy /i/s/e/h/y "C:\Apps" "E:\eXdell Files\Apps"
rmdir /s/q "E:\eXdell Files\Ali's Documents"
xcopy /i/s/e/h/y "C:\Ali's Documents" "E:\eXdell Files\Ali's Documents"
rmdir /s/q "E:\eXdell Files\SteamApps"
xcopy /i/s/e/h/y "C:\Program Files\Valve\Steam\SteamApps" "E:\eXdell Files\SteamApps"
:exit

One thing i would be careful of. If your OS is on C, but Apps are on D....meaning different partitions....reverting back C to an older image might make some applications installed since the image creation date not work. During installation, many apps create registry entries...the old image wont have those entries.

If you plan on keeping it this way...make C and D images in pairs...or just the whole drive, then you wont have that issue.

A lot of what i wrote might be confusing...mostly in the way that i wrote it. if you have more specific questions you want me to clarify, please let me know.

explaining my script...i delete the wwwroot backup on the external drive, then copy the laptop wwwroot back to the external drive again.
i then do that with 3 other folders...Apps in C:, the Ali's Documents folder, which has majority of my critical files (documents, photos, music, work, etc), and of course steam files.

Thanks for the info.
I should clarify myself on one point....my XP and Apps are on the same partition, just separate from Music, Video, Personal Files etc.

So, since I don't have Ghost yet (either 2003 version or 9.0), it's too late for me to have a CLEAN version. I'm guessing the next best thing would be to have all my apps loaded and configured, the system stable and functionng fine.....and now run Ghost. After that it just regular backups by whatever method, until the day comes that I decide there are problems that need radical softwarectomy. I back my data, restore with Ghost and viola....it's back to a configured previous state and I put my backed up data back. Will it work like that? What I'm really trying to avoid here is the reloading and configuring or XP and all apps and utility programs. Norton AV may have to do a major LiveUpdate session after that..but that's nice and automatic.

I will keep your batch file for future reference after I decide on which Ghost version to get and then really get into it.

Thanks again.
Wilson23

I back my data, restore with Ghost and viola....it's back to a configured previous state and I put my backed up data back. Will it work like that?

Will work just like that

Quebec g/f informs me it's 'voila' not 'viola'..........at any rate I'm going to get me a Ghost.

Thanx for the input aliaskary77.