By Bob LaFave, Tampa PC Users Group
boblala@ij.net

I had just finished the article on Ghost 2002 (http://www.tpcug.org/newsletter/nl_2003/july2003/backup.htm) when I was able to get a Norton SystemsWorks 2003 containing Ghost 2003 OEM from Steve Singer at RDI, and am I glad I did. The 2003 version has so much more to offer than the previous version, but I think what is most important for others is that it is simpler to use and does much more.

As you start the program you now have three choices on what to do:

• Ghost Basic
• Ghost Advanced
• Ghost Utilities

Ghost Basic gives you three choices.

• Backup
• Restore
• View Log

Backup and Restore start easy-to-follow wizards that take you step by step to do what they say. View Log takes you to a Task Log of previous processes. This isn’t much information, but it really is that simple to do both the Backup and Restore. Point and click your way through the wizards.

In Ghost Advanced, you again start well-thought-out wizards:

• Clone
• Run Ghost Interactively
• Peer to Peer
• Create Virtual Partition
• Image Integrity Check

Again you just point and click your way through a wizard that is very self-explanatory.

Each screen of the wizards has a help button that will explain each choice you have to make. You can clone a computer, start backup from here, work over networks that can be any configuration, and check a created image for completeness. The advanced settings allow many individual settings that provide the correct drivers for your particular system.

Ghost Utilities offers what the previous version contained: Norton Ghost Boot Wizard and Norton Ghost Explorer along with an easy access to the Norton Ghost User’s Guide in Adobe PDF file. The boot Wizard allows the user to create a Boot Disc that can be used to start Ghost in a DOS environment. The Boot Disc is created again using an easy to follow wizard that you just point and click till finished.

In this new version the Boot Disc is not needed to create an image because you can now run Norton from inside the Windows environment. As you finish up the process that you have chosen, Norton Ghost now creates a “Virtual Drive” on your hard drive and restarts the computer into a DOS environment and starts the Ghost process without needing a Boot Disc.

Other changes in this version are that you now are not asked any questions when starting to create an image since you do all settings from the Windows wizards and after the image is created the computer is restarted back into Windows automatically. This is simple and is what I like most with this version. You still need the Boot Disc to restore an image to a hard drive from other backup storage media; a second hard drive or CDR’s would be examples.

The Ghost Explorer stays the same as in the older version. You can use the Explorer to view the created image files much as you use Windows Explorer to view the contents of storage media. You can also easily extract any file(s) needed, open files and change them, delete files from an image and also add files to an image.

The user guide is now 221 pages that can answer most any question you could have when using. I would suggest that any new users go through the user guide before trying the program. The new version also contains a tutorial that is a quick way to review the program’s different actions of the offered wizards. You can use the tutorial in either a Demo mode where you just watch the actions or in an Interactive mode where you can follow the process and click the choices as the wizards proceed.

This program is a must for anyone that wants a reliable and easy to use program to back up their system into image that can be easily restored in case of hardware failure, cloning one system to another, or for protection from virus damage. u