I would say the instructions are still inaccurate. There is no mention of the need to shutdown and remove the original drive for the first boot. Should also say not to assign a drive letter to a bootable drive. Oh yeah. It really should be called Partition Copier since it doesn't really copy drives.
That tells me that there's work to be done for both guides. Thanks for taking a look.
Erik,
I just looked at the Ghost 15 userguide and saw half a page on how to install an IDE HD but nothing on how to install a SATA HD. The IDE section is word for word from the Power Quest Drive Image 7 userguide.
The statement that really concerns me is, "The new hard drive does not need to be formatted". I've always found this to be ambiguous. Can it mean "although it doesn't need to be formatted, it's OK if you do"? If you take this interpretation then your new HD won't load into Windows. In fact this is the most common cause of Copy Drive failure in this forum. It's not formatting that is the issue. But to "format", one has to have a partition and that is the catch. Most people will create a partition with a drive letter and once you have a drive letter you are doomed as far as Copy Drive is concerned. I think the wording should be something along these lines.
"Ideally you should Copy into Unallocated Space on the new HD. If you want to Copy into a partition on the new HD, the partition must NOT have a drive letter. It doesn't matter if this partition is formatted or not."
The userguide doesn't mention the old HD must be removed from the computer before the first boot from the new HD. If the new HD boots while the old HD is still in the computer, the registry partition signatures in the new HD will be altered so the new HD will not be able to load into Windows when it subsequently becomes the only HD in the computer.
I'd like to see instructions on how to deal with the Win7 partition and the SRP. Setting the Win7 partition as the Active partition is another cause of failure.
The above issues are Microsoft issues. But unless you play the Microsoft game, Ghost Copy Drive will fail.
I will make sure you, DaveH, etc are contacted when the user guide is updated.
Dave, thanks for the link to the BESR pdf. The Copy Drive section is basically the same as the Ghost pdf.
Brian_K wrote:"Ideally you should Copy into Unallocated Space on the new HD. If you want to Copy into a partition on the new HD, the partition must NOT have a drive letter. It doesn't matter if this partition is formatted or not."
Thank you Brian_K, this also satisfies my curiosity about whether when restoring a hard drive (single-partition, as all mine are; and using the standard Restore functionality on the SRC, as I always do) to a new, unformatted hard drive, it matters if one formats first.
And thank you erik_carlstrom, it's wonderful to see this great product listening to such smart users!
The original question was
Is Ghost ever going to be replaced/ updated?
Any news on the next version of Ghost ?
NotaCanada
Red's comment.
I would also like to see Ghost stop adding a boot menu after a restore. I'm not sure if this is a feature or bug.
I would say it is a bug, that is one reason I use Ghost 12 more than Ghost 15 because of the additions to the boot menu produced by G15.
When I use G12 to run a "Image restore" to "Clone" a drive it is dead simple compared to G15, no need to use edit to delete the phantom drive.
Deric.
redk9258 wrote:Dave,
I wish I could give you 5 Kudos for your suggestions. I agree 100%. Especially a decent GUI for DiskPart or similar partitioning tool. At least a nice GUI with sliders for adjusting partitions before doing a restore. A disk signature clear tool would be great too.
Add me to the list of those supporting these changes/upgrades/improvements!
I am waiting patiently for Ghost 16, but Symantec should be able to give us a clue if there is going to be one or not. At least it should be when Windows 8 arrives, but hopefully sooner.
Gretar wrote:I am waiting patiently for Ghost 16, but Symantec should be able to give us a clue if there is going to be one or not. At least it should be when Windows 8 arrives, but hopefully sooner.
I think it's reasonable to assume there will be one, at some point. But I imagine that until that moment, they want people to keep buying Ghost 15.
Time I added a few more comments on this thread,
I found that G15 wouldn't recover a multi-boot machine with separate drives (in my case 4 drives) but G12 would.
G15 always adds extra entries in the boot menu and G12 didn't so the team need to look at this one closely.
The best Multi boot results I got with G15 was with a single drive partitioned into 4.
When running incrementals on O/S drives only it still takes ages for it to finish reconciling, this needs speeding up when there are limited changes to the O/Ss only updates are added.
When backing up to a NAS there is always a need to Map the drive, again can this be simplified to work as if backing upto USB/Firewire/eSata external drives.
I use a third party software to "Duplicate" my data drive so that I can easily recover any individual file by opening the drive and folders, it would be nice if Ghost could easily do that without running Ghost explorer.
The recovery screen colours are off putting and need brightening up a bit, G12 colours are much better.
That will do for now,
Deric
Before collecting the idea of Ghost16, Symantec should fix all the bugs of Ghost15!!! How much are the Ghost development capacity and volition of Symantec? Please make it what tests much more and does not almost have bugs before a release of Ghost16! Symantec should also do a public beta test.
Project2502 wrote:
Before collecting the idea of Ghost16, Symantec should fix all the bugs of Ghost15!!! How much are the Ghost development capacity and volition of Symantec? Please make it what tests much more and does not almost have bugs before a release of Ghost16! Symantec should also do a public beta test.
Hi,
I'm not sure I can support your idea that v15 should be fixed before anything is done to develop v16. There have been enough technology changes to warrant a new version. Spending time and resources on fixing could be better spent on building. I'm assuming that the know bugs in v15 would be resolved in v16. And I'm also expecting that there will be a few new ones to find in the new version. 
The idea of a public beta is interesting. Currently Ghost is not a subscription product. This means you buy the license once and it's good forevermore. For a beta to be valid there would have to be a short lived test life, like NIS and 360 betas, to make sure that only the final product is turned loose on the world. If Symantec/Norton were to move Ghost into the subscription product group then it might also benefit from more timely updates and fixes. Something worth considering.
dickevans wrote:If Symantec/Norton were to move Ghost into the subscription product group then it might also benefit from more timely updates and fixes. Something worth considering.
I would definitely switch to another product! That said they could offer a maintenance for those who desire support. With this would include updates to the newest version.
I still think they should fix the known bugs* that have been already fixed in the sister product BESR. Oh and by the way, not only have they fixed bugs, they released a new version SSR 2011 with new features.
They should at least fix the major bug where the Windows 7 SRP and OS partitions are restored out of order rendering a system unbootable!
I'd like to see -at least- a very basic CLI to execute missed backups for example.
Also I'd like to have an option in settings if a missed backup will be executed right after next windows boot or not. At the moment one has to care about missed backups (for example when the PC was not on the time the backup should have been executed).
deb01 wrote:I'd like to see -at least- a very basic CLI to execute missed backups for example.
Also I'd like to have an option in settings if a missed backup will be executed right after next windows boot or not. At the moment one has to care about missed backups (for example when the PC was not on the time the backup should have been executed).
Hi,
Sounds like a great idea to post in the product improvement forum. That's where the staff goes when they are looking for new ideas.
Thanks
The beta for the next release of Ghost is still down the road a bit. If you are interested in being on the beta team when the software comes available, I'll post the instructions in this forum when the time comes. You are also welcome to send me a private message and I can reply once the beta is available. For the record, there is a very loooong list of issues being addressed in the next release.
During the development of Ghost and BESR/SSR, there was much discussion about how to handle missed backups. After consulting with many of our beta customers and product management, the decision was made to not automatically kick off the backups on next reboot after a missed backup. Rather, the toaster will popup giving the user the option to run the missed backup, but will not kick it off unless YES is pressed. This is because many people time their backups to occur according the load on their machine and don't want a backup kicking off when the CPU resources are being used by other programs. However, If you do want a backup to kick off when the machine reboots, there is an option in the backup job to kick off a backup every time a user logs onto the computer. Not exactly the same thing, but an extra safety measure nonetheless. Another suggestion is to have multiple incremental backups occuring during the day. That way, if one backup is missed, the next will follow shortly.
Thanks Andy for the helpful response.
I'm assuming Andy can't comment on this, but I'm wondering if the community here has any thoughts on SSR 2011 as a replacement for Ghost 15. Since Ghost 16 is still a long way off and even then may not have a Restore Anywhere option, I'm thinking about switching to SSR 2011 for the bug fixes and Restore Anywhere capability.
There are competing options, but I like the overall design of this product with the way the scheduling works and off-site copies, etc. SSR seems to keep those features while exorcising some of the bad habbits of Ghost 15.
My biggest issue is the lack of Restore Anywhere. My motherboard is just as likely to fail as my hard drive and, various potential workarounds notwithstanding, Ghost would be of limited help in that scenario.
Any thoughts?
philipm785 wrote:Thanks Andy for the helpful response.
I'm assuming Andy can't comment on this, but I'm wondering if the community here has any thoughts on SSR 2011 as a replacement for Ghost 15. Since Ghost 16 is still a long way off and even then may not have a Restore Anywhere option, I'm thinking about switching to SSR 2011 for the bug fixes and Restore Anywhere capability.
There are competing options, but I like the overall design of this product with the way the scheduling works and off-site copies, etc. SSR seems to keep those features while exorcising some of the bad habbits of Ghost 15.
My biggest issue is the lack of Restore Anywhere. My motherboard is just as likely to fail as my hard drive and, various potential workarounds notwithstanding, Ghost would be of limited help in that scenario.
Any thoughts?
Hi,
I can't comment and I can't fault your logic. Without any official word from Symantec/Norton anything said would have to be a wild guess. since there's enough of that going around this election season I'll remain silent.
Stay well and surf safe