Looking for imaging software

[warriorfan808]

I need some software that will take an image of an entire installation + all the files on the hard drive and transfer them all to another computer. I usesd Nortons Ghost a long time ago. Does anyone know of anything I can use? Free or paid. If it's a paid version, possibly inexpensive?

Thanks

[SirDice]

Norton ghost is still around.. Currently at version 10.0.
http://www.symantec.com/sabu/ghost/ghost_personal/

What OS will the installation be running?

[XTC46]

we use ghost...

[warriorfan808]

Windows XP Pro. He also has all of his programs; files and a bunch of emails saved with Outlook.

[SirDice]

It doesn't matter what's on the disk.. Ghost will dupe it all... As long as it can understand the filesystems involved..

[warriorfan808]

Hmm....

Is Ghost hardware dependent?

[warriorfan808]

What I meant was, could I take the image off a completely different computer and apply it on another computer?

When I used Nortons, I was learning Windows 2000 on lab computers that had the same exact hardware profiles.

[dinowuff]

If you ghost a Dell PC and try to put the image on a sony laptop - you'll have some problems.

However most ghosting software have a built in image viewer, allowing you to extract individual files from the image.

Also, in an enterprise environment Antivirus clients can cause issues.

[Katja]

First I thought you wanted Paint Shop Pro or the Gimp or whatever. Then you started about having a picture taken of your system and then I knew something was wrong here. Bad choice of words, I think.

Ghost can be used to copy a full Windows installation to another system but keep in mind that this will require a proper license. Companies use a corporate Windows license for this, so they can make a ghost image once and then put the image on a dozen or so similar systems.

The hardware dependency depends on the OS settings that you are copying. E.g. if your original system uses a screen resolution of 1600x1200 and you copy it to another system that can't go higher than 1024x768 then you will have a nasty problem. (Startup in safe mode, modify resultion and reboot.)
The same with the harddisk and other hardware. If the new system has different hardware, you might get stuck with the wrong drivers. As a result, after putting back the image you might have to check all settings.

[warriorfan808]

I went online to find a copy and came across this link

http://www.compusa.com/products/prod...959&pfp=SEARCH

It doesn't list Server 2003 or even 2000 Server as OS's it supports. I remember ghosting 2000 Server in a lab a while back, but I might be wrong. Will it ghost these images?

Thanks Katja,

From what you told me, sounds like if I have different hardware, I'll just have to boot into safe mode and fix the problem. Did I understand you correctly?