Restoring a Hard Drive Image using Norton Ghost

In the previous tutorial, we created an exact image of a hard drive on a separate external drive. For the sake of this tutorial, lets say Windows XP or Vista got really confused about something and the fastest way to fix it is to restore the image of the Operating System when it was healthy. This is a review of the Norton Ghost hard drive restore process.

Open up Norton Ghost to get to this screen. I want to recover my computer so I clicked on Recover My Computer.

This is good. The program found where the image is stored. I clicked Recover Now.

This next screen tells me exactly what Norton Ghost is going to do. It looks good to me so I clicked OK.

Then comes the following warning and I say sure you can overwrite my destination drive. It is wounded anyway.

It starts to show a progress indicator, then warns me that it needs to reboot the computer. I figured that would happen seeing as I am working in the drive it needs to restore. I said yes, please continue.

Then I got a surprise. It seems that Norton Ghost cannot control itself on a reboot. I need to use the recovery CD that I have not yet created.

In the Acronis True Image tutorial, the program made me a CD with a couple clicks. I could not find this feature in Norton Ghost. It made me read the directions and search the Symantec website to find an answer to this dilemma. I downloaded the Ghost program which was about 67 Megabytes but now it seems that I need to download a separate 200 Megabyte ISO file to complete this operation. I didn’t have to do that with Acronis.

I’ll go find that email with the link to the download. Then download the 200 Megabyte ISO file. Then burn the file to a bootable CD. What if my hard drive crashed and the email that I needed for the download was lost with the all the other information? I am quite sure that the restore will go smoothly when I get everything I need for the recovery process ready. Until then, check out the Acronis tutorial.

Now that I have downloaded the 200 megabyte file, I can create a Norton Ghost Recovery CD. I went to the file menu and clicked on Create Recovery Disk.

Then the following screen appears welcoming me to the Symantec Recovery Disk Wizard.

I clicked next a couple times to get the Recovery disk to start burning.

Then Norton Ghost told me that the recover disk was created successfully. The Ghost program recommended that I test the CD to make sure it will boot when I need it to. This is a recommended step.

I definitely want to test the recovery CD so I smacked Finish and I was told that a reboot was required. So naturally, I smacked Yes.

The computer booted to the Norton Ghost Recover My Computer Wizard and found my Lacie external hard drive where the Ghost image file is stored with no problems.

I chose the backup file created earlier and proceeded to run the Norton Ghost restore. The restore went uneventful and rebooted the computer to the prior state. The Norton Ghost program completed the task that I set out to perform, albeit with several more steps than I would have liked to perform. After the review of the Norton Ghost imaging process, the program gets a Petabyte on a scale of bytes to Brontobytes.

The comparison of the Norton Ghost program and the Acronis True Image program was no contest. For ease of use and intuitiveness, the Acronis imaging program is the better buy for your money.

For a limited time, you can Get 10% off of Norton Ghost 14.0 just for entering the following coupon code when you order:
Code: 10NGHST08 This offer expires January 10, 2009 - Enjoy!

See all of the Advanced Backup and Recovery features of the new Norton Ghost 14.0

Post your comments and questions about Norton Ghost

Comments	Date
By Randy	2008-11-13 12:36:14
When you purchase Norton Ghost, they send you an email with the link to the ISO file.
By dost	2008-11-13 11:52:15
what is the full name of cd burner .ISO ?
By dost	2008-11-13 11:49:02
how to make norton ghost recovery disc , where can i get .ISO i couldnt find .ISO on symantic website plz help . i save backup into D: i want burn it into bootable CD but how ?
By Randy	2008-09-24 08:15:44
If you do a full image restore, Ghost will automatically overwrite everything on the drive with no need to format. Hope this helps!
By David	2008-09-23 13:40:44
Question on Ghost imaging process. When a drive is reimage, does the ghost image write to the entire drive? Currently have drive with potential root kit and wonder if Ghost doesn't then need to do a format of some type to make sure is gone.
By Randy	2008-02-14 08:23:42
Thanks for the comment Colin. I stated in the Ghost imaging tutorial that I have a bad habit of not reading manuals for software. I believe the software should be intuitive enough for the average person to basically just use it without reading a manual. My findings were that the Acronis True Image was a more intuitive and easy to use program than the Norton Ghost product. I haven’t used Linux in years so thanks for the tip about Acronis not working well with the OS. I am sure that insight will be helpful for somebody wanting to try Acronis for Linux imaging.
By Colin Sewell	2008-02-13 15:08:07
You shouldn't have been surprised that you need the recovery CD to restore your system disk. It's quite clearly outlined in the manual and on the download site. You wasted your time creating a customized recovery cd; you only need to do that if you have special devices that don't have drivers already on the recovery cd. And since the recovery CD is based on Vista, it contains pretty much all the drivers you'll need. Can't say the same about Acronis though. The Acronis Linux based recovery cd still has problems with modern SATA disk controllers.
By Randy	2008-02-01 11:55:42
I can’t seem to find where Ghost makes a bootable DVD with the image on it. The best bet would be to create an image on a DVD and use the Ghost bootable CD to restore the image from the DVD.
By Brian	2008-01-31 16:42:03
Is it possible to create a dvd image that I can just insert into my machine and have it install the entire machine - this was possible with past DOS based ghosts Thanks,

Name:
Email:
Comments :

If you are having computer problems that are not answered here. you can Ask the PC Experts for a solution.