Ghost is a disk cloning program, originally produced by Binary Research, but purchased by Symantec in 1998. The Ghost program launched the market for disk-cloning software. The name Ghost originated as an acronym for "General Hardware-Oriented System Transfer".^[1] Disk cloning is a category of software which copies the contents of one computer hard disk to another. ... Binary Research Ltd was a company founded in Auckland, New Zealand by Murray Haszard in 1991 after the sale of his previous company, B32 Software. ... Symantec Corporation NASDAQ: SYMC, founded in 1982, is an international corporation which sells computer software, particularly in the realms of security and information management. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Backronym and Apronym (Discuss) Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations, such as NATO, laser, and ABC, written as the initial letter or letters of words, and pronounced on the basis of this abbreviated written form. ...

Symantec's Norton Ghost v.14 home screen.

The main Task page from Norton Ghost.

Additional Tools in Norton Ghost v.14.

Murray Haszard wrote Ghost in 1995, building on experience with a parallel and serial file-copying program previously produced by Binary Research. Murray Hayden Haszard (born 11 May 1954) is a New Zealand entrepreneur and businessman who founded the companies B32 Software and Binary Research and is presently the chairman of Ilion Technology. ...

Initially, Ghost supported only FAT filesystems directly, but it could also copy (although not resize) other filesystems by performing a sector copy. Ghost added support for the NTFS filesystem later in 1996, and also provided a program, Ghostwalker (DOS name: ghstwalk.exe), to change the Security ID (SID) that made Windows NT systems distinguishable from each other. Ghostwalker is also capable of modifying the name of the Windows NT-based computer from its own interface. Ghost added support for the ext2 filesystem in 1999 and for ext3 subsequently. File Allocation Table (FAT) is a partially patented file system developed by Microsoft for MS-DOS and was the primary file system for consumer versions of Microsoft Windows up to and including Windows Me. ... See Filing system for this term as it is used in libraries and offices In computing, a file system is a method for storing and organizing computer files and the data they contain to make it easy to find and access them. ... In the context of computer hardware, a sector is a sub-division of a track on a magnetic disk or optical disc. ... NTFS is the standard file system of Windows NT, including its later versions Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Vista. ... Windows NT (New Technology) is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. ... Windows NT (New Technology) is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. ... The ext2 or second extended file system is a file system for the Linux kernel. ... The ext3 or third extended filesystem is a journaled file system that is commonly used by the Linux operating system. ...

Binary Research developed Ghost in Auckland, New Zealand and, although a few functions (such as translation into other languages) now take place elsewhere, the main development and quality assurance remains in Auckland. Auckland, in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest urban area in New Zealand. ...

Symantec purchased 20/20 Software in April 2000 and integrated its Autoinstall technology into Ghost.^[2] Symantec Corporation NASDAQ: SYMC, founded in 1982, is an international corporation which sells computer software, particularly in the realms of security and information management. ...

Although disk cloning programs are not primarily backup programs, they are sometimes used as such. A key feature of a backup program is to allow the retrieval of individual files without needing to restore the entire backup. Disk cloning programs either provide a Windows Explorer-like program to browse image files and extract individual files from them, or allow an image file to be mounted as a read-only filesystem within Windows Explorer.

Ghost is marketed as a backup program. It comes with an ISO file that needs to be written to a CD. This provides a recovery environment to perform a full system recovery. There's also provision to mount a drive & select backed-up files from that drive and recover them to the primary hard disk. ISO has many meanings: Iso is the stem of the Latin transliteration of the Greek word ίσος (ísos, meaning equal). The iso- prefix in English derives from this and means equality or similarity. ...

Ghost can copy the contents of one hard drive to another and can convert a hard drive's contents to a virtual disk format such as VMware VMDK file. VMware, Inc. ...

PowerQuest

At the end of 2003, Symantec acquired its largest competitor, PowerQuest. It then released Norton Ghost 9.0 on August 2, 2004 as a new consumer version of Ghost, based on version 7 (the last major version produced by PowerQuest before being acquired by Symantec) of PowerQuest's Drive Image product. It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Symantec. ... is the 214th day of the year (215th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Norton Ghost 9 can back up partitions and entire drives and supports direct cloning (without first backing up a partition and writing the image on a different partition).

Ghost 9 is not backward compatible with previous versions of Ghost in that it won't restore GHO images created by Ghost 8 or earlier. However, there is a version of Ghost 8 included on the Ghost 9 recovery disk located under the "restore legacy image" option in utilities. This ensures backwards compatibility with previous versions of Ghost. The version of Ghost 8 included cannot restore images made by version 8.3 of Ghost, which was released later.

Phantom

The internal project name Phantom designated a complete rewrite of the Ghost cloning engine at Symantec in Auckland. The Phantom project ran for about three years in parallel with the ongoing development of the Ghost code. Some parts of the Phantom code, such as the ability to write to NTFS filesystems from MS-DOS, got folded into the main Ghost product. Symantec released a prototype of Phantom as Ghost for Manufacturing in 2003.

Ghost Versions

Ghost 3.1

The first versions of Ghost supported only the cloning of entire disks, but version 3.1 in 1997 allowed the cloning of individual partitions as well. Ghost could clone a disk or partition to another disk or partition, or to an image file, restorable either to another machine or the same machine later. Ghost allowed for writing a clone or image: A partition in the IBM PC architecture, is a part of a hard disk that can have an independent file system. ...

• to a second disk in the same machine
• to another machine linked by a parallel or network cable
• to a network drive
• to a tape drive

Ghost 4.0

Version 4.0 of Ghost added multicast technology (following the lead of a competitor, ImageCast). Multicasting allows sending a single image simultaneously to many machines without putting greater stress on the network than by sending an image to a single machine. Multicast is sometimes also (incorrectly) used to refer to a multiplexed broadcast. ...

This version also introduced Ghost Explorer, a Windows program which allowed a user to browse the contents of an image file and extract individual files from it. Explorer was subsequently enhanced to allow users to add and delete files on FAT (and later on ext2, ext3 and NTFS) filesystems in an image. Until 2007, Ghost Explorer could extract files from NTFS images but not edit NTFS images. Ghost Explorer could work with images from older versions but only slowly; version 4 images contained indexes to find files rapidly. Windows redirects here. ...

Version 4.0 also moved from real-mode DOS to 286 protected-mode. The additional memory available allowed Ghost to provide several levels of compression for images, and to provide the file browser. Real mode (also called real address mode in Intels manuals) is an operating mode of 80286 and later x86-compatible CPUs. ... This article is about the family of closely related operating systems for the IBM PC compatible platform. ... The Intel 80286 is an x86-family 16-bit microprocessor that was introduced by Intel on February 1, 1982. ... Protected mode is an operational mode of x86-compatible CPUs of the 80286 series or later. ... Source coding redirects here. ...

Ghost 4.1

In 1998, Ghost 4.1 allowed for password-protected images.

Ghost 5.0

Version 5.0 moved to 386 protected mode. Unlike the character-based user interface of earlier versions, 5.0 used a GUI. The Binary Research logo (two stars revolving around each other) played on the main screen while the program idled. GUI can refer to the following: GUI is short for graphical user interface, a term used to describe a type of interface in computing. ...

Gdisk, a scriptable partition manager, joined the growing suite of Ghost programs in 1998. Gdisk serves a role similar to Fdisk, but has greater capabilities. fdisk is the name used for several hard disk partition table editor programs for PC compatible computers. ...

Ghost 6.0 (Ghost 2001)

Ghost 6.0 included a Console application in 2000 to simplify the management of large numbers of machines. The Console communicates with client software on managed computers to allow a system administrator to refresh the disk of a machine remotely. A system administrator, systems administrator, or sysadmin, is a person employed to maintain and operate a computer system and/or network. ...

As a DOS-based program, Ghost required machines running Windows to reboot to a DOS environment to run it. Ghost 6.0 required a separate DOS partition when used with the Console.

Ghost 7.0 / Ghost 2002

Released March 31, 2001 Norton Ghost version 7.0 (retail) was marketed as Norton Ghost 2002 Personal Edition. Help|About reveals version 7.00. is the 90th day of the year (91st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... This article is about the year. ...

Ghost 7.5

Released December 14, 2001 is the 348th day of the year (349th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... This article is about the year. ...

Ghost 7.5 in 2002 created a 'Virtual Partition' instead - a DOS partition which actually exists as a file within a normal Windows filesystem. This significantly eased systems management. Ghost 7.5 could also write images to CD-R drives, and later versions can also write DVDs.

Ghost 8.0

Ghost 8.0 includes a standalone executable (DOS name: ghost32.exe) that runs directly from Windows, without the need to reboot. It is very well-suited for placement on bootable media, such as BartPE's bootable CD. The Corporate edition supports Unicast, Multicast and peer-to-peer transfers via TCP/IP. Ghost 8.0 also allows an image to be saved on, or read from, an NTFS filesystem, although NTFS is not normally accessible from a DOS program. This article is about the family of closely related operating systems for the IBM PC compatible platform. ... BartPE (Barts Preinstalled Environment) is a Live CD version of the Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 operating systems. ... The Internet protocol suite is the set of communications protocols that implement the protocol stack on which the Internet runs. ...

There was also a Norton Ghost version (called 2.0) for Novell NetWare, with supported NSS partitions (although it ran in DOS, like the others).

Norton Ghost 2003

Norton Ghost 2003, a consumer edition of Ghost, was released on September 6, 2002. Available as an independent product, Norton Ghost 2003 was also included as a component of Norton SystemWorks 2003 Professional. A simpler, non-corporate version of Ghost, Norton Ghost 2003 does not include the Console but has a Windows front-end to script Ghost operations and create a bootable Ghost diskette (third-party CD burning software can be used to create a bootable Ghost CD based on a bootable Ghost diskette). The machine still needs to reboot to the Virtual Partition, but the user doesn't need to interact with DOS. Symantec deprecated LiveUpdate support for Norton Ghost 2003 in early 2006. Two Symantec knowledge base articles (Updates to Norton Ghost 2003 How to obtain the programs updates that are archived on Symantec LiveUpdate server) provide step-by-step instructions detailing how to obtain Norton Ghost 2003 updates from the LiveUpdate Archive. As of April 24, 2008, the latest version available from the archive is 2003.793. Older versions of Norton Ghost 2003 can be also updated from a system with a newer version of Norton Ghost 2003 by copying program directory from newer to older. Reliable support for SATA drives was also provided in 2003.793.

Ghost Solution Suite 1.0 (AKA Ghost 8.2)

Symantec Ghost 8.2

In 2004, Symantec renamed the Enterprise version of Ghost to Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 1.0. This helped to clarify the difference between the consumer and business lines of the product. This was further defined in February 2006, with the Release of Norton Save And Restore (some packages are labelled Norton Backup And Restore), a standalone backup application based on Ghost 10.0. Image File history File links Ghost-screenshot. ... Image File history File links Ghost-screenshot. ...

Released November 15, 2004 is the 319th day of the year (320th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Ghost Solution Suite 1.1 (Ghost 8.3)

Ghost Solution Suite 1.1 was released December 2005. Some of the new features includes multi-terabyte support, more comprehensive manufacturing tools, and the ability to create a universal boot disk. Ghost Solution Suite is a bundle of an updated version of Ghost, Symantec Client Migration (a user data and settings migration tool) and the former PowerQuest equivalent, DeployCenter (using PQI images).

Ghost 9.0 (includes Ghost 2003)

A screen shot of Norton Ghost 9.0 as seen in Windows 2000

Ghost 9.0 was released August 2, 2004. Image File history File links This is a screenshot of copyrighted computer software. ... Image File history File links This is a screenshot of copyrighted computer software. ... Windows 2000 (also referred to as Win2K) is a preemptive, interruptible, graphical and business-oriented operating system designed to work with either uniprocessor or symmetric multi-processor computers. ... is the 214th day of the year (215th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Recovery Disk: The recovery disk for this version of Ghost can be found inside the download/CD.

Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.

Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ...

Ghost 10.0

Supported media CDR/RW and DVD+-R/RW drives, USB and FireWire (IEEE 1394) devices, and Iomega Zip and Jaz drives. Enables the encryption of backups and support for Maxtor external drives with Maxtor OneTouch buttons. Maxtor Corporation was an American manufacturer of computer hard disk drives founded in 1982 and acquired by Seagate in 2006. ...

Norton Save And Restore 1.0 (Ghost 10.0)

Norton Save And Restore 1.0, released February 2006, was the renamed consumer version of Ghost. The system utilized Ghost 10.0's engine, with the addition of features to allow backup and restoration of individual files.

Ghost Solution Suite 2.0 (Ghost 11.0)

Ghost Solution Suite 2.0 was released in November 2006. This version provides significant improvements in performance, as well as the ability to edit NTFS images. This version also adds support for Windows Vista, x64 versions of Windows, and GUID Partition Table (GPT)-based disks (although the software does not yet fully support systems with Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI)-compliant firmware). Windows Vista (pronounced ) is a line of operating systems developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, Tablet PCs, and media centers. ... GUID Partition Table (GPT) is a standard for the layout of the partition table on a physical hard disk. ... The workings of the Extensible Firmware Interface The Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) is a software interface between an operating system and platform firmware. ...

Ghost 12.0

Ghost 12.0 includes Windows Vista support with an updated and more thorough user interface. It allows for a full system backup & one where individual files or folders can be selected & backed up. Windows Vista (pronounced ) is a line of operating systems developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, Tablet PCs, and media centers. ...

This version also provides a "LightsOut Restore" feature. This restores a system with an on-disk software recovery environment, thereby allowing a recovery without a bootable CD. Upon boot-up of the computer a screen will ask which drive to boot from from, the regular drive, or the LightsOut restore virtual drive.

LightOut restore augments the ISO disk, which comes with the Ghost program, that has to be copied to a CD. This contains a recovery environment that allows one to recover files even if Windows doesn't start up, but the computer can turn on. The latest update to the program is 12.0.3.24711. ISO has many meanings: Iso is the stem of the Latin transliteration of the Greek word ίσος (ísos, meaning equal). The iso- prefix in English derives from this and means equality or similarity. ...

Norton Save & Restore 2.0 (Ghost 13.0)

NSR 2.0 has fewer features when compared to Norton Ghost 12. NSR 2.0 offers one-time backups, file and folder backup, simplified schedule editor, Maxtor OneTouch integration and modifiable Symantec recovery disc.

This version also supports 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows XP and Vista.

Norton Ghost 14.0

The window where you can set Norton Ghost to automatically back up a drive based upon the level of global computer based threats, as judged by Symantec's ThreatCon grading system.

Same as Ghost 12, but with Google Desktop integration, the ability to make full Volume Snapshot Service (VSS) backups and the option to make remote backups to a secure FTP site as another storage option. Google Desktops logo Google Desktop is a desktop search software for Mac OS X, Linux and Microsoft Windows. ...

Ghost can now trigger incremental backups whenever ThreatCon reaches a specified threat level. ThreatCon is a malware-detecting utility that triggers a backup on Norton Ghost whenever a pre-set level of threat is reached. However, this functions only when connected to the Internet, so it will not resist any local attack. An incremental backup is a backup method where only one backup is kept kept (not just the last one). ... A screenshot of a malicious website attempting to install spyware via an ActiveX Control in Internet Explorer 6 Malware is software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owners informed consent. ...

Version 14 also offers back up to Network-Attached Storage devices and supports NTFS partitions up to 16TB. Other features and the general user interface are the same as v12. It's installer also manages other Norton Ghost installation (v12 or higher) across a Local Area Network. Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level data storage connected to a computer network providing data access to heterogeneous network clients. ... NTFS is the standard file system of Windows NT, including its later versions Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Vista. ... LAN redirects here. ...

Version 14 no longer supports older versions of Windows, just Vista and XP. The latest version is 14.0.2.26325.

Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 2.5

This is the current version of the enterprise software, and includes Ghost 11.5. It was released in May 2008.^[3]

Release history

is the 261st day of the year (262nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2000 (MM) was a leap year starting on Saturday. ... is the 109th day of the year (110th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... This article is about the year. ... is the 15th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Also see: 2002 (number). ... is the 293rd day of the year (294th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 319th day of the year (320th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 346th day of the year (347th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 338th day of the year (339th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 113th day of the year (114th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... is the 114th day of the year (115th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2008 (MMVIII) is the current year, a leap year that started on Tuesday of the Anno Domini (or common era), in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 194th day of the year (195th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Events of 2008: (EMILY) Me Lesley and MIley are going to China! This article is about the year. ... is the 214th day of the year (215th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Events of 2008: (EMILY) Me Lesley and MIley are going to China! This article is about the year. ... is the 271st day of the year (272nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2000 (MM) was a leap year starting on Saturday. ... is the 248th day of the year (249th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... This article is about the year. ... is the 239th day of the year (240th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Also see: 2002 (number). ... is the 214th day of the year (215th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 256th day of the year (257th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 58th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... [[Media:Italic text]]{| style=float:right; |- | |- | |} is the 50th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... is the 43rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2008 (MMVIII) is the current year, a leap year that started on Tuesday of the Anno Domini (or common era), in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. ...

See also

• Disk cloning

Disk cloning is a category of software which copies the contents of one computer hard disk to another. ...

References

2008 (MMVIII) is the current year, a leap year that started on Tuesday of the Anno Domini (or common era), in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 162nd day of the year (163rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Symantec Corporation NASDAQ: SYMC, founded in 1982, is an international corporation which sells computer software, particularly in the realms of security and information management. ... 2008 (MMVIII) is the current year, a leap year that started on Tuesday of the Anno Domini (or common era), in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 104th day of the year (105th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 125th day of the year (126th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2008 (MMVIII) is the current year, a leap year that started on Tuesday of the Anno Domini (or common era), in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links

• Norton Ghost - Enterprise Edition product page
• Radified tutorials and pages on Ghost
• Softpanorama Norton Ghost Page
• Brief overview of Symantec Ghost and Norton Ghost versions
• Binary Research Ghost Version History
• Symantec News
• Symantec Ghost Release Details (Dates seems somewhat questionable based on press releases)
• Symantec Ghost Solution Suite Release Details (Dates seem somewhat questionable based on press releases)