Question Recommendations for Ghost / Image software ?

[L0vB1t]

I need a bootable imaging program.
Long time ago I used Norton Ghost to make ISO images of Windows 98/XP computers for quick recovery later. Now I need to to do the same with Windows 7/10 PC's, but it appears my old copy of Norton Ghost doesn't recognize NTFS.

Can anyone recommend a good imaging program?
It needs to boot from CD.
Every PC has 2x HDD's so the image save/read will be local, not network.

There are too many options from a simple google search and it seems to me all of them are more Windows utilities, anti-virus, error checking and such.
Im hoping to find something simple, just how Norton Ghost used to be... just boot from CD, save image or load image.

Thanks!

 

[USAFRet]

Specifically, what do you mean by "bootable imaging"?

I use Macrium Reflect for backups on all of my systems.
Non bootable "image", saved off elsewhere.
In case of need, the Macrium Rescue USB is bootable, and will apply that Image to the drive of my choice.

Macrium can also make a fully bootable clone of whatever OS drive you choose.

So, what, specifically, are you looking to do?

 

[L0vB1t]

Ok so the exact steps I would like to take are....
1: Insert bootable CD, then turn off PC (nothing happens here, just need power to open/close cd-rom).
2: Turn on PC, boot from CD and wait for imaging program to load (as opposed to windows or command prompt).
3: Use imaging program to either make an ISO image, or load an ISO image

That was what I loved about Norton Ghost, it couldnt have been easier...
just pop in their disk, boot to it and choose whether to save a drive to an ISO image, or write an ISO image to a drive.

The image ISO file itself is of course not bootable, its just a gigantic backup file (that probably wouldnt even fit on a DVD) of the windows 7/10 partition/drive saved on a second hard drive inside the same PC. Thats why a bootable cd with the imaging software is needed.
You boot from the software and point to the image file... or tell it where an image file is to be saved

Is this understandable or am I being confusing?
Sorry, im old lol

 

[esakhelvi]

I need a bootable imaging program.
Long time ago I used Norton Ghost to make ISO images of Windows 98/XP computers for quick recovery later.
Now I need to to do the same with Windows 7/10 PC's, but it appears my old copy of Norton Ghost doesn't recognize NTFS.

Can anyone recommend a good imaging program?
It needs to boot from CD.
Every PC has 2x HDD's so the image save/read will be local, not network.

There are too many options from a simple google search and it seems to me all of them are more windows utilities, anti-virus, error checking and such.
Im hoping to find something simple, just how Norton Ghost used to be... just boot from disk, save image or load image.

Thanks!

aomei backupper is best one for legecy and uefi backup

 

[CountMike]

Ok so the exact steps I would like to take are....
1: Insert bootable CD, then turn off PC (nothing happens here, just need power to open/close cd-rom).
2: Turn on PC, boot from CD and wait for imaging program to load (as opposed to windows or command prompt).
3: Use imaging program to either make an ISO image, or load an ISO image

That was what I loved about Norton Ghost, it couldnt have been easier...
just pop in their disk, boot to it and choose whether to save a drive to an ISO image, or write an ISO image to a drive.

The image ISO file itself is of course not bootable, its just a gigantic backup file (that probably wouldnt even fit on a DVD) of the windows 7/10 partition/drive saved on a second hard drive inside the same PC. Thats why a bootable cd with the imaging software is needed.
You boot from the software and point to the image file... or tell it where an image file is to be saved

Is this understandable or am I being confusing?
Sorry, im old lol

Nothing to do with being "old", I'm 77 and still up to date with PCs.
CDs and making backup in an ISO file has been replaced by fully configurable programs like Macruim Reflect and USB connected devices. I suggest you read instructions for it.
Basically, you install MR and configure it to back up anything from whole disk, just partitions, folders or even individual files. That includes disk with OS.
It makes one file .MRIMG (instead of ISO) which doesn't include empty disk space so it's already smaller than whole disk and is also condensed so it's about 70-75% of whole data.
That file can be mounted just like an ISO into a virtual disk and manipulated just like it was real disk drive.
In addition you can make it to manually or automatically back up just difference between full backup and present data (incremental or differential) which is just small percentage of original.
Program also helps you make an bootable USB (or CD if you want) from which you can BOOT. do same operations and more like fix BOOT problems, clone disk and it's main function to restore contents to any other disk.

 

[Lafong]

Ok so the exact steps I would like to take are....
1: Insert bootable CD,

Do you refuse to use bootable USB flash drives??

 

[BFG-9000]

Norton Ghost Personal can copy NTFS just fine, whether whole partitions or disks and even an NTFS partition into a file. It's just by default the CD or Floppy doesn't have a NTFS driver so Ghost cannot put that file onto or read one from a NTFS partition. NTFS4DOS is one example of a NTFS driver for DOS ,which allows DOS to both read from and write to NTFS partitions. While you are at it you could add USB drivers for DOS too so you can use Ghost with external USB drives in NTFS too. The alternative of course is to instead add DOS drivers for your network card so you could save the files to a network drive where the format doesn't matter because DOS doesn't see it--could even be Ext4

It's important to remember that restored images for Windows Vista and later will only be bootable if you first (before saving the Ghost image) from the running Windows system in an administrator command prompt run:
BCDEDIT /set {bootmgr} device boot
BCDEDIT /set {default} device boot
BCDEDIT /set {default} osdevice boot
This avoids any BCD issues with booting and with this Ghost still works, even on Windows 11... at least with MBR disks.

It's probably a bad idea to try using Ghost on 4TB disks anyway given it doesn't even display 2TB disks properly--though it does copy those properly. It's also too old to recognize some SATA controllers unless your BIOS allows temporarily changing the native SATA implementation from "enhanced" to "compatible" or "IDE" (in which case only 4 devices work at a time and note one must be the CD drive unless you are using a Ghost floppy)

Now a modern CD bootable alternative such as Minitool Partition Wizard can also clone partitions and whole disks, and without these issues... but unlike Ghost it cannot write the image as a .GHO file. However disk space is now so cheap that you may not mind wasting a bunch of space by storing one in each partition if it saves some hassle.

There are some other things stored in the BCD which should be temporarily disabled before taking an image, like System Restore (the "missing" drive may still show up afterwards in System Restore as not working, but will disappear if you just disable System Restore for it) and hibernation--Windows 7 has a handy tab to disable hibernation but with later Windows you should just use command prompt to disable it before taking an image with:
powercfg /hibernate off

After restoring the image it can be re-enabled with:
powercfg /hibernate on

While people did use Ghost on Win 3.1 and 9x, you could actually clone those from a running system using only the included File Manager (just drag-and-drop io.sys and msdos.sys before anything else and it would be bootable). Was sure nice back then when no files were locked or had permissions and such.

 

[USAFRet]

Ok so the exact steps I would like to take are....
1: Insert bootable CD, then turn off PC (nothing happens here, just need power to open/close cd-rom).
2: Turn on PC, boot from CD and wait for imaging program to load (as opposed to windows or command prompt).
3: Use imaging program to either make an ISO image, or load an ISO image

That was what I loved about Norton Ghost, it couldnt have been easier...
just pop in their disk, boot to it and choose whether to save a drive to an ISO image, or write an ISO image to a drive.

The image ISO file itself is of course not bootable, its just a gigantic backup file (that probably wouldnt even fit on a DVD) of the windows 7/10 partition/drive saved on a second hard drive inside the same PC. Thats why a bootable cd with the imaging software is needed.
You boot from the software and point to the image file... or tell it where an image file is to be saved

Is this understandable or am I being confusing?
Sorry, im old lol

Macrium Reflect is even easier than that.

It can make a full drive Image from a currently running Windows instance.
My system does that every night, unattended.

Yes, really.

Run the software, tell it where to save the Image to. In my case, it saves to a folder in my NAS.
If you need to restore from that Image, you just boot up from a previously created Rescue USB or CD.
Tell it where the Image is, and which drive to apply it to.
Done.

 

[TeamRed2024]

Macrium Reflect is even easier than that.

It can make a full drive Image from a currently running Windows instance.
My system does that every night, unattended.

Yes, really.

You just convinced me to purchase this software for my backups. I'm not going to clone the new laptop I'm just going to do a fresh W11 install... but will definitely use this software to back up both systems.

 

[BFG-9000]

I will just say it can be really handy to know how to use a utility that doesn't rely on Microsoft's Volume Shadow Copy Service or Linux, for odd cases where those fail to work.

I've had to resort to Ghost before when nothing else would work, which is why I know all the cumbersome workarounds for using it on more modern OSes. That may be OK for just making a single pristine backup image, but something that can do differential or incremental backups would be way faster for frequently scheduled backups. Just be sure to actually test whatever you choose to make sure things can be reliably restored.

 

[USAFRet]

You just convinced me to purchase this software for my backups. I'm not going to clone the new laptop I'm just going to do a fresh W11 install... but will definitely use this software to back up both systems.

For me, Macrium si one of those things that just works.
Full, Differential, Incremental, file/folder...
And cloning when you want.

 

[L0vB1t]

Ok Ill have to give that program a look.
I dont care what format the image is, im just used to ISO.
I only have 1 USB memory stick, but I need it for transferring files to my CNC machines... so I would have to get a second, but would prefer to save the image on the second hard drive and boot from a CD. That way every PC can have its image saved locally and I can use the same boot CD for all PC's.

 

[USAFRet]

Ok Ill have to give that program a look.
I dont care what format the image is, im just used to ISO.
I only have 1 USB memory stick, but I need it for transferring files to my CNC machines... so I would have to get a second, but would prefer to save the image on the second hard drive and boot from a CD. That way every PC can have its image saved locally and I can use 1 CD for all PC's

It saves images in its own format.
xxxxx.mrimage

I have all of my house systems, and each physical drive individually, save to a folder tree on my NAS.
Each system and drive on its own schedule, depending on need.

My main system gets an Incremental Image every night, each drive individually.
The single drive in my spouses system gets a Full drive image, every other day. Keep for a rolling 2 weeks.

And yes, I have had to use an Image to recover. Both from catastrophic drive fail, or just nasty malware.

 

[RUSerious]

Macrium (which I think still has a free version for personal use). Also, some sort of NAS so that your backup set isn't on the same computer (to avoid OS, app errors that can cause corruption). I still use spinners for backup in RAID 1.

Macrium 8 person free download: https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/macrium_reflect_free_edition.html

 

[USAFRet]

Macrium (which I think still has a free version for personal use). Also, some sort of NAS so that your backup set isn't on the same computer (to avoid OS, app errors that can cause corruption). I still use spinners for backup in RAID 1.

The free level of Macrium went away a few months ago.
Same with its competitors.

There is supposedly still a free one out there somewhere. But the Free version, even when viable from Macrium, lacked the Incremental Images. Only Full and Differential.

There is a 30 day trial, though.

 

[RUSerious]

The free level of Macrium went away a few months ago.
Same with its competitors.

There is supposedly still a free one out there somewhere. But the Free version, even when viable from Macrium, lacked the Incremental Images. Only Full and Differential.

There is a 30 day trial, though.

Oh bummer. I used the paid version. It's 1000% worth it.