Ghost image vs. Format + Re-install...


  

25 members have voted

  1. 1. Ghost image vs. Format + Re-install...

    • Man, I'll Ghost Image the damn thing
      9
    • Meh... I'll reload everything
      16


Recommended Posts

I made an image of my HDD right after i installed windows and got everything working just right...

It takes less than 7min to do the ghost, which does all of the following..

- Formats

- Installs Windows Again

I really like it, because i just have to tell it where the image is, and it does the rest... I do not have to stand around and type in ****. So thats what i would suggest

making IMages is a LOT better than formatting specially when you have settings galore and color settings registry tweaks/hacks all that **** that you'd forget to do again if you did format that along with all the programs you may have installed etc. but i guess a good format is good every once in a while

Ghosting is much better if you had to do what I did last year. Our company is contracted to the bigest steel producer in Africa and they requested a complete change from 386/486 and Pentium1/2 up to P3's running Windows 2000. Now all the PC's were already loaded with Windows 2000 when we received them but they needed to have updates and security settings done as well as Office 2000, Antivirus package and various programs installed. So doing something like 3000 installs was going to be much easier with a ghost.

So for about 2 months I was doing installs on a few hundred PC's. The image sure did help as it only took about 10 minutes per PC. Now to load the whole lot would have been around 2 hours per PC. Work out the difference and multiply that by 3000 and you get the idea on what a time saver it is.

But for a single user I guess formatting and installing once in a blue moon is not gonna be much of a problem. I wanted to image after my last format but never got round to it. Best is do as many updates as possible to the OS. Install must have software then tweak and then finally make an image. That way it is at it's best setup so that you can bugger it all up without a worry.

"Ghosting" is basically creating a copy or "image" of your harddrive which you can use to restore your system with later in case of failure as an example. The benefit of this is its fast, around 10 mins on average as opposed to an hour or two to reinstall manually and then your apps and favorite tweaks.

This image can be burned to cd and can be used as many times and on as many systems as you like. It is an exact copy, so it will restore everything, your apps, settings, and your OS.

Visit www.norton.com and see if they have a trial version of Norton Ghost on offer for download.

Greetz

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • SMPlayer 25.6.0 by Razvan Serea SMPlayer intends to be a complete front-end for MPV/MPlayer , from basic features like playing videos, DVDs, and VCDs to more advanced features like support for MPlayer filters and more. One of the most interesting features of SMPlayer: it remembers the settings of all files you play. So you start to watch a movie but you have to leave... don't worry, when you open that movie again it will resume at the same point you left it, and with the same settings: audio track, subtitles, volume... Other additional interesting features: Configurable subtitles. You can choose font and size, and even colors for the subtitles. Audio track switching. You can choose the audio track you want to listen. Works with avi and mkv. And of course with DVDs. Seeking by mouse wheel. You can use your mouse wheel to go forward or backward in the video. Video equalizer, allows you to adjust the brightness, contrast, hue, saturation and gamma of the video image. Multiple speed playback. You can play at 2X, 4X... and even in slow motion. Filters. Several filters are available: deinterlace, postprocessing, denoise... and even a karaoke filter (voice removal). Audio and subtitles delay adjustment. Allows you to sync audio and subtitles. Advanced options, such as selecting a demuxer or video & audio codecs. Playlist. Allows you to enqueue several files to be played one after each other. Autorepeat and shuffle supported too. Preferences dialog. You can easily configure every option of SMPlayer by using a nice preferences dialog. Possibility to search automatically for subtitles in opensubtitles.org. Translations: currently SMPlayer is translated into more than 20 languages, including Spanish, German, French, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese.... It's multiplatform. Binaries available for Windows and Linux. SMPlayer is under the GPL license. SMPlayer 25.6.0 changelog: Fix play/pause button. Some fixes to stop the screensaver on Linux. Fixed some issues related to disc playback. Various bug fixes and stability improvements. Download: SMPlayer 25.6.0 (64-bit) | Portable | ~40.0 MB (Open Source) Download: SMPlayer 25.6.0 (32-bit) | Portable Links: SMPlayer Website | Mac OS | Screenshot Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware
    • Mozilla never had the funding resources to promote their stuff the way Microsoft and Google do. As simple as 1-2-3.
    • ...Microsoft says that Edge is better for your Windows PC than Google's Chrome, as it is a "Microsoft product" that "integrates closely with Microsoft Windows," which helps with "performance benefits."... Yeah, right! Microsoft is still trying hard to convince everyone about everything it makes...
    • This is the curse of Linux on the desktop, the development and maintenance manpower is spread out across countless distributions. The same thing has to be integrated many times.
  • Recent Achievements

    • Week One Done
      Al_ earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Week One Done
      MadMung0 earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Reacting Well
      BlakeBringer earned a badge
      Reacting Well
    • Reacting Well
      Lazy_Placeholder earned a badge
      Reacting Well
    • Dedicated
      Epaminombas earned a badge
      Dedicated
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      474
    2. 2
      +FloatingFatMan
      273
    3. 3
      ATLien_0
      242
    4. 4
      snowy owl
      211
    5. 5
      Edouard
      182
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!