Portable — Norton Ghost

A high school IT admin has 30 Dell Optiplexes. One master image on a USB hard drive. Boot each PC with a Ghost USB stick. Type GHOST -CLONE,MODE=LOAD,SRC=USB\IMAGE.GHO,DST=1 -SURE . Walk away. 15 minutes later, 30 fresh Windows XP installations.

Ghost didn't care if your drive was NTFS, FAT32, EXT2, or a weird RAID controller. If the BIOS could see it, Ghost could clone it. From Windows 2000 through Windows 7, Norton Ghost Portable was the universal skeleton key for system deployment. norton ghost portable

The portable version spread via USB sticks, hidden folders on IT shares, and burned CDs labeled "DO NOT LOSE." Symantec, never comfortable with a tool that worked too well and didn't require annual subscriptions, began killing Ghost. A high school IT admin has 30 Dell Optiplexes

GHOST.EXE -CLONE,MODE=PDUMP,SRC=1,DST=D:\IMAGE.GHO -Z3 -SURE -RB Translation: Clone drive 1 to an image file on D:, compress it hard (Z3), don’t ask me for confirmation (-SURE), and reboot when done (-RB). Type GHOST -CLONE,MODE=LOAD,SRC=USB\IMAGE

A friend’s hard drive clicks. Windows won't boot. You boot from a USB stick, run Ghost.exe, and clone the dying drive to a new one, ignoring read errors with -FRO (Force Read Operation). You save their wedding photos.

By: Retro Computing Archives