Best backup software: Norton Ghost 9 or Acronis True Image 8?

From the information I see on various forums, both are excellent.  In personal experience, I placed an order for Ghost 9.0 prior to the release date and actually received it ahead of their published schedule.  The program is now, essentially Drive Image and bears no resemblance to prior editions of Ghost.  On my computer, the program had one drawback...it would not burn an image direct to media (CD or DVD) to completion.  The Symantec KB indicated the error I got reflected a conflict with Drive Image and various spyware tools (Spybot Search & Destroy, for one).  I could probably have saved the image to the HDD and burned from there but for the bucks, I should think it would work as advertised.  Others are using it with no problems whatever so as always, some programs have problems on some machines.  I ultimately asked for and promptly received a refund.

As for Acronis True Image 8.0, I have it presently installed and have made a couple of backups with no problem.  One disadvantage (compared to Ghost 9.0) is, it will not write directly to DVD except under certain circumstances and if you are using DVD+R media, only using Roxio software.  This is explained in the manual and is available on their website FAQ but is essentially, a UDA packet issue and requires formatted disk.  If you use CD media, no problem.  Again, the workaround if you wish to use DVD is to image to the HDD and use whatever software you normally use to burn the image from there.

Dan,

Thanks for your answer. I will be using either software to make an incremental backup of about 400Gb of data stored currently in an external Firewire HD and back it up to a 2nd identical external HD. I guess that for this job Norton Ghost or Acronis will work flawlessly. (I do not plan to backup to DVD, and if I do I will 1st backup to a local HD and then burn the DVD, just in case).

Also, maybe you know this. Norton Ghost gives you the option of applying compression of up to 50% max to a backup , so if I use this option I would save 200Gb of space approx.. Do you know of any issues with compression? Are the compressed files in the backup non-corrupted, or compression increases the chances of corruption in the backup files?

Thanks again.

Both programs have compression options.  While I've not had the occasion to use an imaged copy yet, I have been using the default recommendations in both the backup programs I currently use (Acronis "TI 8.0" and Sonic's "BackUpMyPC").  I don't know if there is an answer to this that is really meaningful...I do know that most all backup software recommends compressing to one degree or another to save space.  In my case, I can do a full compressed backkup on a single DVD and without compressing, it takes 2.

I think you will be pleased with either of the 2 programs.  Truthfully, although I had the little issue with Ghost 9.0 and the fact it uses DRM technology, I was still impressed with the package and believe it's worth a hard look.  It ships with a Ghost 2003 CD also, BTW.  Both programs are very similar but Ghost seems slightly more advanced.  PC Magazine has an article on Ghost 9.0 in the current issue if you care to have a look.

Thanks, I guess I will stick to Norton Ghost 9 and give it a try. I found many forums where they discuss NG9 vs ATI8, for example this one:

http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?t=35547

That thread also guides you to other discussion boards comparing these programs. In general from what I've read it seems that ATI8 wins the preferences over NG9. NG9 is seen as "bloatware" whereas ATI8 is described as a cleaner, more efficient porgram.

Regards.

My Norton Ghost 2003 has worked almost flawlessly for a couple of years. From time to time I have tried Acronis and others just to see, but each of them has had problems at times. Ergo I will stick with my trusty Norton Ghost 2003. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

Perhaps all of you have an answer to this. I have a Dell Dim. 8400 with two 250 ATA drives. I had DI 7.0 but I upgraded to Ghost 9.0. So far, I've found the following issues and hope someone has solutios -- Symantec has given up and asked I ship them a Dell 8400...... (Because after all, Dell is an unknown brand they'll never need to test with.)

1. The two drives use the ACHI driver. I can't seem to avoid this. If I put the BIOS into compat. mode, I only see the drives at 132GB. This was tested at BIOS A01. I can ask GHost 9.0 to load these drivers from a floppy. It's annoying but it works.

2. Networking doesn't work. I have to install a spare 10/100 Ethernet card. The Broadcom isn't recognized at all. I've send system snapshots to Symantec and drivers. So far, nothing works.

I gave up on Ghost 9. The disk cloning does not work. I tried Acronis True Image and it works flawlessly.

Tried TI 8, and it appears that Acronis does not support the Dell 8400 ICH6 controller. It loads, but says there are no hard disks.

I tried True Image 8.0.  I have a Dell Gen 3. I have an external usb2 Western Digitial Hard Drive stuck to it too.  The machine is on a cable router with two other machines.  The usb hard drive is a shared resource on the network. 

When I installed True Image 8.0 and tried to access the shared usb hard drive from the other machines on the network, I got the error message "Not enough server storage is available to process this command."  So doing some digging, I found that I should increase the irpstacksize in the registry.  I tried this and got all the way up to 30 with no progress. 

I uninstalled True Image and my access from the other networked machines to the shared drive came back.  I worked with Acronis for about two weeks on the problem to no avail.

I requested my money back  10 days ago.  Have heard nothing from them yet.

Anyone else have any suggestions for backup/drive imaging software?

 

I never use Norton Ghost, as for Acronis True Image, though it offer many functions, but as for me it is a quiet expensive. I commend another software, easeus todo backup, It is comparatively cheaper, but good.

You can refer its wetsite:

http://www.todo-backup.com/

ghost is a quite popular one.

true image is featured with many functions with some special features. I know todo backup is a new backup software. its free version is quite powerful as some commercial features, but now support of Windows Server. So try the server version.

here, true image and todo backup are two good choices.