NORTON GHOST

Norton Ghost is one of two backup programs I recommend. This program backs up entire hard drives. You are given several choices – to another local hard drive, to removable storage, or to a network hard drive. If you choose to back up to removable storage, you’ll have to use a number of DVDs.

I use Norton Ghost to back up my C drive to my D drive. I’m using about 60 GB of my 160GB C drive. This is compressed to approximately 50GB on my 160GB D drive.

You can restore individual files or folders. Or restore your whole system in case your disk crashes.

To buy or download the trial version of Norton Ghost, go to Symantec.

You can navigate to Norton Ghost by clicking the ‘, or go there directly by opening the Shop Home and Home Office .

You can read about Norton Ghost, and download a trial or paid version.

Once downloaded, navigate to the downloaded file. You’ll see it’s a RAR file. Unless you already have WinRar installed, there will be no way for you to open it. RAR is a competing compression method to Zip. Actually, it’s better, and stands for Russian Archiver.

WinRar also extracts zip files, along with many other compression methods. Since many downloads use Rar instead of Zip, you should have it on your computer. To get it, take your browser to RarLabs .

Click on ‘Buy WinRAR archiver, order and download WinRAR.

Navigate to the downloaded file. Since you don’t have WinRAR already, RARLabs sends it to you as a Zip file. Unzip the file, navigate to the folder to which you unzipped it., and double click the installer.

Now that you’ve installed WinRAR, you can unRAR Norton Ghost’s RAR file.

Navigate to the folder to which you extracted the archive and double-click Setup.

Once you’ve installed Norton Ghost, you’ll have to reboot. When you reopen Norton Ghost you’ll be asked for your serial number. It’ll have been sent to your email address after you’ve ordered it.

Now you’re ready to backup a hard disk. The steps are self-evident, but I’ll run through backing up my C drive to my D drive.

If Norton Ghost is not already open, double-click its icon in the task bar.

I selected C and clicked ‘Back Up Drive’.

Check ‘Verify backup image after creation’. I put the date as the description. Click ‘Next’ to select a target drive. It could be a local hard disk, a network drive, or a handful of DVDs. I selected ‘D’.

Then the backup ‘wizard’ asks you the location on the backup drive.

For the amount of data on my C drive the backup process takes about 2 � hours. Normally you should backup a drive when you’re sleeping, as the backup process is resource intensive and your computer will slow down.

Here’s a screen shot of the backup process.

The restore process is self-evident and there is no reason to repeat the steps here in reverse.

Dennis Turner