The beta of Symantec's Ghost 6.0 I tested at first seemed to be a significant improvement over the previous release (Ghost 5.1), but it adds a whole set of new headaches. The interface is sloppy and, more important, it failed to accomplish all the tasks I put to it. I was sorry to see Ghost not living up to its claims. Its time-saving features, had they worked, would have been valuable. Symantec says it believes it has adequately addressed many of the problems I encountered. This may be true, but you'll want to be awake, alert and ready for anything you encounter should you use Ghost--or any NT-compatible disk-cloning solution.

How It Works
Ghost 6.0 Enterprise edition has two components: the standard Ghost 6.0 and the Ghost Console, which is Symantec's attempt to perform disk cloning with-out using a boot disk. It works by deploying agents in hidden partitions of client hard drives that communicate with the Ghost enterprise server.

Several utilities are included. Among them are Ghost Walker, which creates a unique security identifier and alters identification details of Windows 9x and NT machines after a clone operation; Ghost Explorer, which lets users manipulate images graphically, providing a quick and easy way to restore files and directories; and GDISK, which is similar to FDISK but supports larger disks and performs on-the-fly partitioning and reporting.

To test Norton Ghost, I wanted to make sure I used identical machines with exactly the same hardware configuration for disk cloning. Deploying the source image on a system that has a different hardware configuration is an invitation to further complications and compatibility problems. I used a Cubix system with seven identical 200-MHz computers with exactly the same hardware components and settings.

On one computer I installed Norton Ghost to create an image file of the hard drive. It housed Microsoft Windows 98, Office 97, Netscape Communicator 4.5, Internet Explorer 5, a Real Audio player, Symantec pcAnywhere 9.0 and Adobe Acrobat Reader with 483 MB of used hard-drive space.

The image file was created on a mapped Novell NetWare drive that resided on the same subnet. It took about 40 minutes to create an image file with the compression set to its highest capability. The resulting image file was approximately 269 MB, for a 55 percent compression ratio.

Deploying this image wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. Because my source image file was on a NetWare server, I had to use DOS-based NetWare drivers that didn't support the FAT32 operating system. And in so doing, I wasn't able to access a 32-bit FAT local hard drive to which to deploy the image. I managed to deploy a disk image on another computer, and Ghost handled the partitioning. I used the Ghost Walker tool to change my Windows 98 computer name. But Ghost Walker would only let me change the workgroup name if I chose a substitute with the same number of characters.

I then used the Ghost Explorer tool to change the contents of the image file. However, in the process of removing some programs from the image file, Ghost Explorer stopped responding. This corrupted the image file and made it unusable. I had to create another image file to test changes I'd made with Ghost Walker.

Although the computer name appeared to have been changed in the network properties, I received a message that my computer's new name was in conflict with another machine. And because I knew there was no other machine with the new name, I figured Ghost Walker hadn't really changed the name after all.

I then tried to use a Windows NT server machine to set up the Ghost multicast server to test the ability of Ghost Console to deploy disk images remotely. But Ghost failed to work with the NT server. I then tried to clone an NT workstation machine, but that failed, too. I kept receiving an error message that said Ghost wouldn't work with NT.

Next I attempted to set up an NT workstation as an enterprise client and deploy an image file from a Windows 98 machine that was set as a multicast server. This process also failed. The Ghost Console continued to tell me that each of my tasks was executed successfully, while the actual NT machine was sitting idle. At this point I decided to eliminate NT altogether and just use Windows 98. However, the Ghost enterprise client kept crashing on my Windows 98 machine, and I decided to call it a day--a day that was an utter fiasco.

I talked to Symantec about the problems I encountered in the beta version, and I was pleased to hear that the newer build should address most of them. Symantec claims to have added more thorough NT-related documentation than in the version I had used. Symantec also said the reason the remote multicast session failed was that a hidden Ghost partition was not created on the client. The company said a new quick-start guide to set up clients for IP multicasting will take care of the whole process.

Asad Irshad is a Syracuse, N.Y.-based freelance writer. Send your comments on this article to him at airshad@syr.edu.