Specifications

Page 7
ROM August — September 2007
Symantec are a big enough company to call
their program features what they like, in
use one soon gets used to the “recovery
points” rather than “image” terminology.
In Use
Installation is easy. You can let the pro-
gram use its default features or use the
customise option if you want to be different
and install it to another location or drive
etc.
Following a reboot you are asked to acti-
vate the product, or you can leave it un-
activated. If you do this you can use it for
30-days, after this it’ll no longer work until
activated.
As someone who regularly reviews soft-
ware Ghost 12 is a useful application that
allows me to make an image of my current
system and then restore that to a previous
state, at a later date. For instance I use my
notebook with a drive dedicated solely for
software reviews, some of these reviews
are of beta versions of software that hook
deeply into the operating system, with
Ghost 12 I can backup my drive. Install the
test software, test it, and at the end of the
test quickly use Ghost 12 to revert back to a
previous state, without having to bother
sorting out and uninstalling the software
from my system — a piece of cake!
My usual method of backing up my com-
puter is to use Ghost to back up the entire
hard drive overwriting whatever was there
before. Ghost can also backups individual
files and folders without needing to back-
up the whole drive which is a useful facil-
ity. After you’ve backed-up the whole drive
its possible to restore individual files and
folders without restoring the entire system.
This is useful if you find for example a
photo you’ve been working on has been
deleted in error or an essential operating
system file has become corrupted for one
reason or another.
(Continued from page 6)
Emergency Recovery CD
I wasn’t supplied with a boxed review
copy of the program but the downloadable
version which incorporates the facility to
create a Symantec Recovery Disk needed
for a full system restore as a .ISO file. Once
burnt to CD it acts as an emergency boot-
able recovery CD that loads a cut down
Windows interface with a Ghost recovery
application, from which you choose your
preferred recovery point.
Maxtor OneTouch External
Drive
If you have a Maxtor OneTouch external
hard drive Ghost has another neat touch up its
sleeve. As the help file says:
Ghost 12 - Maxtor External Hard drives—
Enabling Event-triggered Backups
Norton Ghost can detect certain events and
run a backup when they occur.
For example, to protect your computer when
you install new software, Norton Ghost can
run a backup when it detects that new soft-
ware is being installed. If a problem occurs
that harms your computer, you can use this
recovery point to restore your computer to its
previous state.
You can configure Norton Ghost to automati-
cally run a backup when the following events
occur:
• A specified application is started
• Any application is installed
• Any user logs on to the computer
(Continued on page 8)
Drive-based backup Use this backup type to do the following:
• Back up and recover your computer's system drive (typically,
the C drive, which includes your operating system).
• Back up and recover a specific hard drive, such as a secon-
dary drive (which is a drive other than the system drive on
which your operating system is installed).
• Recover lost or damaged files or folders from a specific point
in time.
File and folder backup Use this backup type to do the following:
• Back up and recover specific files and folders, for example
personal files that are stored in the My Documents folder.
• Back up and recover files of a specific type, for example
music (.mp3 or .wav) or photographs (.jpg or .bmp).
• Recover a specific version of a file from a specific point in
time.
Choosing a Ghost 12 backup type
There are two types of Ghost 12 backups available:
• Drive-based backup: Backs up an entire hard drive
• File and folder backup: Backs up only the files and folders that you select
Use the following guidelines to determine which type of backup to choose:
Initial Backup Screen
Decide what to do here
All done!
Backup in progress