Ghost (an

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

for ''general hardware-oriented system transfer'') is a disk cloning and backup tool originally developed by

Murray Haszard Murray Hayden Haszard (born 11 May 1954) is a New Zealand entrepreneur and businessman who founded the companies B32 Software and Binary Research and is the chairman of Ilion Technology. B32 Software In 1983 he was contracted to convert Kiwi P ...

in 1995 for

Binary Research Binary Research Ltd was a company founded in Auckland, New Zealand by Murray Haszard in 1991 after the sale of his previous company, B32 Software. Binary Research initially considered developing competitors to the file transfer programs Blast an ...

. The technology was acquired in 1998 by

Symantec Symantec may refer to: *An American consumer software company now known as Gen Digital Inc. *A brand of enterprise security software purchased by Broadcom Inc. Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier ...

. The backup and recovery functionality has been replaced by Symantec System Recovery (SSR), although the Ghost imaging technology is still actively developed and is available as part of Symantec Ghost Solution Suite.

History

Binary Research developed Ghost in

Auckland Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The most populous urban area in the country and the fifth largest city in Oceania, Auckland has an urban population of about I ...

, New Zealand. After the Symantec acquisition, a few functions (such as translation into other languages) were moved elsewhere, but the main development remained in Auckland until October 2009 at which time much was moved to India. Technologies developed by 20/20 Software were integrated into Ghost after their acquisition by Symantec in April 2000.

Ghost 3.1

The first versions of Ghost supported only the cloning of entire disks. However, version 3.1, released in 1997 supports cloning individual

partitions Partition may refer to: Computing Hardware * Disk partitioning, the division of a hard disk drive * Memory partition, a subdivision of a computer's memory, usually for use by a single job Software * Partition (database), the division of ...

. Ghost could clone a disk or partition to another disk or partition or to an image file. Ghost allows for writing a clone or image to a second disk in the same machine, another machine linked by a parallel or network cable, a network drive, or to a tape drive.

Ghost 4.0 and 4.1

Version 4.0 of Ghost added

multicast In computer networking, multicast is group communication where data transmission is addressed to a group of destination computers simultaneously. Multicast can be one-to-many or many-to-many distribution. Multicast should not be confused wi ...

technology, following the lead of a competitor, ImageCast. Multicasting supports sending a single

backup In information technology, a backup, or data backup is a copy of computer data taken and stored elsewhere so that it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb form, referring to the process of doing so, is "back up", ...

image simultaneously to other machines without putting greater stress on the network than by sending an image to a single machine. This version also introduced Ghost Explorer, a

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...

program which supports browsing the contents of an image file and extract individual files from it. Explorer was subsequently enhanced to support adding and deleting files in an image with FAT, and later with

ext2 The ext2 or second extended file system is a file system for the Linux kernel. It was initially designed by French software developer Rémy Card as a replacement for the extended file system (ext). Having been designed according to the same ...

ext3 ext3, or third extended filesystem, is a journaled file system that is commonly used by the Linux kernel. It used to be the default file system for many popular Linux distributions. Stephen Tweedie first revealed that he was working on ext ...

and

NTFS New Technology File System (NTFS) is a proprietary journaling file system developed by Microsoft. Starting with Windows NT 3.1, it is the default file system of the Windows NT family. It superseded File Allocation Table (FAT) as the preferred fil ...

file system In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one larg ...

s. Until 2007, Ghost Explorer could not edit NTFS images. Ghost Explorer could work with images from older versions but only slowly; version 4 images contain indexes to find files rapidly. Version 4.0 also moved from

real-mode Real mode, also called real address mode, is an operating mode of all x86-compatible CPUs. The mode gets its name from the fact that addresses in real mode always correspond to real locations in memory. Real mode is characterized by a 20-bit s ...

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

to 286

protected mode In computing, protected mode, also called protected virtual address mode, is an operational mode of x86-compatible central processing units (CPUs). It allows system software to use features such as virtual memory, paging and safe multi-taskin ...

. The additional memory available allows Ghost to provide several levels of compression for images, and to provide the file browser. In 1998, Ghost 4.1 supports password-protected images.

Ghost 5.0 (Ghost 2000)

Version 5.0 moved to 386

. Unlike the

text-based user interface In computing, text-based user interfaces (TUI) (alternately terminal user interfaces, to reflect a dependence upon the properties of computer terminals and not just text), is a retronym describing a type of user interface (UI) common as an ear ...

of earlier versions, 5.0 uses a

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, ins ...

(GUI). The Binary Research logo, two stars revolving around each other, plays on the main screen when the program is idle. In 1998, Gdisk, a script-based partition manager, was integrated in Ghost. Gdisk serves a role similar to

Fdisk In computing, the fdisk command-line utility provides disk-partitioning functions, preparatory to defining file systems. fdisk features in the DOS, DR FlexOS, IBM OS/2, and Microsoft Windows operating systems, and in certain ports of ...

, but has greater capabilities.

Ghost for NetWare

A Norton Ghost version for

Novell NetWare NetWare is a discontinued computer network operating system developed by Novell, Inc. It initially used cooperative multitasking to run various services on a personal computer, using the IPX network protocol. The original NetWare product in ...

(called 2.0), released around 1999, supports NSS partitions (although it runs in

, like the others).

Ghost 6.0 (Ghost 2001)

Ghost 6.0, released in 2000, includes a management console for managing large numbers of machines. The console communicates with client software on managed computers and allows a

system administrator A system administrator, or sysadmin, or admin is a person who is responsible for the upkeep, configuration, and reliable operation of computer systems, especially multi-user computers, such as servers. The system administrator seeks to en ...

to refresh the disk of a machine remotely. As a DOS-based program, Ghost requires machines running Windows to reboot to DOS to run it. Ghost 6.0 requires a separate DOS partition when used with the console.

Ghost 7.0 / Ghost 2002

Released March 31, 2001, Norton Ghost version 7.0 (retail) was marketed as Norton Ghost 2002 Personal Edition.

Ghost 7.5

Released December 14, 2001, Ghost 7.5 creates a virtual partition, a DOS partition which actually exists as a file within a normal Windows file system. This significantly eased systems management because the user no longer had to set up their own partition tables. Ghost 7.5 can write images to

CD-R CD-R (Compact disc-recordable) is a digital optical disc storage format. A CD-R disc is a compact disc that can be written once and read arbitrarily many times. CD-R discs (CD-Rs) are readable by most CD readers manufactured prior to the i ...

discs. Later versions can write DVDs.

Symantec Ghost 8.0

Ghost 8.0 can run directly from Windows. It is well-suited for placement on bootable media, such as

BartPE BartPE (Bart's Preinstalled Environment) is a discontinued tool that customizes Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 into a lightweight environment, similar to Windows Preinstallation Environment, which could be run from a Live CD or Live USB drive. ...

′s bootable CD. The corporate edition supports

unicast Unicast is data transmission from a single sender (red) to a single receiver (green). Other devices on the network (yellow) do not participate in the communication. In computer networking, unicast is a one-to-one transmission from one point in ...

and

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer ...

transfers via

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the su ...

. Ghost 8.0 supports NTFS file system, although NTFS is not accessible from a DOS program.

Transition from DOS

The off-line version of Ghost, which runs from bootable media in place of the installed operating system, originally faced a number of driver support difficulties due to limitations of the increasingly obsolete 16-bit

environment. Driver selection and configuration within DOS was non-trivial from the beginning, and the limited space available on floppy disks made disk cloning of several different disk controllers a difficult task, where different

SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, electrical, optical and logical interface ...

, USB, and CD-ROM drives were involved. Mouse support was possible but often left out due to the limited space for drivers on a floppy disk. Some devices such as USB often did not work using newer features such as USB 2.0, instead only operating at 1.0 speeds and taking hours to do what should have taken only a few minutes. As widespread support for DOS went into decline, it became increasingly difficult to get hardware drivers for DOS for the newer hardware. Disk imaging competitors to Ghost have dealt with the decline of DOS by moving to other recovery environments such as

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...

or Windows PE, where they can draw on current driver development to be able to image newer models of disk controllers. Nevertheless, the DOS version of Ghost on compatible hardware configurations works much faster than most of the *nix based image and backup tools. Ghost 8 and later are Windows programs; as such, they can run on Windows PE,

or Hiren's BootCD and use the same plug and play hardware drivers as a standard desktop computer, making hardware support for Ghost much simpler.

Norton Ghost 2003

Norton Ghost 2003, a consumer edition of Ghost, was released on September 6, 2002. Available as an independent product, Norton Ghost 2003 was also included as a component of Norton SystemWorks 2003 Professional. A simpler, non-corporate version of Ghost, Norton Ghost 2003 does not include the console but has a Windows front-end to script Ghost operations and create a bootable Ghost

diskette A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined wi ...

. The machine still needs to reboot to the virtual partition, but the user does not need to interact with DOS. Symantec deprecated LiveUpdate support for Norton Ghost 2003 in early 2006.

Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 1.0 (Ghost 8.2)

Released November 15, 2004, Symantec renamed the Enterprise version of Ghost to ''Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 1.0''. This helped clarify the difference between the consumer and business editions of the product. According to Symantec, Symantec Ghost and Norton Ghost are two separate product lines based around different technologies developed by different teams. This was further defined in February 2006, with the release of Norton Save And Restore (also known as ''Norton Backup And Restore''), a standalone backup application based on Ghost 10.0.

Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 1.1 (Ghost 8.3)

Ghost Solution Suite 1.1 is a bundle of an updated version of Ghost, Symantec Client Migration (a user data and settings migration tool) and the former PowerQuest equivalent, DeployCenter (using PQI images). Ghost Solution Suite 1.1 was released in December 2005. It can create an image file that is larger than 2 GB. (In Ghost 8.2 or earlier, such image files are automatically split into two or more segments, so that each segment has a maximum size of 2 GB.) Other new features include more comprehensive manufacturing tools, and the ability to create a "universal boot disk".

Acquisition of PowerQuest

At the end of 2003, Symantec acquired its largest competitor in the disk-cloning field,

PowerQuest PowerQuest was a software company that produced utility software. It was acquired by Symantec in 2003. PowerQuest's market focus was on management of computer data storage, especially file systems and disk partitions. Their products include ...

. On August 2, 2004, Norton Ghost 9.0 was released as a new consumer version of Ghost, which is based on PowerQuest's Drive Image version 7, and provides Live imaging of a Windows system. Ghost 9 continues to leverage the PowerQuest file format, meaning it is not backward compatible with previous versions of Ghost. However, a version of Ghost 8.0 is included on the Ghost 9 recovery disk to support existing Ghost customers.

Norton Ghost 9.0 (includes Ghost 2003)

Ghost 9.0 was released August 2, 2004. It represents a significant shift in the consumer product line from Ghost 2003, in several ways: * It uses a totally different code base, based on the DriveImage/ V2i Protector product via Symantec's acquisition of

. * It is a Windows program that must be installed on the target system. * Images can be made while Windows is running, rather than only when booted directly into DOS mode. * Incremental images (containing only changes since the last image) are supported. * Requires

Product Activation Product activation is a license validation procedure required by some proprietary software programs. Product activation prevents unlimited free use of copied or replicated software. Unactivated software refuses to fully function until it ''determin ...

in order to function fully. * The bootable environment on the Ghost 9 CD is only useful for recovery of existing backups. It cannot be used to create new images. Since Ghost 9 does not support the older .gho format disk images, a separate CD containing Ghost 2003 is included in the retail packaging for users needing to access those older images. The limitations of Ghost 9 compared to Ghost 2003 were not well-communicated by Symantec, and resulted in many dissatisfied customers who purchased Ghost 9 expecting the previous version's features (like making images from the bootable Ghost environment, no installation required, and no product activation).

Norton Ghost 10.0

Supports creating images on CDs, DVDs,

Iomega Zip The Zip drive is a removable floppy disk storage system that was introduced by Iomega in late 1994. Considered medium-to-high-capacity at the time of its release, Zip disks were originally launched with capacities of 100 MB, then 25 ...

and Jaz disks as well as

IEEE 1394 IEEE 1394 is an interface standard for a serial bus for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer. It was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Apple in cooperation with a number of companies, primarily Sony an ...

(FireWire) and USB mass storage devices. Supports encrypting images and

Maxtor Maxtor was an American computer hard disk drive manufacturer. Founded in 1982, it was the third largest hard disk drive manufacturer in the world before being purchased by Seagate in 2006. History Overview In 1981, three former IBM employ ...

external hard disk drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magneti ...

s with Maxtor OneTouch buttons. Ghost 10.0 is compatible with previous versions, but not with future versions.

Norton Save And Restore 1.0 (Ghost 10.0)

Norton Save And Restore 1.0, released in February 2006, was the renamed consumer version of Ghost. It used Ghost 10.0's engine, with the addition of features to allow backup and restoration of individual files.

Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 2.0 (Ghost 11.0)

Ghost Solution Suite 2.0 was released in November 2006. This version provides significant improvements in performance, as well as the ability to edit NTFS images. This version also adds support for

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

x64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit version of the x86 instruction set, first released in 1999. It introduced two new modes of operation, 64-bit mode and compatibility mode, along with a new 4-level paging mod ...

versions of Windows, and

GUID Partition Table The GUID Partition Table (GPT) is a standard for the layout of partition tables of a physical computer storage device, such as a hard disk drive or solid-state drive, using universally unique identifiers, which are also known as globally uniqu ...

(GPT) disks. However, the software does not fully support systems with Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) firmware. Ghost 11.0 supports saving and restoring from native Ghost image format (.gho, .ghs) and raw images (.img, .raw).

Norton Ghost 12.0

Ghost 12.0 includes

support with an updated and more thorough user interface. It supports both full system backup and individual files or folders backup. This version provides a "LightsOut Restore" feature, which restores a system from an on-disk software recovery environment similar to Windows RE, thereby allowing recovery without a bootable CD. Upon system startup, a menu asks whether start the operating system or the LightsOut recovery environment. LightsOut restore would augment the

ISO image An optical disc image (or ISO image, from the ISO 9660 file system used with CD-ROM media) is a disk image that contains everything that would be written to an optical disc, disk sector by disc sector, including the optical disc file system. ...

, which comes with Ghost. The latter contains a recovery environment that can recover a system without a working operating system.

Norton Save & Restore 2.0 (Ghost 13.0)

NSR 2.0 has fewer features in comparison to Norton Ghost 12. NSR 2.0 offers one-time backups, file and folder backup, simplified schedule editor, Maxtor OneTouch integration and modifiable Symantec recovery disc. This version supports 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows XP and Vista.

Norton Ghost 14.0

Version 14.0 uses Volume Snapshot Service (VSS) to make backups and can store backups to an FTP site. Ghost can connect to ThreatCon, a Symantec service that monitors malware activity around the world, and performs

incremental backup An incremental backup is one in which successive copies of the data contain only the portion that has changed since the preceding backup copy was made. When a full recovery is needed, the restoration process would need the last full backup plus al ...

s when a specific threat level is reached. Other features include the ability to back up to

network-attached storage Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level (as opposed to block-level storage) computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a heterogeneous group of clients. The term "NAS" can refer to both the tech ...

devices and support for

partitions up to 16TB. Ghost can manage other installations of version 12.0 or later across a network. This version no longer supports opening .gho image files. It stores images in .v2i format. Incremental backup images created with Norton Ghost are saved with .iv2i filename extensions alone the original full backup (with .v2i filename extension) on a regular basis. Older .gho image files can be restored using Ghost Explorer, a separate utility.

Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 (Ghost 11.5)

The ghost software for enterprise, including Ghost 11.5, was released in May 2008. New features include: As of January 6, 2010, the latest build from Live Update is 11.5.1.2266 (Live Update 5 (LU5)). This updates Ghost Solution Suite to 2.5.1 and provides support for

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...

and

Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows Server 2008 R2 is the fifth version of the Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft and released as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generall ...

. Furthermore, Ghost 11.5 is compatible with

's bootable CD using
PE Builder plug-in for Symantec Ghost 11

Norton Ghost 15.0

According to the Norton community on Symantec's site, the following features are available in Norton Ghost 15:

Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 3.0 (Ghost 12.0)

The ghost software for enterprise, including Ghost 12.0 and Deployment Solution 6.9, was announced in March 2015.

Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 3.1 (Ghost 12.0)

The ghost software for enterprise, including Ghost 12.0 and Deployment Solution 6.9, was released on 7 March 2016.

Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 3.2 (Ghost 12.0)

The ghost software for enterprise, including Ghost 12.0 and Deployment Solution 6.9, was released on 18 May 2017. Release Update 3, which was released 22 September 2017, added support for the

ext4 ext4 (fourth extended filesystem) is a journaling file system for Linux, developed as the successor to ext3. ext4 was initially a series of backward-compatible extensions to ext3, many of them originally developed by Cluster File Systems for ...

filesystem.

Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 3.3 (Ghost 12.0)

The ghost software for enterprise, including Ghost 12.0 and Deployment Solution 6.9, was released on 31 October 2018. This release added support for Ghost Solution Suite Web Console, iPXE, Windows Server 2016, Smart raw imaging, 4K native drive support.

Features

Ghost is marketed as an OS deployment solution. Its capture and deployment environment requires booting to a Windows PE environment. This can be accomplished by creating an ISO (to burn to a DVD) or a USB bootable disk, installed to a client as an automation folder or delivered by a pxe server. This provides an environment to perform offline system recovery or image creation. Ghost can

mount Mount is often used as part of the name of specific mountains, e.g. Mount Everest. Mount or Mounts may also refer to: Places * Mount, Cornwall, a village in Warleggan parish, England * Mount, Perranzabuloe, a hamlet in Perranzabuloe parish, ...

a backup volume to recover individual files. Ghost can copy the contents of one

volume Volume is a measure of occupied three-dimensional space. It is often quantified numerically using SI derived units (such as the cubic metre and litre) or by various imperial or US customary units (such as the gallon, quart, cubic inch). ...

to another or convert a volume contents to a

virtual disk Virtual disk and virtual drive are software components that emulate an actual disk storage device. Virtual disks and virtual drives are common components of virtual machines in hardware virtualization, but they are also widely used for variou ...

in VMDK or VHD format. Initially, Ghost supported only FAT file system, although it could copy (but not resize) other file systems by performing a sector-by-sector transfer. Ghost added support for

later in 1996, and also provided a program, Ghostwalker, to change the Security ID (SID) that made

Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system. The first version of Win ...

systems distinguishable from each other. Ghostwalker is capable of modifying the name of the

computer from its own interface. Ghost added support for the

file system in 1999 and for

subsequently. Support for

was added in September 2017.

Discontinuation

Norton Ghost was discontinued on April 30, 2013. Support via chat and knowledge base was available until June 30, 2014. Until it was removed, the Symantec Ghost Web page invited Ghost customers to try Symantec System Recovery, described as software for backup and disaster recovery.

References

External links

Symantec Ghost – Solution suite
(previously Norton Ghost Enterprise Edition) product page
Symantec News
{{Symantec Gen Digital software Proprietary software Backup software Storage software Disk cloning