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Converting Norton Ghost 15.0 to SSR 2013

Geoff_HH
Level 2

We have recently received notification that Norton Ghost has been discontinued and consequently a free 60-day trial of SSR 2013 is being offered. It clearly states that Ghost must first be uninstalled, but nowhere is there any up front statement of "backward compatibility". The 309 page SSR 2013 User's Guide does not have the word "ghost" in the text. The absence, in your message to Norton Ghost users, of any reference to backward compatibility suggests that the two products are completely different. After all, if there was a simple conversion path, I am sure your marketing people would have made a clear, bold statement about this in trying to retain Norton Ghost users.

Our assumption, therefore, is that SSR is not 100% backward compatible; and therefore we should be advising clients NOT to uninstall Norton Ghost, NOT to install the new SSR 2013, BUT to switch to Acronis True Image instead.

Is our assumption a reasonable one? If not, where is the documentation about transition and conversion from Ghost to SSR? Obviously we are not going to risk our reputation or damage to clients based on casual and possibly ambiguous comments in a forum. At the very least, we would expect to see an officially documented Symantec technical statement about backward compatibility, transition, conversion tools, etc.

19 REPLIES 19

bwallan
Not applicable

Exactly my question?  Will SSR read and recover Ghost 15 archives??  Very important to our operation!

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

Yes, SSR 2013 is backward compatible with Ghost 15.

JasonInVegas
Level 2

Geoff and Chris,

My (and others') first-hand experiences say "no, SSR 2013 is not compatible with Ghost 15." 

Further, SSR2013 is incompatible with Windows 7 x64-bit in many typical installs.

There are significant obstacles to uninstalling Ghost 15.0 and to installing SSR 2013; the latter has problems with vPro Console as described in these Symantic Tech articles (which by the way provide incomplete and/or inneffective problem resolution:  TECH212199 ; TECH209151

 

Definately DO NOT install SSR2013 util the above has been resolved by Symantic at a strategic level!

cyclingcpa
Level 4

Hi To All,

I have been holding off on SSR 2013 as replacement for Ghost 15. So, what to do?

This post is not reassuring. I am never a pioneer for obvious reasons. 

If there is a link to SSR 2013 as a replacement for Ghost 15 I would appreciate the link. 

Thanks

djosh512
Not applicable

Can the Symantec System Recovery Disk recovered Ghost 10 images. I have this issue with my CD Drive, it is no longer working. I have Ghost 10 and would like to restore my computer. But Ghost 10 does not have a USB support so I can only boot off the CD.

I heard of the 60 day trial to Symantec System Recovery (SSR) 2013 Desktop edition. I was wonding if I installed that I can boot of the USB Drive and restore my Ghost 10 image. 

Any suggesting that are free. 

Thanks

 

Can I use a Ghost 15 trail to restore a Ghost 10 image from usb boot?

Bill_Wood1
Level 2

For what it is worth, I just tried to replace a good operating Ghost 15 installation on my 64-bit Dell T7600 Precision Workstation.  Just to be safe I did a Ghost 15 full backup so I could get back where I was.  Then I removed Ghost 15 using the original Ghost 15 Installation disk.  Next I installed SSR 2013 Desktop and made a custom SSR 64-bit Recovery DVD after adding 64-bit drivers for my LSI RAID card. 

When I booted up using the custom recovery disk I got an error saying I did not have enough memory to make a RAM Dist.  Got the same thing after trying all the supplied Symantec SSR disks.  Appanently SSR 2013 Desktop 32 or 64-bit recovery disks do not like my Dell Workstation.  Anyone else have similar problems?

Bill_Wood1
Level 2

An update after finding the problem:  My Dell T7600 Workstation has a parameter in the BIOS called PCI MMIO Space.  I had it on "Large."  That prevents SSR 2013 Desktop from accessing enough memory to run.  When I switch3ed it to :Small" SSR 2013 Desktop ran as good as Ghost 15.  If you use a DVD it loaded rather slow taking several minutes to get where it runs.   I found that making a SSR Recovery using a 90 MB/s USB2 memory chip, it loaded in about 90 seconds.

cyclingcpa
Level 4

Bill, 

I will be riveted to your post as I have a W7 64 bit Dell T3600 Precision Workstation with 8 GB RAM. After reading through SSR 2013 posts I am more than uncomfortable.

After a ghastly learning curve Ghost 15 is operating well. However, I do not want to make the investment in time for SSR 2013 that I did for Ghost.

I am also considering W7 image backup but only the smurfs at Microsoft could comment on the W7 image learning curve. I am more likely to get information on this from a dead person than the MS smurfs.

 

Bill_Wood1
Level 2

There is an update that will appear after it is blessed by the moderators. That says that my problem was fixed by a Bios change that switched the PCI MMIO size to small. So SSR 2013 now works for me on a T7600. However, SSR 2013 appears to be an exact copy of Ghost 15 with a few new bells and whistles added as well as the ability to restore an image with a 64-bit Recovery Disk. Ghost 15 only has a 32-bit recovery disk, but is is very reliable once you get everything working. I go back to 1995 with the original Ghost utility and after Norton bought the product, through the various Norton Ghost iterations. Since Ghost 15 came out it has been very stable and easy to install and configure once you get up the very steep learning curve. You really will not gain much if you stay with Win-7 64 bit. I wanted to try out SSR 2013 to see how it differs from Ghost 15. So far it looks good. The only drawback so far is the slower loading of the SSR Recovery DVD. But that is due to it being much larger than Ghost 15. It is a lot faster using a 90 MB/sec USB2 memory stick.

cyclingcpa
Level 4

Bill,

Glad to hear you are a veteran of the Ghost wars. I am a 2 year rookie.

Thanks very much for the good news. You say 

        However, SSR 2013 appears to be an exact copy of Ghost 15 with a few new bells and whistles. Good news indeed.

Despite the Ghost learning curve I am also satisfied with the product. I have restored an XP image in December, 2012 with some anxiety but in the end no drama. Restore was succesfull. Now that I have so much time in Ghost it make sense to move up to SSR 2013. I will give this a shot and report back after the holidays. Attached is a screen shot of my existing Ghost backup jobs. I think I have this covered but would appreciate any of your veteran comments.

I have to review the restore image steps but I think I have to restore in the following order. I will double check the order before I install SSR 2013. I have the latest 8/2013 SSR 2013 users guide on my desktop. Assuming C SSD goes bad order would be:

Dell Utility

Win Recovery

RPS or IRP of C whichever is more up to date. 

Thanks again for your help.

Bob

monsieurms
Level 4

I'm relieved to read this.

I just dl'd SSR 2013 in preparation of changing over from XP sp3 to Win 8.1 64 bit.

SO far I am still on the XP machine.

SSR 2013 has no trouble reading old Ghost 10 files, including password protected files, but I'm doing new SSR backups anyway.

The tech pre-sales assured me that there would be no problem restoring these 32 bit backups to a new 8.1 machine, at least just as files and data. (Obviously, as unskilled as I am, even I know the system will have to be set up, programs reinstalled and upgraded, given a new computer and dramatically different OS.)

 

So, hopefully there are no bugs in this extremely simple plan. It's just a home computer. I'm not an IT guy or running a company. Just:

1. DL the 64 bit version when I have the new machine (they assured me the activation code would work on that, even though I am now using it on a 32 bit machine!)

2. Pull up my backups from my externalHD and restore my data to some location on the disk.

 

I have to say, though, had I know how blazing fast SSR was going to be compared to Ghost 10, I would've done this earlier. Backups seem to complete in about 2/3rds of the time. (I'll have to measure that more carefully!)

 

EDIT---SSR just completed a backup in about 2:15 that used to take over 5 1/2 hours. I'm impressed.

TRaj
Level 6
Employee Accredited

I thank all the guys who have taken their own experiences with SSR 2013

Welcome to SSR and we techs will be glad to provide you the best support possible!

However SSR 2013 is as stable as Ghost 10

monsieurms
Level 4

Stability aside, is there any issue doing what I described with SSR? Taking a backup made on XP (32 bit) and restoring the files to a Win 8 computer (64 bit). Of course, I understand that I can't just restore the image. But there won't be any issue restoring the files from the 32 bit backup?

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

If you are talking about restoring 'user' data, not system files, I don't see any issues with this.

monsieurms
Level 4

Yes, correct. I understand I will have to reinstall programs appropriate for the new OS, but documents, photos, mp3s, etc. I would of course want to restore.

TRaj
Level 6
Employee Accredited

You can use the option "Run Recovery point set"and mount the rescovery point , then get the documents , photos , mp3 files restored to a location allocated and off course you will have no issues.

jonw9
Not applicable

I understand that with appropriate effort, SSR 2013 will work OK with 64-bit Win 7.  But I haven't seen whether it can read Ghost 15 backups?  If not, then any need to restore from the Ghost 15 era would require uninstalling SSR 2013 and reinstalling Ghost 15, completing the recovery, then doing the whole uninstall/reinstall cycle again to return to SSR 2013.  Sounds terrible.  

Are  my assumptions correct?

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

Are  my assumptions correct?

No, they are not wink

Please refer to my earlier comment in this thread from October...

Bill_Wood1
Level 2

I agree with Chris. SSR 2013 can read, extract and restore from Ghost 15 backups! It even has some added capability that is even better than a restore with Ghost 15, like being able to run from a memory stick instead of a CD/DVD.