Ghost Solution Suite

I've got GHO image file. I need to restore it. However, new version of Ghost doesn't support this type of image. What can I do ? If I buy Ghost V14, can I use older Ghost version then (i.e. downgrade) ?

 .GHO format images are created by the genuine original Ghost programs; after the release of Ghost 2003 however, the consumer version of Ghost was cancelled. What is now sold as "Ghost" in the consumer market isn't actually Ghost, it's another program entirely that is just re-using the Ghost brand. It shouldn't be considered a version of Ghost at all, it's something else entirely.

[ Genuine Ghost is still maintained and sold by Symantec, but only as it was originally, as a business rather than a consumer product, via Ghost Solution Suite or as a component of the Altiris Deployment solution. ]

If you still have Ghost 2003 (which is probably what you used to produce the image), the Ghost 2003 CD should be bootable and may allow you to restore the image. Also, I believe that some of the later versions of the consumer product that replaced genuine Ghost did include a Windows version of genuine Ghost on their recovery CDs purely for the purpose of restoring images taken with Ghost 2003, so you should try booting the system with the recovery CD you have and see whether it has a menu option to restore a .GHO image.

Hi Nigel,

no, the situation is this:

I got some GHO file from another person, I need restore it. The image was generated with Symantec Ghost 11.0. I don't have this software. So I bought the latest version of Ghost (V14). But it doesn't support GHO format. What can I do now ??? I can somehow get copy of Ghost 11.0 but is it legal ? If I have licence of the latest version of Ghost (V14), can I use older version of Ghost (11.0) or not ?

Thanks for your help.

The "Norton" consumer and "Symantec" enterprise product lines are quite different, and "Norton Ghost" is, despite the mis-use of the Ghost brand name, not Ghost nor anything remotely related to it (it's a "lite" consumer version of the product sold as Backup Exec System Recovery). Since you purchased it thinking it is a version of genuine Ghost, you should return it for a refund (Symantec has a 60-day refund policy for Norton-branded consumer products detailed at this page).

> I can somehow get copy of Ghost 11.0 but is it legal ?

No, it isn't. In fact, almost all third-party discussion of "Ghost 11.0" is actually referring to illegal, unlicensed use of the product.

There is no such product as Ghost 11.0; there is a genuine Ghost executable which identifies itself internally as version 11.0, but it was only ever sold as part of Ghost Solution Suite 2.0 and can only be legally used in conjunction with a suitable Ghost Solution Suite client license (or the single-use-only manufacturing licenses we sell to computer resellers).

Ok Nigel,

and what can I do now ?

I have looked for Ghost Solution Suite but with no success (Symantec doesn't offer such a software now).

It's evident that some people around the world use this Ghost Solution Suite (i.e. "Ghost 11.0"). If such a people pass to me generated image (*.GHO) what can I do ? I cannot buy suitable sw to restore GHO image. Why your products don't support this old GHO format ? Or why, let's say, is not possible to use legally "ghost 11.0" executable when buying Symantec Ghost V14 ??? This would solve my (and probably a lot of others people) problem !

What can I do now ? Should I somehow (i.e. ilegally) get copy of "ghost 11.0" executable to solve my problem ?
Bad situation !!!
:-(

> I have looked for Ghost Solution Suite but with no success

Look here, which is the product home page

> Symantec doesn't offer such a software now

Yes, we do. You're in the forum for that particular product, which we continue to develop and sell

GHOS T images created by ghost cast server are larger than those created manually.
Can we reduce the size of a an image on Ghost Cast Server ?

It seems that raw data is also included in the file image process creation. Is there anyway to compress only the filesystem to restore it as it is possible to do it with a single notorn ghost ?

For example, When I use Ghost Cast Server to create an image of a 30 GIGAS hard drive, it creates an image of 30 GIGAS even using file compression.