User manual SYMANTEC NORTON GHOST PERSONAL EDITION

[. . . ] Norton GhostTM Personal Edition User's Guide Norton GhostTM Personal Edition User's Guide The software described in this book is furnished under a license agreement and may be used only in accordance with the terms of the agreement. Copyright Notice Copyright Ó 1998­1999 Symantec Corporation. Any technical documentation that is made available by Symantec Corporation is the copyrighted work of Symantec Corporation and is owned by Symantec Corporation. The technical documentation is being delivered to you AS-IS and Symantec Corporation makes no warranty as to its accuracy or use. Any use of the technical documentation or the information contained therein is at the risk of the user. [. . . ] Image files are a useful way to store and reliably compress images of model system configurations, or to create backup copies of complete drives or partitions. The image files created with Norton Ghost have a . gho extension by default. Image files support: s s s s Various levels of compression CRC32 data integrity checking Splitting of media files Spanning across volumes If you also use the Ghost Explorer application, an image file companion utility, individual files from these image files can be recovered selectively without having to restore the complete partition or disk. Image files and compression Image files created in Norton Ghost support several levels of data compression. When using Norton Ghost in interactive mode, three compression options are provided: none, fast, and high. The Norton Ghost command-line switches provide access to nine levels of compression. As a general rule, the more compression you use, the slower Norton Ghost will operate. However, compression can improve speed when there is a data transfer bottleneck. There is a big difference in speed between high compression and no compression when creating an image file on a local disk. Over a NetBIOS connection, fast compression is often as fast as, or faster than, no compression. Over a parallel cable, high compression is often faster than no compression because fewer bytes need to be sent over the cable. Decompression of high-compressed images is much faster than the original compression. The level of compression you should select depends on your own individual requirements. 39 Chapter 3: Using Norton Ghost Image files and CRC32 Cyclic Redundancy Checking (CRC) is a data error checking technique. CRC ensures that the original data that was written to the image file is the same as the data that is being used from the image file. The 32 value in CRC32 indicates the CRC technique uses a 32-bit value to store error checking information. When image files are created, CRC32 details are embedded into the file to ensure image file corruption can be detected when it is being restored to disk. CRC32 is currently included on a file-by-file basis with FAT partitions and on a MFT table basis for NTFS partitions. In addition to image file error detection, the CRC values can be used to verify that image files and partitions or disks are identical. This can offer an additional detection method against bad sector writes and other drive anomalies that may be missed during normal imaging checks. A text file containing CRC values and associated file attributes can be generated using the -CRC32 command-line switch. These switches and functions are detailed in Appendix A. Image files and volume spanning Standard image files Standard image files consist of a single file that contains the contents of the complete disk or required partitions. This type of image file is used for storing system configurations on hard disk drives and tape drives where the volume is large enough and capable of holding the complete image file in one piece. Size-limited, multi-segment image files There are situations where it may not be practical to have a standard image file. Norton Ghost can split up an image file into segments (known as spans) that are limited to a user-specified size. [. . . ] 408 Victoria Road Gladesville, NSW 2111 Australia Automated Fax Retrieval +61 (2) 9850 1000 Fax: +61 (2) 9850 1001 +31 (71) 408 3111 Fax: +31 (71) 408 3150 +55 (11) 5561 0284 Fax: +55 (11) 5530 8869 (800) 441-7234 (USA & Canada) (541) 334-6054 (all other locations) Fax: (541) 984-8020 (800) 554-4403 (541) 984-2490 +31 (71) 408 3782 +61 (2) 9817 4550 Most International Partners provide Customer Service and Technical Support for Symantec products in your local language. For more information on other Symantec and International Partner locations, please call our Technical Support automated fax retrieval service, in the United States at +1 (541) 984-2490, choose Option 2, and request document 1400. Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of this information. However, the information contained herein is subject to change without notice. [. . . ]