i'm thinking about purchasing norton ghost, so if i format and fresh install xp, update and tweak it i can image it and restore in the future instead of the format/reinstall procedure again. my question is does anyone know approx how big the image would be?

No idea how big the image would be. I know with Norton Utilities you can make an image that will fit on ten floppies, so that must be a good guideline. What i don't understand is why you don't use Xp's "System Restore Points", they take up no room whatsoever. As soon as you've installed, create a new restore point, then if yur PC ever falls over, you can restore it to that fresh install.

With XP, it isn't worth the trouble. After you Fresh Install - Update and Tweak. Do This+++++++++++++++++++++ ============================================ Just go to Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/ System Restore == CLICK. Now create a restore point. Then when everything screws up, all you do is restore the unit to this point.

hello the first two obviusely dont under stand the benifits of norton ghost .i use it and have a partion i install norton ghost to if your main partion your copying from say is 10 gigs than a good rule of thumb is to have a 10 gig allso i have them on a seprate hard drive allso as a secuity percuation. and than have it hidden with partion magic. encrypted allso. and you can allso ghost to cd,s depending on how many gigs actualy used will depend on number of cds used. ghost is a veary worth while program to use.

Before buying Norton Ghost at $69.95 you might also want to consider PowerQuest Drive Image at $69.95 USD and Acronis True Image at $44.99. There is little difference between them as regards peformance although Drive Image and True Image are slightly easier to use than Norton Ghost. All three products offer image file compression and you can expect the compressed image to be about half the size of the used space on the partion to be imaged. The unused space is not imaged so it does not matter how large the partion is - it is only the used space that matters. It is a good idea to run Windows Washer or similar to get rid of unwanted files first to reduce the size of the image. You can save the image file to CDs or to another partion (even on the same drive). Don't even think about saving to floppies! I save the image to a second drive about once a month and to CDs about once every 3 months. I also use ERUNT to save copies of the WinXP configuration files. This is a very good program as it allows you to save copies as often as you want and all copies are retained until you delete them. Restoring the configuration files is simple and will solve most problems. An image file is the safest way to backup as it also saves the partition information so if the whole drive dies you can just copy the complete partition to a new drive. Since I can easily restore everything I have turned off system restore and saved the disk space. This also makes virus removal easier should the unthinkable happen. Happy Imaging!

I agree completely with the last trwo posts. System restore is fine up to a point. It does absolutely nothing to save your data. Turn it off and follow the above post to image your drive. I use Drive Image weekly and create the image on a second HD. If I have problems I simply restore the image and everything, including all data written up to the time the image was made, is restored to my system. Very handy. The Image file size on my drive is slightly larger than 8G. I am imaging a 60G HD at high density. I would recommend Drive Image over Norton Ghost as it is easier to use. If you want to make network images you may have to use Norton Ghost but for a one time image of your system use Drive Image. It can be run from the computer in question. Just set it up as a scheduled task and it will run when the computer is rebooted. Hope this helps.

I use Norton Ghost on this pc, a dual boot ME/XP system, system restores turned off. I use it to give me an image backup of both ME and XP onto a third partition. I run it once or twice a month, daily I use the program Replicator (from www.karenware.com) to backup my data files onto another drive. Drive Image is certainly another viable option, I guess I bought NG initailly about 3 years ago and use it. Al