Hello, the reason I purchased Norton Ghost was so that after I reformat my computer, I can restore all of my personal settings. See I use my computer for everything, video games, map creation, music creation, movie creation, php, the list goes on. After a few months all of the junk files and drivers make my pc lag a bit. A reformat always seems to make my PC run very fast, so I tend to do this every few months. So here is my question: Should I reformat my drive, reinstall Windows, then run the Norton Ghost backup? Or can I simply run the Norton Ghost backup now, and it would erase everything that I have added after the backup, and restore it so that it would perform just like a reformat? Please respond, and thanks

Hi Greatgamer, Which version of Norton Ghost have you purchased? i_XpUser

I have Norton Ghost 9.0 Thanks

just use the ghost backup, that will make your system exactlyl ike it was on the day it was made, no need to install windows again first.

Ghost captures an "image" of your computer at the time you run it. This includes all settings, programs, files; the entire contents of the drive or partition. When you restore a Ghost image you get back exactly what was on the drive at the time you made the image. So formatting, installing Windows, and then restoring a Ghost image would accomplish nothing. When you restored the image you would be overwriting the Windows installation and returning your computer to the state it was in before you started. To be effective, Ghost should be used to capture an image of your computer in a state you would actually want it to return to. So yes, the best thing would be to reinstall Windows, get it running the way you like it, then make the Ghost image. You can use this image to restore your computer to a newly-installed-Windows state at any time in the future. Be aware that doing so will, as you suspected, erase everything added to the drive after the image was made. Including your documents.

Thanks a lot very informative :D

Hi Greatgamer again, Just in case you didn't know, Norton Ghost 9 used to be Drive Image 7, formerly owned by PowerQuest. i_XpUser