Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Just a couple of quick tests I ran with a "blank" Windows XP Pro image under VMware (hosted on an Athlon64/3200 with 2GB RAM):
I started with an 8GB virtual drive, all space pre-allocated. I split the drive into two 4GB partitions and installed XP Pro + Updates on one, along with Ghost 2003 and TrueImage Home build 3633.
This occupied 1.84GB of disk space, total.
I then created a Ghost backup of the C: drive using the default options (Normal compression). Ghost needed 3:15 to run the backup and return to Windows (including reboot time) and made a 1.14GB backup file.
TrueImage ran the same backup in 1:12, did not need to reboot, and made a 1.02GB file. The restore time for that image to the same location was 54 seconds from the same virtual hard disk.
One of the things I've long disliked about TrueImage is that it did not support backup directly to DVDs. The current build does support DVD. Finally. I am more than a little disappointed that there's no option to write the Restore environment to the same disc as the image files, something that Ghost does automatically when writing to a removable disc. I'm fairly certain I could use ISObuster or a similar tool to manually produce such a disc, but I'm annoyed that I would have to, and I certainly wouldn't want to try to talk a customer through doing it. A restore from a TrueImage file to a blank hard disk pretty much takes two CDs/DVDs and at least one disc swap. Yuck.
Acronis' recovery supports "odd" disk formats far better than Ghost; I was able to restore from a USB1.1 removable drive and from a 2GB thumb drive. Neither were supported under Ghost. The Acronis boot environment also directly supports ethernet and TCP/IP - I was able to connect to a Windows server to search for .TIB files.
Scripting: Ghost is a DOS program, and it is possible to write scripts as .BAT files that work very well. Ghost is also limited in that fashion, in that files called from DOS must be in DOS-readable locations, even though Ghost itself supports CDs/DVDs/NTFS/some USB and Firewire devices. TrueImage can also be scripted. I note that the scripting support includes semaphors for dealing with storage that might be inaccessible under DOS, but TrueImage scripts appear to be more useful in Windows. I'm not sure it's possible to script the Recovery Manager.
Cost: TrueImage Home is $20 or so for an OEM copy. Ghost 2003 is $7 for an OEM copy.
At the end of the day, I can see a place for both products. Ghost 2003 is still a clear winner for doing deployments; needing two discs to use TrueImage is a killer. For standard day-to-day backups and for end-user needs, TrueImage is probably the the best choice. It's faster and much more flexible in its operation.
I started with an 8GB virtual drive, all space pre-allocated. I split the drive into two 4GB partitions and installed XP Pro + Updates on one, along with Ghost 2003 and TrueImage Home build 3633.
This occupied 1.84GB of disk space, total.
I then created a Ghost backup of the C: drive using the default options (Normal compression). Ghost needed 3:15 to run the backup and return to Windows (including reboot time) and made a 1.14GB backup file.
TrueImage ran the same backup in 1:12, did not need to reboot, and made a 1.02GB file. The restore time for that image to the same location was 54 seconds from the same virtual hard disk.
One of the things I've long disliked about TrueImage is that it did not support backup directly to DVDs. The current build does support DVD. Finally. I am more than a little disappointed that there's no option to write the Restore environment to the same disc as the image files, something that Ghost does automatically when writing to a removable disc. I'm fairly certain I could use ISObuster or a similar tool to manually produce such a disc, but I'm annoyed that I would have to, and I certainly wouldn't want to try to talk a customer through doing it. A restore from a TrueImage file to a blank hard disk pretty much takes two CDs/DVDs and at least one disc swap. Yuck.
Acronis' recovery supports "odd" disk formats far better than Ghost; I was able to restore from a USB1.1 removable drive and from a 2GB thumb drive. Neither were supported under Ghost. The Acronis boot environment also directly supports ethernet and TCP/IP - I was able to connect to a Windows server to search for .TIB files.
Scripting: Ghost is a DOS program, and it is possible to write scripts as .BAT files that work very well. Ghost is also limited in that fashion, in that files called from DOS must be in DOS-readable locations, even though Ghost itself supports CDs/DVDs/NTFS/some USB and Firewire devices. TrueImage can also be scripted. I note that the scripting support includes semaphors for dealing with storage that might be inaccessible under DOS, but TrueImage scripts appear to be more useful in Windows. I'm not sure it's possible to script the Recovery Manager.
Cost: TrueImage Home is $20 or so for an OEM copy. Ghost 2003 is $7 for an OEM copy.
At the end of the day, I can see a place for both products. Ghost 2003 is still a clear winner for doing deployments; needing two discs to use TrueImage is a killer. For standard day-to-day backups and for end-user needs, TrueImage is probably the the best choice. It's faster and much more flexible in its operation.
