Ghost (software)
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Ghost is a disk cloning program, originally produced by Binary Research, but purchased by Symantec in 1998. The Ghost program originated the market for disk-cloning software. The name Ghost originated as an acronym for "General Hardware-Oriented Software Transfer".
Murray Haszard originally wrote Ghost in 1996, building on experience with a parallel and serial file-copying program previously produced by Binary Research. Initially, Ghost supported only FAT filesystems directly, but it could also copy (although not resize) other filesystems by performing a sector copy. Ghost added support for the NTFS filesystem later in 1996, and also provided a program to change the Security ID (SID) that made Windows NT systems distinguishable from each other. Ghost added support for the ext2 filesystem in 1999 and for ext3 subsequently.
Binary Reseach developed Ghost in Auckland, New Zealand and, although a few functions (such as translation into other languages)now take place elsewhere, the main development and quality assurance remains in Auckland.
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Versions
The first versions of Ghost supported only the cloning of entire disks, but version 3.1 in 1997 allowed the cloning of individual partitions as well. Ghost could clone a disk or partition to another disk or partition, or to an image file, restorable either to another machine or the same machine later. Ghost allowed for writing a clone or image:
- to a second disk in the same machine
- to another machine linked by a parallel or network cable
- to a network drive
- to a tape drive
Version 4.0 of Ghost added multicast technology (following the lead of a competitor, ImageCast). Multicast allows sending a single image simultaneously to many machines without putting greater stress on the network than by sending an image to a single machine.
This version also introduced Ghost Explorer, a Windows program which allowed a user to browse the contents of an image file and extract individual files from it. Explorer as subsequently enhanced allowed users to add and delete files on FAT (and later on ext2 and on ext3) filesystems in an image. Ghost Explorer could extract files from NTFS images but not edit NTFS images. Ghost Explorer could work with images from older versions but only slowly; version 4 images contained indexes to find files rapidly.
Version 4.0 also moved from real-mode DOS to 286 protected-mode. The additional memory available allowed Ghost to provide several levels of compression for images, and to provide the file browser.
In 1998, Ghost 4.1 allowed for password-protected images.
Version 5.0 moved to 386 protected mode. Unlike the character-based user interface of earlier versions, 5.0 used a GUI. The Binary Research logo (two stars revolving around each other) played on the main screen while the program idled.
Gdisk, a scriptable partition manager, joined the growing suite of Ghost programs in 1998. Gdisk serves a role similar to Fdisk, but has greater capabilities.
Ghost 6.0 included a Console application in 2000 to simplify the management of large numbers of machines. The Console communicates with client software on managed computers to allow a system administrator to refresh the disk of a machine remotely.
As a DOS-based program, Ghost required machines running Windows to reboot to a DOS environment to run it. Ghost 6.0 required a separate DOS partition when used with the Console. Ghost 7.5 in 2002 created a 'Virtual Partition' instead - a DOS partition which actually exists as a file within a normal Windows filesystem. This significantly eased systems management. Ghost 7.5 also allows writing to as well as reading from an image of an NTFS partition. Ghost 7.5 could also write images to CD-R drives, and later versions can also write DVDs.
Ghost 2003, a consumer version of Ghost, does not include the Console but has a Windows front-end to script Ghost operations. The machine still needs to reboot to the Virtual Partition, but the user doesn't need to interact with DOS.
PowerQuest
At the end of 2003, Symantec acquired its largest competitor, PowerQuest. It then released Norton Ghost 9.0 on August 2, 2004 as a new consumer version of Ghost, based on version 7 (the last major version produced by PowerQuest before being acquired by Symantec) of PowerQuest's DriveImage product.
Phantom
The internal project name Phantom designated a complete rewrite of the Ghost cloning engine at Symantec in Auckland. The Phantom project ran for about three years in parallel with the ongoing development of the Ghost code. Some parts of the Phantom code, such as the ability to write to NTFS filesystems from MS-Dos, got folded into the main Ghost product. Symantec released a prototype of Phantom as Ghost for Manufacturing in 2003. In December 2004 the Phantom developers demonstrated that their cloning client ran twice as fast as either the existing Ghost code or the Ghost 9 (DriveImage) code. Higher management cancelled the project the same day. Symantec plans no further development for the original Ghost code either.
External links
- Symantec Corp. (http://www.symantec.com/)
- Norton Ghost product page (http://www.symantec.com/sabu/ghost/ghost_personal/)