How to Ghost a Hard Drive

Ghosting a hard drive is a process that involves cloning a drive for backup and system recovery purposes. The term "ghost" when referring to this process is associated with the program Norton Ghost. Norton Ghost is the most popular disk-cloning software. Follow these steps to ghost your hard drive with Norton Ghost.

EditSteps

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   Get an external hard drive and hook it up via USB to your computer. Right click on "My Computer" on your desktop and choose "Open." Verify that the external hard drive is connected and shows up as a second drive on your computer.
2. 
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   Purchase the latest version of Norton Ghost from your favorite software retailer. Or, download the trial version of it by visiting http://norton-ghost.en.softonic.com/ and clicking the "Download" button. Save the file to your hard drive.
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   Close all applications and programs that are running on your computer, including Internet browsers. Be sure to also look in your system tray in the lower right corner of the screen and close any anti-virus or other programs that are running.
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   Install the program by putting the CD in the drive and following the installation wizard instructions if you purchased a copy of Norton Ghost from the store. If you downloaded the trial version, double click on the file you downloaded and follow the instructions on the installer wizard.
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   Launch your Norton Ghost program and click on "Ghost Advanced" on the left sidebar. Then select "Clone." Wait as the Clone Wizard window appears. Click "Next" to begin the wizard (On newer version of Ghost, choose "Copy hard drive" option under tools or task menu.
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   Select the source drive of the drive you want to ghost. Under the heading "Source," highlight "Disk 1" to select your hard drive and all of the partitions, if you have them. If you have partitions and want to ghost one or some of them, click on the partition. Hold down the "CNTRL" and click to select multiple partitions.
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   Look under the "Destination" heading and choose "Disk 2." Read the information under both the "Source" and "Destination" headings and make sure the source disk is smaller in size than the destination disk. Click "Next." Click "Cancel" if a screen with the heading "Device Information" appears as you will not need to use an external device to transfer your data to the ghost drive. Click "Next" again.
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   Review the information on the screen with the heading "Important/Advanced information." This screen informs you what the wizard is going to do next. Click the "Next" button. Then review the information on the Norton Ghost task summary page. This reminds you what you have told the Norton Ghost program to do. Click "Next."
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   Click "OK" or "Finish" to finish wizard and start the ghosting process. Wait as Norton Ghost completes the process. Your computer will automatically restart.