Norton Ghost is one disk imaging and cloning tool that firstly developed in the 1990s. It can help you make backup images of the whole hard disk, selected partitions or only those files that mean the most to you. When something goes wrong, Norton Ghost can restore your computer to previous functional status. Besides, it can also help you clone one hard drive to another hard drive.

In a word, if you want to make an image back for your computer or want to clone to the new hard drive, Norton Ghost is not a bad choice. However, now Norton Ghost is no longer available for the Home user. It was discontinued by Symantec in 2013. Indeed you can still download the latest version – Norton Ghost 15, but it only offers 30-day free trial and then you need to pay for it.

How to Use Norton Ghost 15 Step by Step

Here in this guide, you will get the detailed steps about how to use Norton Ghost 15. You can simply search “Norton Ghost 15 download” via your browser to get the tool. As we have we mentioned above, it only offers 30-days free trial. If you prefer a free tool to help you backup, restore or clone your hard drive, you can refer to the next part to get the best free alternative to Norton Ghost.

How to Use Norton Ghost to Create an Image

1. Install Norton Ghost and open it. It will run a step-by-step wizard the first time you open it. At last, you will see the Easy Setup interface where you can create a backup at once. You can also click Cancel option and set the backup task later.

2. On the Home screen, you can create a backup task by clicking Define Backup Wizard or Run or Manage Backups. Here we choose the latter one.

3. The Easy Setup screen will appear.

  • You can click OK to accept the default settings or click a setting to modify it.
  • Or you can click Custom… to create a backup according to your needs.

4. Finally, click OK to confirm.

How to Use Norton Ghost to Restore Image

Click Recover My Files if you want to recover files or folder, or Recover My Computer to make it.

Recover My Files:

1. On Recover My Files screen, you can find the files you want to restore through File and Folder & Recovery Point.

2. Whichever you choose, you can type the file name you need in the box under Find files to recover and click Search to find it.

3. After the scanning, select the file you need and click Recover Files…

Recover My Computer:

On Recover My Computer screen, find and choose the right system restore point and click Recover Now to make it.

Note: If your computer cannot run Windows normally, you can use the Symantec Recovery Disk CD to help you boot your computer. Depending on which version of the product you have purchased, Symantec Recovery Disk is either included on your product CD or as a separate CD. If you don’t have a floppy drive, you can create a Norton Ghost Bootable USB as instead.

How to Use Norton Ghost to Clone a Drive

1. Connect your new hard drive to your computer.

2. On the Tools page, click Copy My Hard Drive and follow the steps in the wizard to copy the drive.

Note: The drivers that are used to run the hardware on one computer will likely not match the drivers on a second computer. So you’d better not use the Copy Drive feature to set up a hard drive that will be used in another computer.

Best Free Alternative to Norton Ghost

AOMEI Backupper Standard is one backup, restore and clone software designed for Windows users. Supports all Windows OS including Windows 10/8.1/8/7. It offers more powerful functions compared to Norton Ghost, and it’s free.

Create Image Backup

It offers 4 backup options for you to choose: system backup, file backup, disk backup, and file backup. Besides, you can create a custom schedule backup. Then it will automatically perform the backup daily/weekly/monthly.

Notes:

1. You can save the backup image on your hard drive, to the external hard drive, the USB flash drive, the network drive.

2. In case your computer cannot start normally, you can create a bootable media using CD/DVD or USB flash drive in advance to help boot your computer. When your computer goes wrong, you can boot the computer using the bootable media and perform a system restore to get everything back to normal.

Restore Disk & Files

If you have created a backup with AOMEI Backupper, you can easily perform a restore anytime you want. You can choose to restore hard disk drive, the system, partition or files/folders to the point you ever backup.

Note:

With AOMEI Universal Restore feature, you can restore a backup image, system image in particular, created on one computer to another one that has dissimilar hardware installed. It can also help you reinstall the system if you are planning to change the hardware such as motherboard, CPU, etc.

Clone Hard Drive

You can directly clone hard drive to another one with the disk clone feature. All data on the disk including operating system, applications, configuration settings, all partitions, etc. will be transferred to the destination. It even allows you to clone larger HDD to smaller SSD.

Note:

The System Clone feature can help you only clone system to new hard drive but this feature is available in higher version. If you are interested in, you can upgrade to AOMEI Backupper Pro to enjoy it.