Norton Ghost

So, whats the difference between Norton Ghost and Windows system restore? Aside from the hard drive copying.

What I'm asking is, specifically what it is meant by the term "Ghosting"? Also any in depth detail on what else it does.

Norton Ghost is used to make a copy of the entire contents of a hard drive or partition, either to another drive or partition, or to an image file (a file that may or may not be compressed, containing the same information as the source drive). This has to be done from outside Windows - you boot from a floppy or CD containing the Ghost executable. System Restore however, runs all the time within Windows XP and Me (unless turned off). It monitors system and program-related files for any changes, makes backups of anything that is changed and can, on demand, restore any changed files to theoretically return a system that has had these file damaged, removed or overwritten to the same state it was at before. System Restore *doesn't* back up documents, pictures, etc.

Ghost and similar cloning programs are useful for backing up an entire system for safety purposes (eg. for making a factory restore disc, or before doing major and potentially risky work like repartitioning a drive, upgrading the OS, etc), or for when you're setting up multiple hardware-identical computers (make one "master", clone it to the other computers). System Restore is only meant to be used as a simple way to get a system that was damaged by a bad software installation, virus, etc. back to working order. It's not a backup solution in any way, shape or form.