Norton Ghost makes deployment easier than manual rebuilds, but its dependence on hardware limits its flexibility.
These days, IT administrators need to support many different devices and configurations, so creating an image for each machine has become unmanageable. This means it works best when deploying devices with identical hardware, or to backup an existing machine. Norton Ghost works by copying the hard-disk drive, sector by sector, to create a clone of the operating system. Now, with diverse hardware environments and better alternatives for imaging, Ghost still has its place-but as a backup solution. Ten years ago, Norton Ghost was great for imaging and backup. Symantec Ghost) has been an industry leader for many years, but many customers are struggling to use Ghost in modern IT management environments that feature diverse hardware. Meanwhile, enjoy our original piece about Norton Ghost and SmartDeploy. Forbes has a more thorough history of the demise of Symantec. Macrium, who offers an alternative cloning solution for backing up disks, gives a concise account of the rise and fall of Norton Ghost. Although Norton Ghost is now gone, the main idea holds true for the other disk-cloning systems that replace it-namely, these cloning solutions may be just what you need for backup, but they are not the best imaging solution for deploying a common, consistent computing experience across every endpoint IT manages. Updated November 5, 2020: This blog post was published years ago, but people are still finding and reading it, so we’ll keep it here.