which is faster among the 3

[eXTREME2002]

Assuming the same PC configuration and a NTFS formatted drive, which app of these is faster:

1. Drive Image 2002 (version 6.0)
2. Drive Image 7.01
3. Norton Ghost 2003

Hoping that some geek here have got a stopwatch and made this race ?

[isus]

i don't know which is faster, but i would pick drive image 7... norton does nav well, but the other stuff is sketchy in my opinion.

[origin]

as for speed, I couldn't really say but norton usually makes shitty products to put out, but i actually like norton's ghost product better. not all about speed it's gets the job done right and has quality results. I'm pleased and so should you!

l8

[The Gauge]

I've used all 3 and, in order of compression speed, rate them in the following order:

1. DriveImage 7
2. Norton Ghost
3. DriveImage 2002

DriveImage 7 definitely has the quickest compression speed with Ghost and DI 2002 roughly the same.

However, Ghost produces the largest (least compressed) images, whereas both versions of Drive Image are roughly the same size (except that v7 is much faster at compressing).

However, I've stopped using DriveImage 7 because you need to install the .NET runtime environment and, all in, the installation takes up about 100MB! Also you have to boot off the CD into the "Drive Image Recovery Console" anyway in order to restore your system drive, but booting off the CD takes SO LONG that any time saved during the compression is lost waiting for the b*tch to boot up so you can restore it. It's enterprise level stuff, really... like Win2000/XP, the bootCD (very slowly) loads just about every driver known to man which, for your average home user, means sitting there for 6 minutes with a clattering CD-Rom waiting for it to boot with a load of scsi/raid/network drivers you'll never need. It also installs an Integrity Checking service that runs continuously and seems to do very little.... in a word, BLOATED. So bloated, in fact, that I'm surprised Norton haven't bought it and badged it as their own.

Stick with DriveImage 2002, in my opinion. It takes 10MB on a boot CD instead of a 100MB harddrive installation, boots in about 2% of the time, gives you the same compression level as v7... it just takes a little while longer to make the image.

Better still, find and download Hiren's Boot CD and use it off that instead.