This list is not a long list but it is a good list for people looking for a free alternative to Norton ghost. As the open source projects listed below (in no particular order)mature they just keep getting better and better leaving the end user with software that is a great alternative to the commercial gold standard. The list was made so you dont have to sift throgh thousands of search engine results for the same three apps.


Free, Open-source Ghost
Free, Open-source Ghost (FOG) is a computer imaging suite that is designed to be a free alternative to Ghost or Zenworks. It can be used to image Windows XP and Vista PCs using PXE, DHCP, PartImage, and a Web GUI to tie it all together.

FOG is good for anyone running Windows XP and Vista with a single partition. Right now FOG can only handle a single partition on the hard disk. FOG is currently being used by many schools and small businesses who can't afford the licensing of commercial products like Ghost.



FOG Hompage



PING

Partimage Is Not Ghost (PING) is a live Linux ISO based on LFS (Linux From Scratch). It can be burnt on a CD and booted, or integrated in a PXE/RIS environment. Several tools that make it the perfect choice for easily backing up and restoring whole partitions are included. It supports backups to and from SMB shares, backup of BIOS data, the ability to blank the local admin's password, creation of bootable restoration DVDs, the ability to partition and format a disk before installing Windows, and more.



PING Homepage




Partition Image

Partition Image is a Linux/UNIX utility similar to Symantec's Ghost. This uility saves partitions in the EXT2, Reiserfs, NTFS, HPFS, FAT16, and FAT32 file system formats to an image file. The image file can be compressed with gzip or bzip2 in order to save disk space, and it can be split in order to fit onto a series of floppy disks. This program can be useful for backup purposes. A boot/root disk is also provided, allowing you to run Partition Image without Linux installed on the hard disk.



Partition Image Homepage

g4u

g4u ("ghost for unix") is a boot-floppy/CD that allows one to easily clone PC hard disks by using FTP. This is often done to deploy a common setup on a number of PCs. The floppy/CD offers two functions: it uploads the compressed image of a local hard disk to an FTP server, and then it can retrieve that image via FTP, uncompress it, and write it back to disk. Network configuration is fetched via DHCP. As the hard disk is processed as an image, any filesystem and operating system can be deployed using g4u. Easy cloning of local disks as well as partitions is also supported.



g4u Homepage



Linbox Rescue Server

The Linbox Rescue Server (LRS) is a tool to centralize hard disk images (like Ghost Enterprise Server), file backups, hardware and software inventory (with Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X agents), secure software deployment using OpenSSH, and remote access on a single server. It can be managed from any PC through a Web-based administration interface, and disk images can be restored using PXE boot or using a bootable CD or DVD. It supports Ext2/3, ReiserFS, XFS, JFS, and LVM v1/v2.



Linbox Rescue Server Hompage



Clonezilla

Clonezilla is a partition or disk cloning tool similar to Symantec Ghost. It saves and restores only blocks in use on the hard drive if the file system is supported. For unsupported file systems, dd is used instead. It has been used to clone a 5 GB system to 40 clients in about 10 minutes.



Clonezilla Homepage



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