I currently use norton systemworks 2005 for antivirus and drive imaging. I'm unhappy with norton's large footprint on my system resources and slow boot times. I would appreciate suggestions for replacing these two applications (especially ghost). Most tech reviews don't address the system resource issue. Thank you.
We use Acronis for imaging... can't recommend any AV... cj... _________________ HAVE STOP - WILL TRADE If You Have The Vision We Have The Code
None so far but we are not deploying it for heavy use... just lite use so maybe you could see if there are any other opinions on it hanging out on the net... It was given the highest rating by PC mag... for drive imagining... cj... ________________ HAVE STOP - WILL TRADE If You Have The Vision We Have The Code
Acronis True Image will also clone your hard drive, which is much faster and more reliable than "imaging". For free AV, try AVG, Avast, AntiVir.
I prefer AVG to NAV, runs much quicker, takes up much, much memory when loaded and doesn't slow down your computer hardly at all. As for Ghost, are you using it for backups? I'd prefer a dedicated hardware solution like RAID-1 mirroring. Plenty of IDE/SATA cards that'll do that with a spare drive and makes an identical copy in real-time. No CPU overhead and the backup is fully bootable. When a drive fails, just swap drives and that's it. Some of these controllers will even let you do live swaps with the computer running and have zero down-time; pretty handy in a server.
I use AVG free and Acronis True Image. I'm assuming the AVG works correctly as I never seem to get any viruses via email anymore (my ISP perhaps?) and the True Image ROCKS ROCKS ROCKS. Did a full wipe out of my laptop, installed XP and Office 2003 (and all 50000000000 gigs of patches from MS) plus True Image. Configured XP and Office the way I wanted then did an image of the disk at that point. Saved that *.tib file to a DVD and now I've got my entire laptop as an emergency DVD with the Acronis disk. When it's time to wipe and reinstall the laptop, the entire process takes about 15 minutes from start to finish. I then of course have to install the apps but that's fine with me as I get all new copies of stuff off the respective websites (e.g. Esignal, Tradestation etc). Works perfectly for me.
two very good and popular AV's are NOD32 and Kaspersky. officially the full versions cost money. alternatively, you can run comprehensive full AV scans for free (but you'll have to remove viruses manually, and no real time protection): from Symantec: http://security.symantec.com/ from Kaspersky: http://www.kaspersky.com/virusscanner (goto Online Scanner) also check out the informative http://www.av-comparatives.org/ be aware that Norton is considered a serious resource hog and it is highly recommended not to install it, definitely not to use its real time virus protection.
After researching all the leads, AVG and True Image look like winners. Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. Regards, William