Symantec Corp. announced the release of Norton Ghost 10.0, one of the most complete, easy-to-use backup and recovery solutions available to consumers today. Scheduled to be available in late September, the latest version of Norton Ghost provides consumers with an effortless and adaptive tool for backing up their entire computer and ensuring quick, easy and convenient file-level or complete system recovery.
Norton Ghost 10.0 takes the guesswork, worry and complexity out of backup and recovery. Rather than requiring users to search for the right files and folders to backup – hoping they don’t miss favorite photos or critical tax records – Norton Ghost 10.0 captures the contents of the entire drive, including all files, folders, system settings and customizations, ensuring backups are complete every time. With a full backup, consumers can be confident they’ll be able to conduct a complete recovery in one easy step after a serious crash, whether it’s a few files or folders or their entire system if necessary.
“Consumers are more dependent on their computers than ever before, storing valuable files, irreplaceable photos and a library of music that may have taken countless hours to organize. At the same time, system failure, user error, data corruption and malicious code can occur anytime and result in lost files or an irreparably damaged hard drive,” said Matthew Moynahan, vice president, consumer products and solutions, Symantec Corp. “Consumers need a solution like Norton Ghost 10.0, which makes backup and recovery of important data and files easy and convenient for users at all levels of computing sophistication.”
Norton Ghost 10.0 provides personalized protection through best practice storage detection. This unique technology automatically detects when new storage devices are added to the computer and determines which drives should be backed up and which are optimal storage destination locations. New recovery point capabilities focus on points in time rather than images, conforming to the way users think about backup and recovery. Event-triggered recovery points are also provided, enabling users to create personalized recovery points based on user-initiated events. In addition, performance throttling adjusts system resource usage based on present computing needs to more effectively utilize resources when creating recovery points.
Another new feature in Norton Ghost 10.0 is the ability to reconcile recovery points, which helps reduce the amount of storage being used by each recovery point set. In the event of an improper system shutdown, such as a power failure or hard reset, Norton Ghost 10.0’s reconciliation capabilities allow consumers to continue to perform incremental backups on their system for the same initial base – even when the system’s state has changed between baseline and scheduled recovery points.
Norton Ghost 10.0 offers a simplified, easy-to-use interface that reduces the complexity of backup and recovery by requiring less interaction and navigation to perform backup tasks. The interface also uses clear words and phrases to ease recovery. Optimized recovery point storage automatically monitors and manages the amount of disk space necessary to store recovery points – a capability unique to Norton Ghost 10.0. Additionally, an enhanced Symantec Recovery Disk interface ensures that recovery is fast and simple by categorizing and organizing tasks associated with recovery. The Symantec Recovery Disk has also been updated to include the widest array of device support possible, alleviating consumers of the worry and hassles of having to build their own “bootable” recovery disk, or worse, not having the proper device support available when they need it most – at critical recovery times.
To ensure consumers are provided with optimal data security, Norton Ghost 10.0 includes support for 128-, 192- and 256-bit AES encryption strengths, ensuring stored data is not accessible to unauthorized users. In addition, Norton Ghost 10.0 provides a centralized backup and recovery status that allows consumers to view all drives on a system, the levels of data protection assigned to each and recommendations based on backup activity. Norton Ghost 10.0 works with a wide range of hard drives and removable media, including CDR/RW and DVD+R/RW drives, USB and FireWire (IEEE 1394) devices, and Iomega Zip and Jaz drives.
