GHOST (an acronym for general hardware-oriented system transfer[4]), now called Symantec™ GHOST Solution Suite (GSS)[5] for enterprise, is a disk cloning and backup tool originally developed by Murray Haszard in 1995 for Binary Research.

This can be accomplished by creating an ISO (to burn to a DVD) or a USB bootable disk, installed to a client as an automation folder or delivered by a PXE server.

GHOST added support for NTFS later in 1996, and also provided a program, Ghostwalker, to change the Security ID (SID) that made Windows NT systems distinguishable from each other.

[citation needed] Technologies developed by 20/20 Software were integrated into GHOST after their acquisition by Symantec in April 2000.

[7] Version 4.0 of GHOST added multicast technology, following the lead of a competitor, ImageCast.

The Binary Research logo, two stars revolving around each other, plays on the main screen when the program is idle.

A Norton GHOST version for Novell NetWare (called 2.0), released around 1999, supports NSS partitions (although it runs in DOS, like the others).

The console communicates with client software on managed computers and allows a system administrator to refresh the disk of a machine remotely.

This significantly eased systems management because the user no longer had to set up their own partition tables.

The off-line version of Ghost, which runs from bootable media in place of the installed operating system, originally faced a number of driver support difficulties due to limitations of the increasingly obsolete 16-bit DOS environment.

Mouse support was possible but often left out due to the limited space for drivers on a floppy disk.

Disk imaging competitors to GHOST have dealt with the decline of DOS by moving to other recovery environments such as FreeBSD, Linux or Windows PE, where they can draw on current driver development to be able to image newer models of disk controllers.

Nevertheless, the DOS version of GHOST on compatible hardware configurations works much faster than most of the *nix based image and backup tools[citation needed].

GHOST 8 and later are Windows programs; as such, they can run on Windows PE, BartPE or Hiren's BootCD and use the same plug and play hardware drivers as a standard desktop computer, making hardware support for GHOST much simpler.

At the end of 2003, Symantec acquired its largest competitor in the disk-cloning field,[citation needed] PowerQuest.

Supports creating images on CDs, DVDs, Iomega Zip and Jaz disks as well as IEEE 1394 (FireWire) and USB mass storage devices.

Norton Save And Restore 1.0, released in February 2006, was the renamed consumer version of Ghost.

It used GHOST 10.0's engine, with the addition of features to allow backup and restoration of individual files.

GHOST 12.0 (April 2007) includes Windows Vista support with an updated and more thorough user interface.

GHOST can connect to ThreatCon, a Symantec service that monitors malware activity around the world, and performs incremental backups when a specific threat level is reached.

Other features include the ability to back up to network-attached storage devices and support for NTFS partitions up to 16TB.

Older .gho image files can be restored using GHOST Explorer, a separate utility.

GHOST Solution Suite 1.1 is a bundle of an updated version of Ghost, Symantec Client Migration (a user data and settings migration tool) and the former PowerQuest equivalent, DeployCenter (using PQI images).

Other new features include more comprehensive manufacturing tools, and the ability to create a "universal boot disk".

This version provides significant improvements in performance, as well as the ability to edit NTFS images.