Technically, Symantec never released an official "Portable" version of Norton Ghost that runs directly from a USB drive within Windows. Instead, the term Norton Ghost Portable refers to two specific community-driven setups:
The goal is the same: image, clone, or restore a hard drive partition without installing bulky software on the host machine. norton ghost portable
| Feature | Description |
|---------|-------------|
| Sector‑based imaging | Copies every used and unused sector (or just used sectors in smart mode). |
| Compression | Fast (no compression), High, or Maximum to reduce image file size. |
| Split images | Automatically split large images into 2GB or 4GB files for FAT32 storage. |
| Clone disk/partition | Direct drive‑to‑drive copy without creating an intermediate image file. |
| Multicast (GhostCast) | Deploy a single image to many PCs over a LAN – still used in labs/legacy IT. |
| Support for FAT/NTFS/ext2/ext3 | Reads/writes images to almost any file system. |
| Command‑line automation | Scriptable with switches like -clone, -sure, -rb for unattended backup/restore. | The goal is the same: image, clone, or
If you love the concept of a portable disk imager but need modern support, replace Norton Ghost with these tools. All can run from a bootable USB with no host installation. If you love the concept of a portable