Making a Norton Ghost Bootable USB Drive
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    Dec

Making a Norton Ghost Bootable USB Drive

Norton Ghost was discontinued by Symantec some years ago, but plenty of older PCs still have Ghost images and Symantec backups on them, and we still use this method at Lennox IT to recover them. This guide shows how to build a bootable USB recovery drive from the Norton Ghost recovery disk ISO (often called the Symantec Recovery Disk, or SRD), so you can restore or recover a PC, laptop or netbook that has no optical drive.

Norton Ghost boot from USB

  1. Download the recovery disk ISO from Norton’s support page. Norton has reorganised its support site, so you may land on their general help page; if so, search it for the Norton Ghost recovery disk, or use an ISO from your original Ghost or Symantec System Recovery media.
  2. Extract the contents of the ISO to a new folder on your hard disk. On Windows 8 and later you can mount the ISO by double-clicking it and copy the files out, or use a free tool such as 7-Zip to extract it. (The original version of this guide used SlySoft Virtual CloneDrive, which is no longer available.)
  3. Download and run RMPrepUSB and select:
    1. Size: MAX
    2. Volume label: SRD (or anything else you prefer)
    3. Boot option: WinPE v2 (BOOTMGR)
    4. File system: NTFS
    5. Choose the folder you extracted in step 2 as the source and tick Copy files
    6. Click Prepare Drive
  4. When it has finished, click Eject.

Alternative: use Rufus. If you prefer, Rufus also works with this ISO. Select the Norton Ghost recovery disk ISO as the boot selection and write it to the USB drive, so there is no need to extract the files first.

You’re all done. Insert the USB drive into the computer that needs recovering and tell it to boot from the drive you just made. If it doesn’t, check that USB boot is enabled in the BIOS and that the USB drive is first in the boot order.

Recovering a newer PC?

Ghost and its recovery disk are old software, so they are best kept for older machines and older backup images. For a current PC, free tools such as Clonezilla can image and restore a disk.

Need a hand? Lennox IT provides IT support for businesses in Derby, Nottingham and across the East Midlands. Get in touch or see our IT support plans.

Last reviewed: October 2026.

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