In technical terms, a Ghost image is a sector-by-sector or file-by-file copy of a Windows XP installation saved as a single .gho or .v2i file. Unlike a standard backup, a Ghost image is . This means you can take a fresh, empty hard drive, boot from a Ghost USB/CD, and restore the image to have a fully bootable Windows XP system in under 15 minutes.
: Organizations use "Ghostcasting" to push one master image to hundreds of identical machines simultaneously across a network. How to Create and Restore Images Windows Xp Ghost Image