Re: OT: Imaging Drive for Backup / Restore

I use Ghost version 8 corporate edition. I don't like the newer versions. It
can be made bootable and can read the dell restore partitions too.

I also see Acronis recommended often, but have never used it.

P.S. If anyone knows something good for UFS, I'm looking for a program to
image Solaris partitions.

-Mike


"Andrew" <usenetMYSHOES@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:zcasdaxcrkrlafy6723623813@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sorry to top post, but...I use True Image from Acronis. It does
exactly what you need. I have used it to restore my old laptop from a
backup when the old hard drive crashed, plus I've done many other
backups of various computers with it. It has saved me hours and hours
of time. You can get True Image from NewEgg for about $30 depending
on the sale. This is great software, well worth the money paid.

You can use True Image (and Ghost and similiar products) in two ways:
in Windows, you can create an image of any drive (even a Linux drive)
to file(s) somewhere else, such as on an ext. hard drive. Then you
can mount that image as a new drive letter as a read-only drive and
explore it or copy files as you would any other drive. For example,
when I got my new Dell, I started copying files from the backup image
I made of the Toshiba on my ext hard drive. I plugged in the
ext. drive, mounted the image backup file as a new drive, then
searched for the files I wanted, then copied them to my Dell.

You can also run True Image outside of Windows from rescue media, a CD
created from the Windows version that you can then boot. So, if your
laptop hard drive crashes, you replace the laptop hard drive, connect
your ext. hard drive containing the image backup you made of the old
one, and boot the rescue CD. Then you can restore the image to the
new hard drive and just reboot when done, and you're all running
again! I did exactly this last summer with my old laptop and it
worked like a charm.

You can also clone a drive, which is a more limited way to image it.
You have to use the entire drive for the clone, whereas an image is
just one or more files that contain your backup. Also, True Image
image files are compressed and not the full size of the original
drive. So if your laptop drive is 100GB but you are using only 20GB,
the image file will be no larger than 20GB, probably even less due to
compression (and you can choose the compression level - more
compression increases the time to make the image). You can also do
incremental backups, so you don't have to make a new full backup every
time do want to backup. And you can restrict the image files to be a
certain size (like the size of a DVD or CD) and split them up, so a
20GB image file could be split into 5 or 6 files that you could then
burn to DVD - and you can restore them that way too, one DVD or CD at
a time.

So it works great. I haven't used Ghost or anything else, but they
must be similiar.

Andrew

journey <rainbow@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
: OK, I'm ready to take my backup / recovery to a new level. I've
: always saved my data, and if something would happen then I could just
: reinstall Windows and the programs. I've done it so much it's second
: nature for me to set up a new PC. This is a valid backup / restore
: strategy.

: However, I'm curious about imaging the whole PC to be able to restore
: it exactly to a point in time.

: My C: drive is 250 gig. This is where the OS and all programs are
: stored.

: I have an extra (new, they were on sale lol) Seagate 250 gig external
: USB drive that I can use to store the image.

: So, I guess the questions are:

: - What software is most useful for the backup / restore.

: - How do I use it to do a backup?

: - How do I use it to do a restore?

: Of course the question of what do I boot from when I restore comes to
: mind, and how do I do that.

: I'm willing to do a lot of the research but a pointer in the right
: direction has saved me a lot of time in the past, and people here have
: been especially knowledgeable / helpful.

: Journey

--

Andrew
--
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Relevant Pages

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