Re: Casper XP's a winner

Timothy Daniels <TDaniels@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote
> Michel S wrote
>> Timothy Daniels wrote

>>> I've been playing with the downloadable free trial
>>> version of Casper XP. For my purposes - making
>>> bootable backup clones of my WinXP system -
>>> it works quite well. Unlike Accronis True Image,
>>> it can clone a single partition from one HD onto
>>> unallocated space on another HD and keep the
>>> clone the same size as the original (or some other
>>> size if desired). With True Image, the entire original
>>> HD is copied to the entire destination HD. And unlike
>>> Partition Magic, it doesn't shift around the partitions
>>> on the destination HD to compact them. And unlike
>>> Ghost 9.0 (and Drive Image 7.x), it doesn't need
>>> .NET Framework to be installed. The only drawback
>>> that I've noticed is that it's not as fast as Ghost -
>>> when Ghost worked on my machine. But since Ghost
>>> causes my machine to freeze, Casper XP is the only
>>> game in town. And it's not a bad game. Check it out:
>>> http://www.fssdev.com/products/casperxp/

>> Does the product allow to create a bootable CD from which it can be run as a
>> stand alone backup/recovery tool ? I don't see any mention of this in the
>> specs.

> The User Guide makes no mention of a bootable CD.

Urk.

> The purpose of Casper XP is to make bootable system clones on hard drives -
> either on the same hard drive or other hard drives. This suits my purposes
> exactly, but I understand that most people do things differently.

Yeah, that approach has real downsides in most situations,
mainly that its a clone and so much bigger than an image
and the only real advantage is that its quicker if you need
to boot the clone, and very few need that except when
upgrading the hard drive, and its better to clone from a
bootable CD if you're upgrading the hard drive.

>> How does the speed compare to True Image ?

> It seems about the same as True Image and much slower than Ghost/Drive Image.

That doesnt make a lot of sense. True Image 8
can clone a physical drive a lot quicker than Ghost 9

> This may be due to my anti-virus or firewall software running at the same
> time,

Thats the main reason why cloning best done from a bootable
CD, so you can ensure that there is none of that involved.

> or it may be due to my use of an IDE controller card for my hard drives. The
> speed varied between 500MB/min and 1GB/min for an average of about 700MB/min.
> Drive Image 7.x seemed to
> do the job at a speed of about 3GB/min (when it worked at all).

>> Do you know how well it handles disks containing IO errors ?

> The documentation makes no mention of technology pertaining
> to bad sectors. The documentation does say to run chkdsk or to use the WinXP
> scan utility to correct errors.

Which basically means that it cant handle them itself.

So its useless for cloning a drive or partition for safety
before attempting to repair a stuffed drive or partition.

> For my purposes - making system clones on backup hard drives - Casper XP is
> ideally suited.

But that really doesnt make a lot of sense for backup.

> It's intuitive and simple and it doesn't need .NET Framework,

Big deal.

> it can clone individual partitions,

So can ghost 2003.

> it doesn't shift the partitions around on the destination drive,

Neither does any decent drive cloner.

> and it's cheaper than Ghost.

Dont believe that. Ghost 2003 as part of
systemworks pro 2003 costs peanuts.

> It will also do incremental backups to existing clones to save time in
> maintaining a backup system (a feature I don't need given the small size of my
> entire system).

Then you also dont actually need to clone individual
partitions. You'd be much better off using images instead.

> But if you need to make image files for storage on CDs or DVDs, or if you want
> to do "repairs", look to another utility.

Or if you just want to use images on hard drives too.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Cloning
    ... Similar with clone. ... I backed up the partition to another ide hard as images using ... Those restorations were botched as well using the Seagate ... Hard drives in removable trays connected to a Promise Ultra133 TX2 card. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: Copy XP from one disk to anohter
    ... before that it strill tried t boot from the original ... cloned the partition using Ghost or Casper XP. ... True Image will only clone an entire HD, ... contains 3 or 4 hard drives, ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.setup_deployment)
  • Re: Cloning
    ... Attempted to clone one identical hard drive to another on same bus system. ... The results were that the source XP partition was unable to boot after ... Those restorations were botched as well using the Seagate ... Hard drives in removable trays connected to a Promise Ultra133 TX2 card. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: Changing boot hard drive
    ... partition the way it is, but on a different hard drive. ... the destination hard drive - which is what a clone does. ... You can assure that the clone doesn't see its "parent" by ... my data to my spare hard drives, and I really dont need anything more. ...
    (alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt)
  • RE: Ghosting on old HP Vectra with WinXP
    ... In order to succeed with Ghost you will need to create your Ghost boot disk ... The difference between partition to partition or ... > in one of the hard drives. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)