fastest image backup from DOS?


What is the fastest image backup software from DOS? Ghost 2003,
Acronis True Image 9, or something else?

PowerQuest's Drive Image served me well for years with it's fast
sector-by-sector copying (quickly compressing them and skipping empty
sectors). I also liked its ability to restore individual files from
the sector-by-sector image backup. Unfortunately it doesn't seem able
to backup my new XP Pro laptop, and there's no updated version
(Symantec absorbed Drive Image into Ghost & eliminated its DOS mode.)

So I bought Ghost 10, only to discover it can't make a backup from DOS.
(It can only restore using DOS, not make backups, and I hear it is
painfully slow to start.)

Fortunately Ghost 2003 (included with Ghost 10) works from DOS, but I
think it defaulted to doing slow file-by-file backup since it displayed
the name of each file, one by one, and it took about an hour for a new
laptop (containing just MS Office and some other tools). It seems to
offer an option to do a sector-by-sector backup, but I don't think that
skips empty/unused sectors, so I'm not sure that'd be any faster. (Or
maybe I just don't understand those options.)

I hear Acronis True Image is good and works from DOS, but there isn't
enough info on their web site to help me know if it can do fast
sector-by-sector image copying that omits empty sectors, or whether it
is faster than Ghost 2003.

Craig in NJ

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Relevant Pages

  • Re: fastest image backup from DOS?
    ... sector-by-sector mode and the Acronis demo. ... Image backup of the then-new 2001 laptop only taking about 15 minutes. ... more because Ghost 2003 didnt appear to go anywhere ... drives and NICs etc is much better than with DOS. ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage)
  • Re: fastest image backup from DOS?
    ... Ghost 2003 sector-by-sector mode ... have things set up to backup over my home GigE LAN to a removable 3Gbps ... the last DI can't handle some current XP drives, ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage)
  • Re: SBS 2003 Mirror OS Drive Question
    ... SBS remote support services. ... I am surprised that anything that boots a "dos" environment will see an NTFS drive? ... or is it just another backup program? ... Rather I would create a DOS bootable, then run the ghost executable, and simply choose the source drive and destination drive. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)
  • Re: Properly backing up my W2K OS
    ... Can I do this in the Dos prompt option of W2K? ... distrust of doing a Windows backup from within Windows (that would include a Windows command prompt. ... My preference (with Ghost) is to install Ghost in Windows then use it to make a DOS boot-disk containing the Ghost backup facility. ...
    (microsoft.public.win2000.general)
  • Re: fastest image backup from DOS?
    ... Ghost 2003, Acronis True Image 9, or something else? ... TI doesnt use DOS, ... from the sector-by-sector image backup. ... DI just doesnt display the individual file names. ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage)