What's the current consensus as to the best program to create a restore disk to DVDs?
;)

Norton Ghost :)

Ghost, Hands down

Ghost.
If the partition you need to clone is formatted ReiserFS... then BootIt NG or Acronis both make a better job. And BootIt NG is free.
In the case you have no need of network support (like you say, make an image and write it to a DVD) BootIt NG will take care of it just as well as Ghost (and faster and cheaper) also when it comes to NTFS and FATxx partitions.

Acronis True Image, ESPECIALLY if you have a RAID hard drive setup..

Yep, I was going to tell Norton Ghost too. :)

Thanks, I kinda figured Ghost, but I also heard some good reports about Acronis True Image. The drive I want to back up is SATA 250 Gig.

I generally use PowerQuest Dive Image 7. You can do images without going to DOS. But you have to use a recovery environment cd to restore. Depends on your applicaions and objctives. I found that PowerQuest is more finicky on certain laptops and use Ghost 2003 on laptops, as a rule. PQ Drive Image 7 on he desktops

what I like about Acronis, besides the fact it works much better than Ghost on RAID setups, is that you can restore off a network backup MUCH EASIER than with GHOST; Ghost tries to install all kinds of network drivers, to enable you to do that, and if you choose the wrong one, its absolutely worthless.

Acronis finds your backup ANYWHERE on the network WITHOUT installing dos type drivers, so if you want to back up off a network, dont bother with that miserable Norton Bloatware..

Sorry guys, I have ditched ALL NORTON products about a year ago, and now my machines have NONE of the issues I used to have with NAV, NSW, GHOST, and all their other bloated software..

wase4711

You are right about the problems with RAID Ghost. I didn't think about that when I replied.

Like wae4711 I also let go off all symantec/norton utilities a long time ago. When I use Ghost I don't have installed at my drives, I always boot from prepared floppies, or a CD when I don't use the network for transportations.

Then I don't find Acronis that fantastic. First off it isn't 100% stable. Then it is a little slow (compared to BootIt NG) and most bothering of it all - several services are installed and always running. But I guess you can run it entirely off some bootable media - the same way as I use Ghost.

Vinnie: You arent gonna backup 250 GB? Really, that will cost you some DVDs to finish that backup?! I guess you have that drive partitioned and that you carefully choose what you really need to backup?

No, not the full 250 gig, I just re-formatted and installed the programs that I use the most. It will be around 15 gigs.

What I do, Uni, is to disable all those services until I need to use Acrnois for back up purposes; Then I turn them on, and turn them off after I am done..I haven't had any stability problems, and have restored at least 10 times with Acronis, but I guess all programs work differently on different machines..
Yeah I used to love Norton stuff, but never realized how it hogged resources, and made EVERTHING run slower until I got rid of all of it..

NOD 32 for anti virus, VCom's System Suite, and either Zone Alarm or Sygate is so, so much better on your machine..people, if you havent tried this combo, and are still suffereing with Norton, you are missing the boat...
BTW, with sp2 rc2 2149, I have stopped using Sygate/Zone alarm, and insted turned to the XP firewall, with NO PROBLEMS, and NO SECURITY Issues..One less program running in the background= more available resources for everything else!

Acronis all the way =)
Please don't get sucked into norton bloatware!

I'm running 2 raptor 10000 rpm sata Hd in raid 0 and norton could not ever read them
Acronis managed to clone them first try.


With acronis you can even do incremental back up without destroying your original backup to keep adding new program and cahnges to your backup is great 10 out of 10 for me ! :D


Sony

I use Drive Image, which works fine but awful damn slow when restoring an image (creating is quick enough). I tried Acronis, but couldn't get it to work.

As for the quote, is it a general consensus that WINXP SP2's firewall is sufficient by itself? I"m using it with Outpost Pro, and I'd gladly ditch Outpost if WINXP works well enough on its own.

torataka

Norton Ghost has no problems and causes no problems as long as you just use the program from a diskette. .
Install it to make the diskette, and then uninstall it , and it works perfectly.

Yea weill ghost is the only norton program I use so.

what if your pc has no floppy drive, like mine????

I prefer PowerQuest V2I desktop edition ;)

No need to boot in Dos and you have a boot disk for the recover process :)

what if your pc has no floppy drive, like mine???? [/b][/quote]
Then you run it fom a CD. Or, use any of the other options here.

A PC with no floppy - I can understand how this can be. It make some sense too - finally time to throw it time. Yet it is a premature thought in my opinion. After all floppies are cheap and versatile and the only (?) 100% compatible medium to movie things around (floppienet).

any way to make Acronis True Image cd bootable?

@doder: Yes. True Image is pretty slick in some aspects.

You'll automatically get that option after installing True Image. You can also do it whenever from a menu at the left - choose "Create Bootable Rescue Media". In this case media means either a floppie, a CD or a DVD (or several).

thanks, unicorn. :)