Drive Imaging in WinXP

[Brave01Heart]

Hi there

I would like to know what is the best and easiest imaging software to use in Windows XP please.

The reason I would like to know this is because my daughter has moved out and I am re-installing her computer with WinXP and other software like EZCD etc. When I have done this, I would like to be able to make an 'exact' image of the drive onto a CDR so that if she get's into trouble on the pc, she can just insert the image CDR and put it back to exactly the same as when I installed it for her. Is this possible?

I have heard of Norton Ghost and Drive Image but which one (if any) will work without problems in XP? I would like to be able to image the drive but I am not sure how I would put the image back onto the computer. Is it done through a boot disk or a bootable CD.

Any help (and links/version)would be appreciated.

Regards

I use Ghost 2002 and it works flawlesly. Here is a link(s) describing the processes:

*http://www.windowsxp.nu/bootcd/default.htm

*http://ghost.radified.com/ghost_1.htm

***EDIT***

Ghost also fits on a floppy disk

Zo



Last edited by zonko at Today at 3:52 pm

[pcservicetech]

I've been using Drive Image for quite sometime without incident, I have had problems with Ghost however.

The biggest advantage I see to Ghost is you can restore it to any partition without it complaining, with Drive Image it's best when restored to the exact same partition if not it complains and resizes the partition to the size of the partition the image was made from.

[kernel]

i use DI with XP for a long time without troubles

you can store your image on HD or CD

restore your image from XP, or from a created DOS-Bootdisk + DI

have a nice day
kernel

[rikytik]

Never used Ghost, but I've used PowerQuest Drive Image for several years and it is faultless. I back up each week with it and have used it many times to restore a previous image with 100% results.

[Brave01Heart]

Hi and many thanks to all who have responded to my query regarding drive imaging.

You've all mentioned the two that I was thinking about and I'm now not sure which one to go for.

Q: Once you have created your image, can you restore to a formatted hard drive and can you restore it within windows - though I would have thought it would be better to format the drive first.

Q: Do both utilities format the drive for you before restoring the image using a DOS bootdisk, or does the image just overwrite what's on the drive?

Ok, I know these Q's are probably basic to all of you, but I'd like to get it right first time

Regards to all

[pcservicetech]

Drive Image won,t even restore to a partition it deletes it then restores. Ghost will restore to a formatted partition if I remember right. They both go from DOS, but they both have utilities to open, explore, test and extract from the image from windows.

[Tomboy]

Hi,

I use DI all the time and have the following answers to your questions:

Q: Once you have created your image, can you restore to a formatted hard drive

A. Yes, however, the restore operation will destroy whatever format exisits in the partition that you are restoring to and will change it to whatever is in the image. For example, if the image was of a FAT32 partition and you restore it to a NTFS partition, the NTFS partition will no longer exist and will be changed to a FAT32 partition (and vice versa). Even within the same format things will change if the image size is different from the hard drive partition you are restoring to and you tell the program to resize the image to fit the new partition (this is useful when upgrading to a new larger hard drive).

and can you restore it within windows - though I would have thought it would be better to format the drive first.

A. No, all image creation and restore operations occur in a DOS environment. The reason for this is that Windows locks a number of files making it impossible to copy or restore them while Windows is running. Can you imagine the mess and corruption that would result if you overwrote the Windows swap file with old information while Windows was running?

Q: Do both utilities format the drive for you before restoring the image using a DOS bootdisk, or does the image just overwrite what's on the drive?

A. As noted above, the file system and format is stored/saved in the image file. The restore operation simply restores that system to the selected partition on the hard drive.

I hope this helps,

Tomboy

[Jupiter2k]

I have not used DI..
and
has been using Ghost for years..and never have problem with it.

I have cloned a 30Gi to a 80 Gig HD

back up partitions image and transfer it .without any problem..


you need to run ghost in DOS if you use XP

but you can backup partition image under W98 or WinMe