Unsolved
This post is more than 5 years old
18 Posts
0
8657
Hard Drive Imaging Software
I recently had a problem, and had to reformat my hard drive, reinstall Windows, and 10 zillion updates. Everything is running fine now. Dell 8300 machine, 120 G drive.
What I would like to do is purchase an additional 120 G drive (or smaller?), add it, and then have some imaging software back up my entire hard drive, OS & all patches, MS Office Pro, everything.....basically, if my original drive crashes or something becomes corrupted, I want to restore everything to a safe configuration.
I tried using System Restore to fix the problem I recently had, but it didn't correct it, so that is why I am looking at imaging software.
I have heard that Norton Ghost both A) works with Windows XP, and B) does not work well with NTSF formatted hard drives.
Am open to using anything, just want some good software.
What would be great is if I could both copy all my system files and program files (essentially making this extra drive bootable), and also being able to update weekly some of my data files. That may require an extra partition or something.
Appreciate any help and direction.
Denny Denham
2 Intern
2 Intern
•
18.8K Posts
0
December 25th, 2003 15:00
I haven't used it, but if you've got $35 to spare, you might take a look at the product discussed here.
oldtraveler
409 Posts
0
December 26th, 2003 17:00
Message Edited by oldtraveler on 12-26-2003 01:07 PM
WillyTee
146 Posts
0
December 26th, 2003 22:00
Skipmcc
18 Posts
0
December 26th, 2003 22:00
I appreciate the comments from all. I am learning quite a bit about this recently.
Someone led me to Acronis, at http://www.acronis.com/, with Acronis True Image 7.0
From the product description, this actually seems like a versatile and very good program. I may be going with this one. If anyone has direct experience with it, please let me know what you think of it.
Thx
Dave Lyle
2K Posts
0
December 27th, 2003 02:00
WillyTee
146 Posts
0
December 27th, 2003 03:00
Derf, I use it everyday in the shop, I highly reccomend it for a bootable copy. It has lots of flexability, is very fast. It's best for a Hdd to Hdd copy, internal to external is fine.
Buy a second Hard drive $50.00 these days and a good
copy/backup program to make a clone. XP-Casper is one.
http://www.fssdev.com/products/ make the clone and then
un-plug the power to the drive if you want.
Want to test drive a Demo for 30 days. It has some
features disabled.
http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/3000-2248-10161151.html
mpedx
4 Posts
0
July 24th, 2004 00:00
I got Acronis True Image a few weeks ago to backup my new Dell Inspiron 510m. It is a powerful tool and I can think of many situations for which I would be glad of it. However ... I recommend becoming thoroughly familiar with all it's functions before doing any 'real' work with it. It seems deceptively simple to use but a newbie (me) can mess up a hard disk with it pretty easily.
I also found a few glitches:
-
The process of booting from diskette hung after asking for the 2nd diskette then instructing me to press any key. I pressed every key and tried 3 times with different new diskettes but couldn't get it to work. Acronis support did not have a fix for me as they could not reproduce the problem.
-
Resizing of the Acronis Secure Zone (this is the partition that Acronis creates for storing it's image copies) failed one time when I tried to make it bigger - but this wasn't catastrophic as nothing was lost.
-
The worse problem was when I uninstalled True Image according to the instructions. The Secure Zone was deleted but the space was not reallocated to my C: partition from whence it came. I can't use PartitionMagic to reclaim the space because it won't initialise, says I have disk geometry errors.
Bottom line - I like the functionality of Acronis True Image and I intend to keep using it, but it's been what I'd euphemistically call a steep learning curve!