image of my drive

[iinfi]

i want to take a backup of my OS so that if my OS crashes and if i need to format my drive then i sud be able to get back my system as is.

ie. i sud be able to get back all the programs installed with the settings without having to go thru the installation all over agian

is that possible with Norton Ghost? or any other s/w

thanks ...

[Vishal Gupta]

Yep. Its possible with Norton Ghost but I'll suggest Acronis True Image over Ghost.
Just install it and create an image of your Windows drive and you have done. Whenever you face any problem or feel that Windows has become slow, just restore the image.

Acronis can also install its own boot loader, so you can boot into Acronis Interface and browse the image and can restore it if you are not able to boot into Windows. Even you can make bootable DVD.

[Ponmayilal]

And if your HDD is Seagate or Maxtor, you need not buy Acronis True Image.You can download Diskwizard (which is nothing but Acronis True Image Home 10) from Seagate website for free and use it to image your drive.

[NucleusKore]

Please use DriveImage XML Recovery. Its free and comes along with UBCD4win. All you have to do is download UBCD4win and follow the instructions to make the boot cd. Then boot from it, you will get a nice windows desktop running from the cd, and from there you can launch Drive Image XML Recovery and mirror your system partition.

[Ponmayilal]

yep, that's the way to go if you do not have a Seagate or Maxtor HDD and if you do not want to buy an imaging software.
I had tried the freeware Drive Image XML but was not comfortable with it and chose to buy Acronis True Image 10.
Later on I found that even if one has a Seagate or Maxtor External drive plugged into the system, one can use the Acronis clone , the Diskwizard.

I am sure when you want to backup your image you may prefer to back it up on an external drive.( I do not recommend any other removable media like multiple CDs/DVD which can easily be lost/damaged and rendered unusable). If you have not already purchased an external drive, then buy a Seagate or Maxtor external drive and use Diskwizard to back up your C drive.

( I keep the images in another partition of the system drive as well as a Maxtor external drive to be doubly safe)

[chesss]

doing this for years with acronis

Also if u r into linux live cds , then dd (command line utility) is another option.
The advantage of dd is that it comes with every live linux cd, the disadvanta ge ofcourse is that its command line.

[iinfi]

thanks everyone .. i will try one of these and let you know how its working...