image of the machine to cd or dvd

[jayanbhm]

Hi,
I have recently formatted my machine and even frequently iam doing the same. So i heard about taking the image of the computer in a dvd or cd and reimage it back when ever needed. Can any body help me out in this? . I have an 80 gb machine with single c: drive . Suggest me the good one

Thanks in advance
Jeevan

[slugger]

usin Acronis True Image u can easily make disk images.

acronis also allows you to split the image to fit in optical disks

but a sinlge 80 GB partition image will take u around 18 DVDs

[hansraj]

U also have the option of using Norton ghost 12 or 14. Its better than acronis because of its feature of "LIghtsout restore" in which u will start getting an option of restore the ghost image at the time of every boot once u enable it. This means if u r system at anytime is bootable but doesnt start properly or some serious virus/malware activity and u want to restore back to a saved image in that case u dont even require the bootable disk.(This will kind of make u independent of the Norton Recovery bootable disk). Rest of the features are more or less same.
But before using any one of the above two i suggest that get ur system formatted again and keep ur system files in a partition of 20 GB which is good enough. Rest of the partitions can be as per ur choice.

[techtronic]

^^ I agree with the post above. Keep your C:/ to max 15 GB or 20 GB so that its easy for backing up.

[ax3]

norton ghost works like makhaan bt its a paid softy ......

just make img of freshly installed OS with office & voila, u dont have 2 pop THAT xp installation cd\dvd & wait 1\2 hr 2 install ......

[hansraj]

@ax3
in the present day scenario..... with torrents all around ... do we need to tell each other whichone is a paid software and which one is free. I think this much should be enough.

[jayanbhm]

slugger , hansraj , ax3 thanks a lot for the support let me try one of this option. Expecting the same quick responds again

Thanks and Regards
Jayan

[alok4best]

u can use Hiren's Boot CD...download the iso...somewhere arnd 70-80 Mbs..Burn it to CD...boot with this CD...and have hundreds of tools integrated for all purpose...Multimedia, Hard disk, Data Recovery Backup. whatever u can think of. I have myself made an image of my windows drive. What I did was Installed XP, installed all necessary soft and tools, then made an image with Hiren's...at that time my Windows partition was having 8 GB, I got an image of the same , in 4 GBs..Now I can restore my windows anytime in 5 minutes.

[infra_red_dude]

^^^ Hiren's Boot CD is an illegal piece of software.