OS Backup

[Paddy]

I have spent the last few days installing XP and a few apps on an old PC for a friend. When I got it from her it was riddled with crap and it was easier to wipe and rebuild than repair.

The entire Os and Apps are under 4GB. I am keen to find some way of backing up the data so that if i need to do this again it will take an hour rather than an evening.

I was thinking of simply copying the contents of the HD onto a DVD, that way assuming the partition table is intact, I could boot from a BartPE disk and copy it back.

Is there any reason why this wouldn't work?

[degrub]

How are you going to deal with the MBR ? Maybe an old copy of Ghost or similar and a USB 2 disk to keep it simple ?

[Adis]

You should use Acronis True Image or similar program to make backup.

Be noted that Norton Ghost will not work with SATA drives.

[Chucky Cheese]

ghost.exe /noide

[Adis]

ghost.exe /noide

This will do the trick on some configurations, not on all.

[Dr Mordrid]

A good reason to retain EIDE for boot discs and use SATA for those requirements that need the bandwidth.

[Nicram]

Use PING:

http://ping.windowsdream.com/

[UtwigMU]

ghostpe.exe we use from a floppy at work works with SATA drives on promise controllers. If the Intel BIOS sees the SATA drive on PCI controller, ghost sees it.

We have one old PIII box just for drive to drive ghosting at work. With adapters you can also ghost laptop drives.

Another option is knoppix and using dd command.

[Paddy]

Thanks for all the advice. I used PING - awesome app! I've got the image saved on a DVD for now. I can restore it from a network or USB drive in the future.

Cheers guys! That will save me a lot of heartache!

[VJ]

I boot using a Knoppix live CD and run partimage to accomplish things.
I can then just write an image of the drive to a zip file FAT32 partition, and later copy it to DVD.
Upside: free
Downside: drive partition can never change in size

edit: just saw that PING is essentially the same...



Jörg