Clone Hard Drive

starixiom wrote on 6/14/2003, 5:58 PM
Hey, Ive got my dedicated NLE setup (program wise and disabled some junk.) I was wondering if anyone can recommend a good Clone/ Ghost/ Backup or whatever you want to call it to make an exact copy of my hard drive so i can reload everything as is in case of a crash.

My journey has taken me through Mcaffee, Norton, Acronis (sp?) products. Im running Windows XP and each forum or message board seems to point to flaws in all programs listed. Tales of not being able to create the disk to not being able to load the backup. All i want to do is have 1 CDR/ DVDR (with all my registered video programs) on hand in case of a hard drive failure. Replace Hard drive, Pop Disk in, Wait for restore, and then Enjoy. Seems like an easy request but there are a lot of people out there that continually have had problems with XP and the above mentioned programs. I would try the demos but that doesnt give you an accurate representation of these products without buying them first.

Comments

riredale wrote on 6/14/2003, 6:49 PM
Real easy solution. I have tried both Norton Ghost and Powerquest's Drive Image. Ghost is somewhat faster (a drive with 7GB is compressed into about 4GB and backed up in about 30 minutes), but there are a couple of things about DriveImage that I like better. Both work great.

A suggestion: do your clone backup to another hard drive, or a different partition on your current drive. Then you can copy that partition over to a CD or DVD at your convenience, or leave it on the hard drive for quick restoration.

I seem to have a knack for utterly trashing my system about once a month. DriveImage and Ghost have saved my backside dozens of times.
LarryP wrote on 6/14/2003, 7:05 PM
Ok call me paranoid but I use Drive Image to a different drive in a drive tray. When I'm done with the save I shut down the machine and turn the key switch on the drive tray to off. That way I'm pretty sure that nothing like a virus or a IDE controller hiccough will affect my save.

Larry
riredale wrote on 6/14/2003, 7:46 PM
LarryP: You're right, it's good to be a bit paranoid. Every now and then, I copy one of my DriveImage images onto DVD-RW and store that disk in a different building.
surfnturk wrote on 6/14/2003, 10:12 PM
Check these guys... Acronis True Image 6.0. I realize I sound like a sales rep, but True Image features one thing that puts it above the rest.

"Create and restore disk images in Windows — no need to reboot to DOS even when backing up system partition"

http://www.acronis.com/products/trueimage/
kentwolf wrote on 6/14/2003, 10:42 PM
Powerquest's Drive Image is the best.

I have used it for years and have never had a problem.

Works exactly like it is supposed to.
mikkie wrote on 6/15/2003, 7:47 AM
FWIW, you're not supposed to be able to create an image of an xp install, so whichever way you do it, might run across some random glitches.

I've used Ghost successfully on win98, 98SE, and winxp pro machines without any prob. What I feel is a neat feature is the ability to write the image as it's created to a set of spanned CDs. The documentation is not the best, so might need to play around a bit to get what you're after.

For backup purposes, IMO and all that... Prefer creating a backup of the various software on the drive -> this doesn't change that often, and when it does, when a program is updated, if I don't have the time right then to do a full backup it's a simple matter to backup just that folder.

What does change rather often is in the folder containing your install of windows, particularly the system32 folder. Rather then a complete image, I try to keep a good backup of this folder along with the documents and settings & system restore folders on the system drive.

That said, and I've seen this on the web a lot, use system restore on your main drive, create a restore point for a base whenever you change anything (add a prog etc.), and use the disk cleanup applet in xp pro to get rid of the older restore points so you don't eat up gigs of disk space. Then, even after a crash where winxp pro will no longer start, you can use that restore point in safe mode to put things back a lot of the time.

Also helps if you have the orig. version of xp pro, to create a new install disk with sp1 included/merged with it. [directions on merging sp1 can be found on the MS site - createing the bootable image takes a web search as sites change frequently] Then, heaven forbid - when you have a prob., can do a re-install using the repair option which leaves your existing settings, installed apps etc. intact, though you'll still need to update drivers etc. (there's a way to avoid that, but a bit of work and gets somewhat involved)
craftech wrote on 6/15/2003, 8:39 AM
Powerquest has always made great products. I have used Partition Magic, Drive Copy, and Drive Image. All versions have worked well.

John
kentwolf wrote on 6/15/2003, 2:04 PM
>>FWIW, you're not supposed to be able to create an image of an xp install, so
>>whichever way you do it, might run across some random glitches.

I have never had a glitch with regard to this.

Where you CAN have an issue is if you backup an XP install (NTFS) that is disk 1, partition 1, then try to restore it to anywhere else, like disk 1, partition 2.

Apparently NTFS freaks out.

Other than that, I have ner had a problem ever.
wcoxe1 wrote on 6/15/2003, 2:32 PM
A question for all of you using all those various products.

Which one will copy a drive INCLUDING the system files AND registry to another disk?
Trichome wrote on 6/15/2003, 3:00 PM
I just did a clone using Symantec Ghost 2003, to go from 13GB HD to 40GB HD on my wife's machine. No longer do you need boot floppy works right out of Win XP... regisrty and programs seem just fine. NTFS no prob for this version. What a time saver this is!!!!!!!
riredale wrote on 6/15/2003, 3:19 PM
wcoxe1: They all do. That's what makes a clone program different from a "backup" program--it clones virtually everything, so if, for example, your hard drive trashes itself, you can use the image to create a perfect copy of your entire system on a new drive, and be back in business in under an hour.


3 hours later....

Well, guess what happened about 30 minutes after this post? Yup--my screen went black, rebooted, and refused to load XP. Tried safe mode, but the system wouldn't even get that far. FDISK could see my C drive, though. I first thought I'd just repair XP by booting from the XP disk. After 30 minutes, the disk is finished, the system reboots, and a message says "Windows will now reboot." Again and again and again. Darn.

So I took my own advice. I first did a clone image of my sick system, then went back to my last clone image (June 1). After restoring a working system, I then went into the sick system image and pulled in all my email files, desktop, and so forth. So here I am, back up and running as if nothing had happened. Only loss was 3 hours of a Sunday afternoon.