Any suggestions on clone/backup software

[montag451]

Hi, Thanx for looking in.

Can anyone recommend the best software to ghost the hdd of a laptop to DVD.
Cheap is good. Free is better.

I've got an oldish laptop without all recovery disk bulls**t, and it is in a brand new state running xpsp2 with no probs -
clean install.

Ideally, would like to be able to boot straight from the backup to reinstall the image.
haha - don't ask for much, do i?

I've posted this on software/apps, but no response yet.
Thanx in advance

 

[InlineFive]

The Backup utility can make a "system image" that you can reload using an image off of a floppy. I have never tried it or had to restore something using it however.

The general preference on the forums for this sort of job seems to be Norton Ghost. I'm hoping that someone knowledgeable about it will come by soon and provide more info.

-Por

 

[montag451]

thanx for the reply.

The backup utility i have tried before - to no avail. Ghost seems to be popular in the forums, but can't write to dvd it seems.

 

[Vernholio]

Any chance of getting an additional machine and performing a network DR? If so, check out this product:

http://www.bakbone.com/product...ster_recovery/vaultdr/

It'll perform a complete backup of the system, including all partition data and settings and restore it accordingly. It'll definitely do the job. It's not super cheap, but it has a 45-day free evaluation on it. On top of that I can offer support for it (since I work for the company as their Tech Writer). The down-side is that you'll have to go through the hassle of registering for it, so I recommend using bogus info for the set up when requested to avoid the sales calls.

If it's something you'd be interested in trying out, download the demo and/or let me know... Also, the last thing I'm trying to do here is push our product, but if it'll help out...

- Vernholio

P.S. In order to use it, you'll need the Server and Client ver. of the core software (i.e., it's called "NetVault") as well as the app that the link takes you to.

 

[montag451]

wow - sounds good vernholio

Would it be safe to backup image to another system over a network, then backup to dvd [safely], then backup direct from dvd over the network?

thanx for the quick response

 

[Vernholio]

OK... I hope I didn't get your hopes up too much. I just talked to one of our senior engineers and he says it's possible, but it'd probably be more trouble than it was worth. Our product focuses on Tape and Disk-based storage, not optical. However, if you have a large enough hard drive on the machine acting as the server, it would be possible to create a "pseudo tape device" and all data could be stored there. This pseudo tape device would take a portion of the server's hard disk and emulate a tape backup device (i.e., a multi-drive tape library or a single drive device). Understand though that this pseudo device would need to utilize enough space of the hard disk on the server to accommodate the whole of the partition structure on the client. It would then be possible to manually transfer each "pseudo tape" from the device to DVD, provided it was set up properly. Obviously, there's more to this, and I'd be happy to walk you through what you'd need to do.

Kind of a pain in the butt, but it would work.

- Vern

P.S. Also, I'd recommend using a multiple partition environment (O/S on one partition and data/applications on another) This way you could only DR the O/S partition and recover it (i.e., perform a smaller backup). However, when recovering a mulitple partitioned client, only the O/S partition would be available for recovery and the remainder of the disk would be empty, with no partition or data.

 

[montag451]

thanks,
this would turn out to be a pain, but thanks for the info.

are you the one who writes the manuals? or, are you the one whipping the programmers into working harder for less pay? ;-)
more sweat less money i say

 

[GAZZA]

I know that Ghost 2003 and later are able to create a HDD image to a DVD RW drive as I have done this, are you using an older version of Ghost perhaps ?

Symantec Ghost

Works with a wide range of hard drives and removable media, including CDR/RW and DVD+-R/RW drives, USB and FireWire® (IEEE 1394) devices, and Iomega® Zip® and Jaz® drives.

 

[montag451]

no - never had the pleasure of using ghost - heard too many things that make it a little unreliable sometimes-
have done a bit more research, and ACRONIS do a good piece of kit, so do TERABYTE - looking at the image for dos yoot.

thanks for the replies.

 

[GAZZA]

Prob most of the things you hear about regarding Ghost esp older versions was it's lack of imaging NTFS drives to NTFS drives or how easily it is to get confused over the drive to image versus the drive that's backing up the image, where many people have overwritten their precious data with a blank drive....

 

[montag451]

lol yeah - something like that -

and i didn't want to be posting to this forum to admit what a stupid wan**r I was.

 

[krackato]

Acronis True Image is the best one I've ever used. It just works exactly how it's supposed to.

 

[Homerboy]

Originally posted by: krackato
Acronis True Image is the best one I've ever used. It just works exactly how it's supposed to.

correct

not to mention EVERY WEEK there are 3 identical post as the OP