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Dells, hidden partitions, and backup.

B

Bregor

Member
I'm a big believer in making frequent back ups to safeguard my data and speed recovery from system disasters. For years I have used PowerQuest's Drive Image to back up my entire hard drive, currently to an external USB hard drive.

When my sister purchased a Dell about a year ago, I recommended she buy one of Maxtor's 'One Touch' external USB drives for back up purposes. It came with bundled back up software Dantz Retrospect. I wasn't to fond of Retrospect, but I saw no reason it wouldn't work for her purposes, but I was wrong.

As it turns out, Dell computers have a hidden 30 MB partition on the HD. As this partition does not have a drive letter, Retrospect did not back it up, and restoring created configuration problems that prevented Windows from booting (More Info Here) My sister tried several work arounds, but ended up having to re-install Windows and all her apps.

I am now looking for a good back up solution for her. She is in need of a program that will back up (or restore) the entire hard drive- hidden partition and all. My first instinct was to recommend Drive Image (which has now been absorbed by Ghost), and I've also heard good things about True Image. But I'm unsure whether either of these programs will correctly back up / restore the hidden partition.

Does anyone know whether Ghost or True Image will work, or have any alternatives?

Thanks in advance for any advice...
 
Good to hear someone else believes in backups.

I use Novaback by Novastor. It saves the registry state. So if you have to start over, you re-install the OS, put Novaback on there, and restore your tape. I've done this many times and it works.

http://www.novastor.com/pcbackup/backup/n_backup.html

I have a Sony SDT-9000 SCSI DDS3 Dat drive, and each tape holds 12 gigs of data uncompressed. I get a little bit more on each tape. This would probably be too expensive for your sister, unless it's for her business.
However, Novaback also supports DVD drives. so she could buy the latest version (7.1) and then burn a complete backup to DVDs. Eventually, when Dual Layer DVDs are more standard, this will be great because then you'll get 10 gigs on a DVD, but for now it's 4.7.

Novaback support is great, I just e-mailed their tech support because their software wouldn't work with SP2. But the guy wrote back minutes later and gave me more things to try, so I'll probably reformat and start over on my new machine.
 
Ghost should back it up, as Packard Bell machines also have a hidden 2Gb no-drive-letter partition, and it's able to back that up.
 
True Image can too, but you might be able to get Ghost cheaper in Systemworks Pro if you're buying Norton AV anyway.

True Image creates a boot CD version of itself that works fine for saving to a data partition, but I haven't had a chance to try it with an external USB drive yet.
 
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