Free Hard Drive Cloning Tool? Maybe with network storage?

[RaiderJ]

I'm looking for a tool that will allow me to backup a PC's hard drive to a blank DVD, which could then be booted off of in order to restore it. This would be for my company's laptops and desktops, so it would have to have a free license. I've used Acronis and Ghost, but unfortunately they cost more than we can afford

Ideas?

 

[Diogenes2]

Even most freeware programs require some kind of licensing for commercial use. That said , I doubt you are going to find a dependable free tool that will do what you are looking for.. I assume you tried Google before posting ? Then you probably know, that what you are looking for is not out there ..

When you say your company cannot afford programs like Acronis - can they afford to lose the data on your computers ?

Have you looked into any of the on-line back-up services ?

 

[bruceb]

Acronis and Ghost are not very costly even for a very small company. If you can't afford $100 at most for backup software, what are you going to do when the computer fails and valuable data is lost ? ? Far more costly that way.

Norton Ghost 14 is only $69

Acronis TruImage Workstation is $79

 

[Navid]

Have a look at this.
http://www.clonezilla.org/

 

[RaiderJ]

Looking at CloneZilla - thanks for the link!

I've done my share of googling, didn't find anything, hence why I posted here. I certainly see the value in buying some good tools, unfortunately I don't have the checkbook

 

[RebateMonger]

If you have a spare PC laying around, you can build your own Microsoft Windows Home Server for the $150 cost of the softwre and the cost of a hard drive big enough to store the (compressed) content of up to ten PCs. It'll save you a LOT of time in managing your backups, is fully automated, and makes daily updates. You can restore files or an entire PC very easily and to about any past date.

 

[RaiderJ]

CloneZilla looks like a winner - let's me backup & restore images to a USB drive (and compress them). With that, I can get a place on the network to store all the images, and just pull the ones I want. The server tool looks interesting, but might be more than I need at this time.

This will have to work for now - thanks!