I am tired of long recoveries.

[oldman420]

I think I have bad luck or maybe I just have high standards but i end up reinstalling XP no less than once a month.
The recovery process takes at least two hours each time, and several more hours getting the details worked out.
So im thinking about a cheap 20 gig hdd in a usb inclosure, I could ghost my system to it and perhaps set it to boot when i make it the first boot device, and reformat and restore a perfect XP.

I estimate that would take about 5-10 mins.

Help me out here guys, how do I do this?
What software will work?
Who makes a decent chaep usb enclosure?
Thank you

 

[XBoxLPU]

I may be wrong but I think you could pick up a DVD burner for ~$80 ( even a DL ) instead of another HD. I just did a ghost image of my Windows Partition which was 9 gb, Ghost produced an image file of 6.6 gb which I can easily burn to a DVD DL media

 

[chocoruacal]

Well, suggestions for imaging your installation doesn't really solve the problem, does it? I would make a separate post and list your system specs and what you think you are doing to kill the installation. Cause if say, you have a bad stick of RAM that's causing data corruption, simply reimaging every month isn't going to do sheet, except thin your wallet and waste your time.

 

[Trey22]

Chocoruacal is right, it's best to get down to the root cause of your problem and work from there.

But,

In answer to your post, I use an external Bytecc USB 2.0 enclosure in which I stuck an extra WD 80GB HD I had laying around to image my system. It was approximately 35 bucks on newegg. I use Acronis TrueImage to image my HD, since it can do it while you are IN Windows and it is as simple as clicking the source drive, then the destination drive, then image.

 

[Navid]

I have a second, 40G, hard drive that I use mainly for backup. I put images of my XP partition on it. My XP partition is only 4GB. I install my programs on a separate partition (D on the same physical drive as C). The "My Documents" folder is also on D as well as my emails and my IE favorites folder. So, when I restore my XP partition, non of those is touched.

I install lots of demos and share ware programs. After a while, my registry gets very messy. So, I just restore the X drive in 5 minutes. I have also disabled the XP restore since I never need it.

I use Drive Image 2002 from Power Quest (now Symantec) for imaging.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: XBoxLPU
I may be wrong but I think you could pick up a DVD burner for ~$80 ( even a DL ) instead of another HD. I just did a ghost image of my Windows Partition which was 9 gb, Ghost produced an image file of 6.6 gb which I can easily burn to a DVD DL media

Be aware though, Ghost has limitations when it comes to NTFS. If you want the duplicate to be bootable, you can't just image a partition - you need to image the entire drive.
I've heard that a few things from Acronis are more capable than Ghost, but I've not actually tried any yet.


And geez, reinstall Windows once a month? What do you do to the OS that warrants so many reinstalls? Back when I had Windows 98, I only reinstalled maybe every 4-5 months, approximately. Now with WinXP Pro, I've done maybe, don't know, 3 or possibly 4 reinstalls since I got the OS well over a year ago, and I think two installs were right near the beginning, as I was doing major upgrades, and another was when I switched motherboards. I think late 2003 was when I did the last reformat, and the system is still running great.

Ah, Everest confirms it - OS install date was October 21, 2003.

 

[mechBgon]

If you have WindowsXP Professional, try Automated System Recovery. Get WinXP installed, get your software installed, get everything "just so," and then run an ASR backup to a spare hard drive that has no other role in the system.

Now nuke your WinXP installation, make sure your spare drive is in the system, start Windows Setup, press the F2 key when prompted, and let 'er rip. I've recovered a fully-configured WinServer2003 Active Directory domain in under an hour... and on very dissimilar computers, too. Intel/VIA/IDE --> AMD/nForce/SCSI. Let's see Ghost pull that one off.

 

[jyates]

For most of the machines I build I put an extra 20gb hard drive in them to put a ghost image on.

Once I have everything the way I want it I use the ghost program and put an image on the 20gb hard drive
and make a ghost boot floppy. From time to time I delete the ghost image on the 20gb hard drive and
put a newer image on it so if my main hard drive craps out I can restore it back fully in about 10 minutes
and that's for about 10gb of data.

As far as NTFS goes I know ghost 2003 supports NTFS and I've actually taken a blank hard drive that wasn't
partitioned or formated and restored a ghost image to it and once the process was over it booted right up
into Windows XP. So unless the hard drive dies completely you can always restore to the drive unless it just
won't be written to.

Ghost has saved me SEVERAL hours of time when it comes to reinstalls.

 

[thorin]

Build stable system with needed installs, config, and patches. Ghost to secondary drive (internal preferably but expernal if you have to). Create Ghost Boot disk. Rebuild system from Ghost Image.

Thorin

 

[DaveSimmons]

I prefer Acronis True Image to Ghost 2003, since Acronis burns a bootable CD even from the electronic download. The bootable CD can image from / to XP NTFS partitions.

But like everyone else says, you should not need to reinstall more than once or twice a year. Solving your hardware problem makes more sense than creating a coping strategy.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
If you have WindowsXP Professional, try Automated System Recovery. Get WinXP installed, get your software installed, get everything "just so," and then run an ASR backup to a spare hard drive that has no other role in the system.

Now nuke your WinXP installation, make sure your spare drive is in the system, start Windows Setup, press the F2 key when prompted, and let 'er rip. I've recovered a fully-configured WinServer2003 Active Directory domain in under an hour... and on very dissimilar computers, too. Intel/VIA/IDE --> AMD/nForce/SCSI. Let's see Ghost pull that one off.

Listen to this man

 

[XBoxLPU]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
If you have WindowsXP Professional, try Automated System Recovery. Get WinXP installed, get your software installed, get everything "just so," and then run an ASR backup to a spare hard drive that has no other role in the system.

Now nuke your WinXP installation, make sure your spare drive is in the system, start Windows Setup, press the F2 key when prompted, and let 'er rip. I've recovered a fully-configured WinServer2003 Active Directory domain in under an hour... and on very dissimilar computers, too. Intel/VIA/IDE --> AMD/nForce/SCSI. Let's see Ghost pull that one off.

Though don't you need a floppy drive ???

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: XBoxLPU

Originally posted by: mechBgon
If you have WindowsXP Professional, try Automated System Recovery. Get WinXP installed, get your software installed, get everything "just so," and then run an ASR backup to a spare hard drive that has no other role in the system.

Now nuke your WinXP installation, make sure your spare drive is in the system, start Windows Setup, press the F2 key when prompted, and let 'er rip. I've recovered a fully-configured WinServer2003 Active Directory domain in under an hour... and on very dissimilar computers, too. Intel/VIA/IDE --> AMD/nForce/SCSI. Let's see Ghost pull that one off.

Though don't you need a floppy drive ???

If there's a way around having the floppy drive, I'm not aware of it. I do back up the ASR floppy's files to hard disk since floppies are easily corrupted.

It's worth mentioning that if the new hardware platform is fundamentally different, like in my example above, then you'll need to install mobo drivers again, and would probably want to reinstall your video drivers afterwards.

 

[oldman420]

Originally posted by: chocoruacal
Well, suggestions for imaging your installation doesn't really solve the problem, does it? I would make a separate post and list your system specs and what you think you are doing to kill the installation. Cause if say, you have a bad stick of RAM that's causing data corruption, simply reimaging every month isn't going to do sheet, except thin your wallet and waste your time.

As for my setup it's in my sig.
I am sure i am having no hw problems, so it has to be playing hard and computing on the edge that kills xp.

its not like xp becomes fubar its like things get funky and not everything works right.
some would try to fix xp I think it works better to reintsall.
i will try to get a hdd usb enclosure and see if that does it.
thankyou

 

[XBoxLPU]

Originally posted by: mechBgon

Originally posted by: XBoxLPU

Originally posted by: mechBgon
If you have WindowsXP Professional, try Automated System Recovery. Get WinXP installed, get your software installed, get everything "just so," and then run an ASR backup to a spare hard drive that has no other role in the system.

Now nuke your WinXP installation, make sure your spare drive is in the system, start Windows Setup, press the F2 key when prompted, and let 'er rip. I've recovered a fully-configured WinServer2003 Active Directory domain in under an hour... and on very dissimilar computers, too. Intel/VIA/IDE --> AMD/nForce/SCSI. Let's see Ghost pull that one off.

Though don't you need a floppy drive ???

If there's a way around having the floppy drive, I'm not aware of it. I do back up the ASR floppy's files to hard disk since floppies are easily corrupted.

It's worth mentioning that if the new hardware platform is fundamentally different, like in my example above, then you'll need to install mobo drivers again, and would probably want to reinstall your video drivers afterwards.

I do not think there is a way around not having a floppy drive.

None of my machines have had a floppy drive for years nor will they now.

Jeff, any more details on making sure a restored image can boot ?

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Originally posted by: oldman420

Originally posted by: chocoruacal
Well, suggestions for imaging your installation doesn't really solve the problem, does it? I would make a separate post and list your system specs and what you think you are doing to kill the installation. Cause if say, you have a bad stick of RAM that's causing data corruption, simply reimaging every month isn't going to do sheet, except thin your wallet and waste your time.

As for my setup it's in my sig.
I am sure i am having no hw problems, so it has to be playing hard and computing on the edge that kills xp.

its not like xp becomes fubar its like things get funky and not everything works right.
some would try to fix xp I think it works better to reintsall.
i will try to get a hdd usb enclosure and see if that does it.
thankyou

..I think if it isn't external for your source of troubles it lies within the following

a7n8x-e
xp2600m 11.5 x 210 @1.65vcore
3x256 corsair xms 400

sometimes nf2 mobos don't like all 3/4 dimm slots populated..

 

[oldman420]

I really must have gotten lucky with my hw as I really have no problems with it. I was running 2 sticks in dual channel and when I added the third it really made the system more responsive and stable.
I think that I over and under clock install and remove drivers and some freeware. I also play a lot of games and push my hw to the limit.
I have Friends that manage to get xp to last forever.
But not this old man.