I used to use Ghost. Does EaseUS work the same for system restore?

[sonoferu]

I dont fully understand this stuff, but enough probably to understand most advice I might get.

For years I ran Norton Ghost 9 on my old XP box. I had 2 disks, and once a week I ghosted the first drive, which had the OS on it, to the second drive. I used it enough to be glad I had it. Going over to fetch a file was nice, and twice I had complete crashes and blessed Norton for having a complete backup ready to write back in over everything

I just got a new computer, Windows 7 custom built for me. Ghost 9 wont run on Win 7. So I looked around, and found this thing called EaseUS, which seems to make a lovely backup, very nice UI, and it's easier even than Ghost to go over and find a backed up file.

But I dont have 2 drives this time. I have an external drive, which is where I run the EaseUS system backup to.

The thing is, Norton had the boot stuff on the Ghost disk. I would put that in and boot into Norton's Windows for the restore process. It knew how to do everything for me

Am I right that any good boot disk would get Win 7 up for me and then I could go from that to the external drive and EaseUS would write the image back onto my HD? It sounds like that on the EaseUS website, but I'm a little antsy about it. Their English is not perfect at times, and that always makes anyone sound like they're not completely reliable.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

I've never used that program but I like Macrium Reflect, and it has a pretty easy to use boot CD. You should check it out.

 

[Dulanic]

EaseUS is great so far for me. I use it to backup 4 PC's using incremental backup to my server on my FlexRaid drive. Let me try it out and see how it restores... I'll post back after testing.

 

[Dulanic]

OK yes it does. Sorry for the delay. Overall EaseUS backup is crazy easy to use. I keep my backups on a network drive and if I need to restore back a few days I just tell it to restore, it reboots and restores direct from the network location.

http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/help/creating-a-bootable-cd-dvd.htm

 

[sonoferu]

Are you saying the external drive would be able to boot my main system and then do the restore? I mean a situation where the main drive is unable to do anything by itself, to call to the external drive to restore. I would set the bios to boot from the external?

 

[JackMDS]

The real state of the art is the Acronis True Image ($15 with a current promo).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16832200030

When you buy it you install the main program on your main computer and can use it from there.

You can also generate with the Program a Boot CD that can used on the main computer (or any other computer) to boot and recover from wherever your backup is.

Even if the backup is on external drive that is connected to the computer that and has a new empty HD ready to be recovered.

Upon boot the True Image program will id the USB (or Ethernet) hardware and let you use it to put the backup onto the HD.

 

[Dulanic]

Are you saying the external drive would be able to boot my main system and then do the restore? I mean a situation where the main drive is unable to do anything by itself, to call to the external drive to restore. I would set the bios to boot from the external?

No because your external drive isn't bootable I wouldn't think. You need to make a restore cd beforehand or on another pc. It would then be able to restore from that bootable cd or usb drive.

 

[deustroop]

With a second internal HDD, I use Casper.

http://www.fssdev.com/products/casper/


It bit for bit copies a drive or entire disk to the second drive-including partitions, including whether active or not.



So you can boot from the back up drive directly--nice, eh ?--and , since Casper is installed there, use Casper to copy over "C" to the former C drive (a clone).


Sweet.


No boot disk thingy .

BUT

While it says in the FAQ it will work with a usb drive - that has yet to be proven here, i.e., it will copy but will it make the usb bootable, i.e., with an active partition ?

Cause I do not know if a usb drive can ever be bootable either by cloning or when you install windows directly on it .

I will try the clone to usb just for fun someday but you could do it and advise.

 

[deustroop]

I cloned the C drive to the USB but it will not boot. Says "drive not available"--am inquiring about that .

All system files are there, boot manager, the usb partition is active, so ??

I wonder if there must be a special file for the drive to boot. This is a WD Passport usb3 drive--latest thing-that has an ses driver . Wonder if that has to load ( like the balloon says in windows-"driver installed" when the drive is attached ) ?

 

[sonoferu]

I finally got some time to play with it. I created a boot CD from the EaseUS menu, and that CD booted me to an EaseUS UI with choices to restore, etc. I didnt try it, but I feel like it would pretty surely do the job

OK, thanks all.

 

[MTDEW]

The real state of the art is the Acronis True Image ($15 with a current promo).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16832200030

When you buy it you install the main program on your main computer and can use it from there.

You can also generate with the Program a Boot CD that can used on the main computer (or any other computer) to boot and recover from wherever your backup is.

Even if the backup is on external drive that is connected to the computer that and has a new empty HD ready to be recovered.

Upon boot the True Image program will id the USB (or Ethernet) hardware and let you use it to put the backup onto the HD.

I agree, Love Acronis.
I install it and create a boot cd.
Using the boot cd creating/restoring an image has NEVER failed!

And i maintain and image 4 of my own personal pc's and at least 20 "friends and family" pc's and it has been flawless using the boot cd.