Making a drive image of a fresh Windows install

[OCNewbie]

I'm maintenance man for a couple friend's of mine's computers, and inevitably, even though I've told them what to watch out for, they end up getting spyware or a virus every few months and I find it easiest just to whipe out the C:

Anyway, I'm looking for a freeware program that after I do a fresh install of Windows 2k/XP, with all the udpates, etc., I can backup the drive's contents to a CD or DVD, in image form I presume, so it'll be easier to restore if/when this happens again.

Many thanks =)

 

[DaveSimmons]

Buy a copy of Acronis True Image, it builds a bootable CD of itself. Get a USB hard drive and bring that along with the CD.

 

[OCNewbie]

Yeah I should probably just buy something. Is Norton's Ghost good as well? Or do you recommend this Acronis one more? I don't have the USB HD yet though =(

 

[buck]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Buy a copy of Acronis True Image, it builds a bootable CD of itself. Get a USB hard drive and bring that along with the CD.

What if a usb hard drive wasnt an option and all you could use was a dvd or cd? Great thread op, was gonna ask this later on this week.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Ghost is weird now, but does work. I prefer Acronis since it doesn't try to hide options from you to be friendly, and doesn't force you to install it on every machine under Windows (just one machine to make the CD).

It can backup to CDs and DVDs, though I haven't tried making DVD backups using the bootable CD rather than in Windows. I've always backed up to a second partitiion or USB drive first, then burned CDs or DVDs using Nero.

You can download a PDF of the manual from the Acronis site before buying it

 

[Gooberlx2]

I think DriveImage XML is freeware. Dunno how good it is though.

 

[OCNewbie]

Perhaps you could incorporate a thumb drive into this equation? I guess if it was a larger one, dunno.