System backup/restore - Drive Image, Ghost or True Image??

[SoLittle]

My system is an AMD running Windows XP Pro. Windows and all of my apps, data and other "stuff" are on a 40 gig master drive (about 20 gig). I bought a 60 gig drive for a slave and want to use it for backup and recovery. I am not all that computer savy.

I would like to be able to back-up everything on the master to the slave including the operating system, registry and other "stuff" so that if I have a hard drive failure on the master I can either replace it and recover from the slave or run from the slave at "the click of a mouse."
I have been reading about Norton's Ghost 2003, Drive Image 2002 and Acronis True Image 6.0. Will any of these do what I am looking for and if so which is best? The info. and claims that I am reading is confusing and off times conflicting.

 

[FoBoT]

we use the enterprise version of drive image at work and i don't like it

too many problems/errors

check the powerquest web site, they have a master error list, it has over 2000 errors listed!!! , maybe they should put some effort into improving their software instead of it error reporting ability

 

[krackato]

I've tried Drive Image 2002 and True Image 6. I really liked Drive Image in the beginning, but I started getting quite a few errors when I went to make my backup. I haven't had any problem restoring with Drive Image, and I was finally able to make a backup of the system just like I wanted, so it wasn't a total bust, but it was unnerving to see so many errors, especially since I had just reformated and was only installing my usual programs.

I tried True Image also, albeit, for quite a bit less time. Of course, part of the reason for that is that it never gave me any errors. If I had to choose 1 of the 2 products, it'd have to be True Image. Also, True Image allows you to make a boot CD. On Drive Image, you can only make Boot Floppies, and given how much I hate floppies, that's another plus for True Image.

Of course, my dream is to have my harddrive image on a bootable DVD-R. I tried to make one the last couple of days and finally gave up. I came close, but no dice. I'm sure they'll eventually put this feature in.

Basically, I think any 3 of the programs will do what you want, but I'd go with True Image.

 

[Skel]

We use Deployment Center 5.01, which we are planning on changing out in the next couple of days to 5.5. It seems to work ok, sometimes we use Ghost, I just don't like the lack of speed, and the way it handles images...


edit: Deployment Center is the corp verison of Driveimage..