What's the best drive imaging program?

[geckojohn]

Hey,

I work in the IT department and i need to image a laptop hard drive for our CEO... so that in case he messes it up, then we can restore it back to new again. Is there anything built into Windows XP? Any software recommendations?

thanks,

-john

 

[Twista]

NORTON GHOST

 

[sohcrates]

Norton Ghost is pretty good

 

[athithi]

I just used PowerQuest DeployCenter/ImageCenter recently - worked very well for me. I was doing disk-to-disk though it does have a Create Image feature too. I believe Norton Ghost is the popular choice - never used it before, though. I don't think Windows has anything built-in. Probably a question for Software forum..

 

[iwearnosox]

I've had good luck with ghost, although there are apparently faster solutions out there.

 

[JackBurton]

Ghost 7.5 or 8.0 (when it comes out). This is usually what I do. I create an image file (the machine image) on the server and copy the image file/s to CD or DVD and make them bootable. If his PC goes down, pop the CD/DVD in and boot off it. It will ghost the HD automatically. I also include Ghost Explorer on the CD/DVD so if they just want to pull data off the image, they can open the image up with Ghost Explorer and copy the data to their HD. No need to reimage a machine if they just want some data off an image.