Whats the best way to back up or image a fresh OS install?

[o2brew]

For a free option, try downloading Knoppix and using partimage. It takes under 10 minutes to image a base install across a network. Same for restoring. It might take a little longer if you use max compression, haven't tried that. Using medium compression the image was about 800MB. Hell, it even has support for raid and such on Dell servers.

 

[WildHorse]

Originally posted by: dunkster
Scott:

Cloned drive vs. Imaged drive:

If you IMAGE a boot drive to another drive and the boot drive suffers a hardware failure - the failed drive must be replaced, and then you would restore the image to the new replacement drive.

If you CLONE a boot drive to another drive - BOTH are working boot drives. If the boot drive fails - just replace it with the clone.

Hope this helps!

dunkster,

That helps tremendously. So glad to hear this. Based on your post, I can go back to using the free Maxblast app that came with my HDD to clone to a backup hdd. Haven't used that in a long time, & now I will again. THANK YOU!

 

[Maximilian]

Repair windows FTW.