Your way to ghost , clone ?

[markk]

All Practiced up on crashing computer and using data recovery software to salvage my data.
NOW
1. Looking for freeware or instruction links/tutorials ? to do user friendly clone/ghost copy ,
so as to secure image of pristine OS, (including personal data and applications.)
Making a CD/R , or series of them to copy back onto harddrive in a few minutes
the stuff that takes hours to do initially.


this <http://ghost.radified.com/ > link is an 8 page explaination of how to use ghost, yet the author has never done the proccess and suggests speaking with someone who has...
nonetheless it is quite informative - BUT CLEARLY it is NOT easily done.
...
2. then there is whole thing of making routine backups, ,What is your favorite freeware to back up only changed files ?

 

[corkyg]

I don't use Ghost because it is rather complex to create a drive image - it also requires restoring. I prefer to do a complete clone job where the drive is duplicated exactly to include optimized file placement.

The best I find right now is TrueImage 7 by Acronis.TI7

It has a nifty feature that auto creates a bootable CD. That is turn gives you the full capability without involing your OS. Just connect both drives (source and target) and boot with that CD. Select the "Clone" operation and tell from where to where - it does the rest. Takes about 10 minutes to clone an 80 GB drive. This way it will also read Firewire and USB externals.

IMHO, this beats the hell out of "Ghosting"

 

[imported_Mavros]

I've done everything mentioned above with Norton Ghost 2k3. You can create various bootdisks. However i havent used Trueimage so it maybe easier to use. If you decide to use Norton Ghost let me know if you need help.