I am fed up with reinstalling crappy windows. Granted, I store my drivers and progs to a seperate partion for rappid reinstallation, but I am tired of this. It still takes about a couple of hours to do this. Unfortunately Im stuck with it as it has the highest program compatibility and I know it well. Iv noticed that linux can copy its files and folders much faster to RAM/HD than windows and am feeling envious. <b>My question:</b> Is there a piece of software out there that can create a bootable iso of My MBR, OS files, Program files, etc - so I can just stick a dvd in and get my OS back in minutes instead of hours? I imagine that such a thing would have to operate outsied of the OS in question as windows locks up certain OS files and folders from even opening them (IE: System Volume Information). If the program requires its own seperate OS or boot-up installation this would not be a problem; infact it would be desirable IMO. Please help, it would be much appreciated
I think you may be pleased with Norton Ghost. It is a partition and disk imaging application. It works with a DOS bootable floppy or CD-ROM which contains the Ghost program. You also get a Windows image explorer program that you can use to explore image files or file sets, and to extract files if needed. You can create an image of a working Windows installation, burn it to a DVD or span over two or three, and use it to recover the installation in the event of disaster. You can do a fresh install, put on all your drivers, etc, set up your email, homepage, printer, etc, and then make a Ghost image which would probably fit on one DVD. and take about 10 minutes to restore. Or you can make & keep it on a spare partition on the same disk or (better and faster) on a different disk. What you would have is a Windows install disk tailored for your hardware setup. Also, you could later on make an image of your complete working system (I do it once a week). So you then have choices - a very quick clean install or a fairly quick return to a last good complete system. There are choices you can make such as trading off compression for speed. At full compression you could get about 50% reduction. I have a C:\ partition 15 GB in size. It has about 11 GB of files in it. To make a 6.5 GB Ghost image set takes about 25 minutes, and to do a restore about 30 minutes or so. It became Symantec Ghost a while back, but many folks still call it Norton Ghost. The best version to get is either version 8 or version 2003. The later version 9, 10 and onwards are a pain in the *ss.
i was just going to suggest norton ghost also but indochine beat me to it. so all a have to say is if you are envious of linux you should realy give it a try. it is much faster no viruses and you wont have to reinstall all the time like with windows. if your interested just go over to the linux forum and i will help you out.
Wow, thanks guys. I will give it a try and see how it works. Infact I think I will get it now and immediately make a backup, possibly even test it. krj15489: Iv tried linux, I even used it to boot off of a flash drive once. I like it but with windows I get something I can never get with linux; maximum compatibility (both programs and hardware), ease of use, and with the internet I am (usually) a quick google search away from finding an answer to my problem. Plus I also have a dozen or so applications that are windows based, such as photoshop and DVD Lab Pro. I use my windows mainly for recreation (movies, music, games, ebooks, and some schollarly work) and my knowledge of it is based mainly on necissity. In that way switching to linux would seem like a waste of all that knowledge. To do this would require me to learn a great deal more than I do now, being the nit-picker that I am I would be constantly trying to figure out how to tweak it to my liking. I imagine this process would take months and Id rather use that time to play super mario world hacks. lol thanks though
I haven't got a floppy drive either. I have it on a bootable CD-ROM and also on a pen drive which are dirt cheap now. I picked up a 1 GB pen drive for the same as $14 USA (well, about $13.90 to be exact) here in England. As far as I know, the commercial retail copy comes with a bootable CD-ROM. An advantage of using a pen drive is that should you only have one optical drive, and it's a burner, Ghost can burn backup CD's and DVDs directly. Of course if you have two or more, you could boot off one and burn with another. Sometimes, version 8 or 2003 Ghost is given away free with new hard drives because of its "clone a drive" feature, very handy if you are swapping an existing OS install onto a newly bought drive.
i use ghost and Acronis True Image for years i find Acronis True Image works great with xp. With this program ye can make and use a bootable cd to get to your back up files on internal or external hard drives if you have a computer crash... Acronis True Image is better then ghost and cheaper $49.95 Acronis® True Image 10 Home Supports the following storage locations: New! FTP; Hard disk drives; Networked storage devices; CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW; ZIP®, Jaz® and other removable media; P-ATA (IDE), S-ATA, SCSI, IEEE1394 (Firewire) and USB 1.0 /2.0 drives, PC card storage devices. Powerful Backup That is Easy to Do! Acronis® True Image 10 Home creates the exact copy of your hard disk and allows you to instantly restore the entire machine including operating system, applications, and all the data in the event of a fatal system crash or virus attack — no reinstallations required! And more — you can also automatically backup and respore individual files and folders to protect your data, your mails, and your applications. http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/
Wow, thanks guys. Iv played around with both and it seems that both of these programs create backups that require the original program disc to restore. This is undesirable as I am looking for a way to make a more comprehensive self-booting backup. Does anybody know of such a thing? If not acronis or norton will do, I will simply have to use iso buster to combine the backup with the bootable disc. If I however do find a self-booting backup creator I will post the info here in my next post. Thanks again for the help.
oh im fusking fed up with this shit too. i need to find a way to make a bootable DVD image of the partition that contains OS. hope i will come up wish some solution sometime and then i will try to post it here.
Both you and crazy should read Irelands post again !! I also use ture image 10 and it does everything you want to do!!!And if you have a second hard drive it will restore everything on main hard drive with one click of a button on start up, or you can use a stand alone cd disk to boot and do it.
Maybe we could have a bit less profanity? I have had no trouble with Ghost. I can make a bootable DVD with my OS partition on it. You just need to read the instructions and have a reasonable attention span. That's all.
All right which version of ghost you got. I tried to make image with ghost 12 and it fails to make the bootable CD/DVD. althought i have made a image of my C drive on another drive. and im not sure of it's integrity. cause there was continuoud activity going on in windows while i was making image. so not sure if the image is healthy. besides I've learned from every expert opinion there is no way you can make error free image from within windows. so you must create an image after booting with bootable CD of your whatever program you use in that environment. problem with me is that i have DVD +/- R DVD RAM and none of the programs support it.
let me give you and example,i use win-2000 and been using the same original installed operating system since late 1999...b-4 ghost or drive image i had to back up my system the hard way.in 2003 ghost came out and i started to use it.i made a floppy and cd boot disk to get to my back up images..my back up images are on d-drive.i can restore my computer in 21min..in a heart beat to the date i want to.. i am still using the first install of 2000 today.as i post to you. i switched over to drive image its easy to use,now all my back ups go to a 500gb external hard drive,also i made a drive image boot cd disk in case my system goes down. note:the key words are:external hard drive note:i do use win xp,and i do use drive image on 2-active systems.. also to a external 500gb hard drive.. what the boot cd disk does it will start b-4 windows starts and let you get to the files on any hard drive the image files are on so you can restore your system.. Quote vivapolsk besides I've learned from every expert opinion there is no way you can make error free image from within windows. bullcrap or get ghost 2003 the back ups are using dos Quote vivapolsk so you must create an image after booting with bootable CD of your whatever program you use in that environment. i agree
