To image a drive (or a partition) you first need some third-party software,
such as Norton GHOST or Acronis True Image. Copy&paste will NOT work, if
the drive/partition contains the operating system and/or installed programs.
But, copy&paste will work fine if the drive/partition contains only data,
and so will the XCOPY command. This is one advantage of separating data
from the operating systems and programs.
There are many programs that can do backup/restore, and some are even free.
Take a look at Major Geeks, category "backup" on the left side of the main
screen, or use this link to get there directly:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloads3.html
The next thing to realize is that while many modern programs can backup a
drive/partition from within XP, none can perform a restore from within XP.
Some, like GHOST 2003 and older versions of DriveImage, act as if they can
restore from within XP, but really log-off, reboot into DOS, perform the
restoration, then reboot the PC. Others, like True Image or the latest
GHOST (now merged with Drive Image) use a bootable CD to perform the
restore. Older versions of GHOST (pre-2003) used a bootable floppy for both
the backup and the restore.
Note: One of the perils of a program that does an auto-reboot from XP to
DOS and back is that it often uses a virtual partition and thus has to play
with the master boot record of the hard drive. In the case of GHOST 2003,
when something went wrong with the process the PC could be left unbootable.
Fortunately, Symantec realized the problem and soon offerred a small
floppy-based program to fix this issue. Modern versions of GHOST do not
have this problem.
If you decide to try a backup program, be sure to understand how it will do
the restore operation. For example, the Microsoft program Ntbackup.exe can
backup from within XP. But, it can only restore from within XP. If XP can
not be booted, this program is of little value. Ditto if you replace the
hard drive.
The other important thing to watch in backup programs is where will it can
write a backup image and where it can recover the image from. These are two
separate questions. Do not assume tnat just becasue a program can write to
an external USB NTFS-formatted partition, or SATA hard drive from within XP,
that it can restore from that same place. Read the manual. Then, to be
sure, make an image and walk part way throguh the restoration process (from
outside of XP, as if XP were unbootable). Can the restoration process see
the internal hard drive(s); can it see the image on the external hard drive,
or CD/DVD, or wherever?
While you might think it strange to ask such questions, I ran into such
problems with my current PC, because it had SATA hard drives, and they were
fairly new at the time (early 2003). GHOST could not see all partiitons
from even from within XP, which I suspect was more due to some over-zealous
copywrite protection scheme than anything else, since every other program
could see them. True Image could see them perfectly from within XP, but
could not see them from its bootable CD, which ran LINUX, not XP. Symantec
support was very UN-helpful, stating that SATA, RAID, etc were not
supported. Period. Of course, "supported" and "works" are two separate
concepts. GHOST worked fine from its bootable floppy on my un-supported
disks, just not from within XP. Acronis support was much friendlier, even
helping me run special diagnostics, from which they concluded that the
bootable CD needed LINUX drivers for my SATA disk controllers. In a few
months they had such drivers and issued a new version, which I downloaded,
installed, and from which I created a new bootable CD. True Image has
worked perfectly ever since.
I have had very good luck with True Image, as have several friends. But, I
also have had good experiences with the older versions of GHOST, although
those are limited to writing to FAT32-formated internal disks, ZIP drives,
and some CDs. True Image writes to FAT32 or NTFS formatted disks, internal
or external; it can also handle LINUX formats. In fairness, I have heard
that the latest GHOST can now handle external and/or NTFS formatted disks.
Still, overall I would rate True Image as friendlier. Plus, it makes a
bootable CD based on the latest installed version of itself. In contrast,
the latest GHOST comes with a bootable CD, but without a means to update
itself.
Be sensistive to the concepts of "drive", "partition", "image", "clone".
Some free programs can clone one hard drive to another, which is great, if
you are installing a new, larger hard drive. Every maker of hard drives has
such a program, and these are offerred for free from their support websites,
or on a CD that comes with the new hard drive. Some may only work if your
PC has at least one of their brand of disk. Others will work on any brand
of disks. Some programs can make an image of a whole drive (whole disk),
but can not make an image of a single partition. Others can do both. If
you have one big C:\ drive then the partition is almost the disk, but not
quite. Be aware that partition backups usually do not include ther master
boot record, since that is a disk concept, not a partition concept.
However, newers versions of True Image save that too, since many users save
a partition, when they mean to save the whole disk. An image is a big file,
that by itself is not very useful, except as input to the recovery process.
Some programs split images into several smaller files, and some allow the
suer to set the size (e.g., 650 Meg for optional copying to CDs at some
later time). A few programs can extract a single file or directory tree
from within an image.
In your quest to find a good backup program, consider downloading the manual
for each candidate. Read it and get a feeling for whether it is something
that you feel comfortable doing. Also, read about any limitations. Most
programs have associated support websites, with FAQs, tips/tricks, searches
on classes of problems, and maybe even a user forum.
"David D" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>I am trying to find some steps or a tutorial on how to ghost/image a
> drive for backup, but I am not finding it. Can someone walk me
> through (if possible) the process? Thanks
>