Riccardo said:
I'm going to prepare a boot dvd to restore automatically image of my
hard disk laptop which is divided into 2 partitions:
Windows XP (NTFS) + recovery partition (unknown)
What kind of product is it more suitable to create boot dvd to use for
automatically restore of Windows ?
My notebook is Dell Precision 6400
I know these product Acronis True Image, Clonezilla, Ghost.
Riccardo:
Let me offer you another suggestion to the ones you've already received...
Your Dell Precision comes equipped with an eSATA port so that you can use
this device to create SATA-to-SATA connectivity between an external SATA HDD
enclosure and your laptop.
This is an important consideration because now you can use one of the
disk-cloning programs that have already been mentioned to you and clone the
contents of your *entire* internal HDD to the external SATA HDD that's
connected to your system via the eSATA port. The great advantage to this
configuration is that because you've achieved SATA-to-SATA connectivity, the
system treats the external HDD as an *internal* HDD. Thus the external SATA
HDD containing the cloned contents of your internal HDD is *bootable* and
completely functional in an identical way to your *internally-connected*
HDD. So you have what amounts to a byte-for-byte copy of your day-to-day
working HDD that's completely bootable & functional.
So if you're not entirely set on using DVDs as your backup medium, my advice
is to take advantage of your hardware configuration. SATA HDD external
enclosures are modestly priced these days. Take a look at newegg's
offerings. While you're there take a look at the Vantec NST-D200SU external
device - see
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817392028
We've been using this model for a few months and it seems to work just fine.
It has an added advantage in that it accommodates both 2 1/2" & 3 1/2" HDDs.
(I'm assuming your laptop takes 2 1/2" drives). You just slip the bare drive
into the appropriate slot. It is a bit bulky so take that into consideration
if you would be looking for a more compact unit.
I know you've rec'd suggestions re using a disk-cloning/disk-imaging
program. My personal preference is the Casper 5 disk-cloning program. (It
does *not* have disk-imaging capability). It's simple to use, very
effective, and extremely fast in backing-up (cloning) one's HDD when the
program is used on a routine frequent basis. There's a trial version
available at
http://www.fssdev.com/trial.
Anna