Should I make an image disk?

[Hans]

I recently bought a new PC with XP Home on it. I have 2 external HDs for
back-up of data and use Retrospect software for that, works very well.

My PC came with an XP CD.

My question really is: should I make an image disk (preferably on the
external HDs) so I can repair or refresh XP if that is ever needed. Some
friends tell me one should re-install XP once/year or so to clean up the
registry etc. I am not familiar with using image disks, except that I made
one a while ago for a new laptop. The HD of that laptop failed within a day
and a new one was installed by the technician. He was very happy that I had
made an image disk and within a few minutes all was up and running again.

But I have no instructions on my new PC how to make an image disk, any help
here? And would it be useful to do so since I do have an XP disk.

 

[Big_Al]

I recently bought a new PC with XP Home on it. I have 2 external HDs for
back-up of data and use Retrospect software for that, works very well.

My PC came with an XP CD.

My question really is: should I make an image disk (preferably on the
external HDs) so I can repair or refresh XP if that is ever needed. Some
friends tell me one should re-install XP once/year or so to clean up the
registry etc. I am not familiar with using image disks, except that I made
one a while ago for a new laptop. The HD of that laptop failed within a day
and a new one was installed by the technician. He was very happy that I had
made an image disk and within a few minutes all was up and running again.

But I have no instructions on my new PC how to make an image disk, any help
here? And would it be useful to do so since I do have an XP disk.

I don't know Retrospect so I'll tell you what I do know.
An image of course is a picture, snapshot, clone, copy. Call it what
you want but its a exact replication of your hard drive or at least a
single partition of a hard drive. And its all in one file, and like any
other file on a HD. Just large. I use Acronis True Image software.
You can get a 15 day trial from their site. Its just one of a few good
ones running around. ATI has the ability to save the entire drive
contents to a single file on the external drive. This allows you to
make several copies over a long period of time, like weekly backups and
have 10-20 copies (if space is available). My 40 gigs of data on a
80gig drive is compressed a bit to about 20 gigs. So I get about 4
copies on my 120 gig external.

ATI also allows you to just clone the drive. The process just copies
all the data from C: to (lets say G and makes G: look like C: on the
next boot. With a clone, you normally do the job and then remove the
drive and never touch it till you need it. When the PC HD fails,
simply swap drives, putting the spare HD into the machine as C: and boot
and you are up and running instantly. What was G: is now C: by means of
a small change on the first boot. (remember it had to be G: to work
with Windows when you wrote to the drive in the first place). All this
is automatic to you.

I prefer the backup image process as its simple to do. You have a CD
that boots to the restore program, you pick an image off the backup
drive and tell it to restore to the C: and you are up and running in a
bit.

Takes 9 minutes on my 40 gig backup. 9 Minutes and I've got the OS
reloaded, all the apps, all my data, all the updates, all the
settings..... I can't load XP in 9 minutes.



Hope this helps.

 

[Lil' Dave]

I recently bought a new PC with XP Home on it. I have 2 external HDs for
back-up of data and use Retrospect software for that, works very well.

My PC came with an XP CD.

My question really is: should I make an image disk (preferably on the
external HDs) so I can repair or refresh XP if that is ever needed. Some
friends tell me one should re-install XP once/year or so to clean up the
registry etc. I am not familiar with using image disks, except that I made
one a while ago for a new laptop. The HD of that laptop failed within a
day
and a new one was installed by the technician. He was very happy that I
had
made an image disk and within a few minutes all was up and running again.

But I have no instructions on my new PC how to make an image disk, any
help
here? And would it be useful to do so since I do have an XP disk.

Unclear if you mean a virtual image of the XP installation CD (disc, not
disk), current installation of XP in image file format which is probably
been used a bit and not new, new installation of XP in image file format.
You said what some friends said to do once a year, but, you failed to
indicate what your intentions were/are/will be.

 

[Leonard Grey]

A disk image is a form of backup. A conventional backup copies files and
folders; while a disk image is a copy of all the bytes on your hard
disk, including data not contained in files, such as the boot sectors,
files tables and partition information.

A disk image is the easiest way to backup and restore your software,
including Windows. You will never again have to reinstall your operating
system. If your PC can't boot, simply restore a known-good image.
You can also backup your data with disk imaging software, but its real
strength is to backup your software.

What is frequently done is to separate your software and data
(documents, spreadsheets, jpegs, etc.) into separate partitions. That
allows you to restore your software without taking your data back to the
same date. However, separate partitions are not necessary for backing up.

Disk imaging is harder to understand and use than conventional backup
software, but it's definitely worth your time to learn about it. There
are several popular disk imaging programs, including (in no order) True
Image, Image for Windows, ShadowProtect Desktop and Ghost.

 

[Newton]

Another good imaging software is Clonezilla. It has the advantage of being
opensource and free. I have had a lot of luck using this system.

As for how often to create an image of your PC: Create one after making any
major changes to your system. Well, you should probably make an image before
the change - in case things don't go well - but once you are happy with the
performace of your machine go ahead and make an image. In my experience
images will often come out in the 10 - 15 GB range, depending on the level of
compression you use and how much you have loaded on your PC.

 

[Hans]

Hello "Lil" Dave
The disc I have is a sealed MS CD with I presume contains XP. The serial
number was removed from a tab and is stuck on the back of the PC.

Since I look after my data with frequent back-ups (I keep my many
photographs and music separate from the rest of the data and back-ups) I
would really like a disc that just reinstalls XP the way it is now. After a
few weeks of use. In that case I could reinstall XP if it ever would start
getting slow. Going to an earlier restorepoint might do the same). But
recently my previous PC apparently developed a fault in the motherboard and
it tripped just before filling in the XP password to a blue screen. I then
bought a new PC and have been re-installing all the old software and
migrating data. This took me many days and great frustration. Now I can do
anything except play DVDs like on the former one. Hence my question for an
image disc.

But from the replies I received (many thanks to all) I think I continue with
my frequent back-ups of data on 2 external HDs and if ever my main HD fails,
I will just re-install all the software again from the discs I have.

Kind regards
Hans

 

[Leonard Grey]

"...and if ever my main HD fails, I will just re-install all the
software again from the discs I have."

Up to you. You may find it inconvenient to have to setup your software
to your liking all over again and then re-install all the updates. Do
you have installation media for /all/ the software on your computer?

I can restore an image of my system partition in less than 7 minutes,
and it's all setup and up-to-date (as of the date on which I made the
image, and I make images every day, sometimes more frequently.)

 

[Lil' Dave]

After reading your reply, I believe you have XP installed entirely in the C:
partition. You keep your photo and music data in a separate location from
your other remaining personal data. You backup your photo and music data to
different location (physical removable media? unclear) than your personal
data. You did say you have 2 external hard drives, so, I assume you are
keeping backups of your self-described data separated on those external hard
drives per your original post.

Based on your question about backing up the entire XP partition (C, the XP
installation disc (CD) is of no bearing in the information phase of your
question. As noted by other replies to your post, imaging software is
typically used for ease of use, reliability, able to copy XP files within
the XP environment or from boot media. For quickest backup and restoration,
an external hard drive is typically used for storage of such an image. Note
that the resulting image file is always smaller than the sum of all the data
in that partition. A clean installation of XP may be kept on CD for image
restoration in the event of major loss of external hard drive failure where
partition images are nornally stored.

Something I did fail to see in the image software replies was the 2nd phase
of testing the imaging software. The first phase is implementing image of
the partition to your media. The 2nd phase of testing the imaging software
is restoration of that image back to its original source location from the
media you saved it to. If the 2nd phase is not done right away, you cannot
feel confident of its use. The most common failures are of the imaging
software unable to access the media where you saved the image file, and
2ndly, a corrupt image file resulting in image restoration failure. The 2nd
failure is usually avoided by verification of the image file after the
actual image creation. Verification is usually optional during the imaging
creation sequence.

Others may disagree, in my own personal opinion and experiences, it would be
smarter to keep all your personal data including photos etc. in another
partition on the same hard drive, separated by folders and subfolders for
organization. XP and 3rd party software still on the C: partition.