Backup Drive Imaging Software

[G Lamar]

I have tried Ghost and Drive Image software but not to happy with
them.
Anyone know of any freeware, shareware or other software that will
make a drive or partition image from either a FAT or NTFS drive and
store on either a FAT or NTFS local drive? Thanks

 

[Crusty \(-: Old B@stard :-\)]

I have been using Drive Image to do just that, for about 10 years now! What
is your problem?

 

[CS]

I have tried Ghost and Drive Image software but not to happy with
them.
Anyone know of any freeware, shareware or other software that will
make a drive or partition image from either a FAT or NTFS drive and
store on either a FAT or NTFS local drive? Thanks

No freeware that I know of but BootIt Next Generation
www.terabyteunlimited.com is shareware. Fully functional for 30 days
try before you buy. Fairly steep learning curve but excellent
software.

You might also consider Acronis True Image from www.acronis.com. I
rather like this program because of its ability to write directly to
USB 2.0 external devices without booting into Windows.

 

[G Lamar]

Thanks much! Both sound interesting, especially the capability to
write/read USB 2.0 drives which I like to use for Image backups.

 

[Fred S]

Just a comment here.

BootIT NG also reads and writes to external USB devices. Works very well.

Fred

 

[Crusty \(-: Old B@stard :-\)]

Drive Image 7.01 read/writes to USB 2.0 drives. Also CD-R, DVD and network
drives! About the only thing it can't write to is reel-to-reel tape. (-:

 

[John C. Yu]

Hi:

I understand this might related to the topic but it seems to be that there
are some experts here so please help me on my failed ghost.

I have a drive is about to crash and I used Ghost to copy all data by
"disk-to-disk" under PC-DOS mode.

Unfortunately, I did not have this experience before and I messed up the
"source" and "destination" drive, which means I copied empty image from the
brand new drive to the old one with the original files.

Now, what can I do? Are all data in the original disk still there? Any ways
I can recover?

Thanks for your kind help.


PS: My personal experience of Ghost - every experts I talked to have
recommended it. But the use is not very friendly - at least for a fresh
hand like me.

 

[Grant]

Hi:

I understand this might related to the topic but it seems to be that there
are some experts here so please help me on my failed ghost.

I have a drive is about to crash and I used Ghost to copy all data by
"disk-to-disk" under PC-DOS mode.

Unfortunately, I did not have this experience before and I messed up the
"source" and "destination" drive, which means I copied empty image from the
brand new drive to the old one with the original files.

Now, what can I do? Are all data in the original disk still there? Any ways
I can recover?

Thanks for your kind help.


PS: My personal experience of Ghost - every experts I talked to have
recommended it. But the use is not very friendly - at least for a fresh
hand like me.

If you also have norton utilities, you might be able to recover some of your
files with the unformat or undelete utilities. I hope you didn't have anything
too important that you didn't have a backup of.

I've done that before, so don't feel too bad. Now I always check like 3 times
to make sure I have the source and destination right.

 

[John C. Yu]

Thanks for your comfort.

Fortunately, I did use XP Pro backup to backup also and to share with you
guys my "terrible" experience. PS: Those are important files.

Before using Ghost, I used XP backup to build up two full backup files - one
is to select the entire C drive and "system state" option, and the other one
is to use ASR with C. I did this before using Ghost since the hard disk is
acting strangely and I did not have the software at the time.

After failed on the Ghost which I copied the wrong disk. I turned to MS
solution again/

According to MS knowledgebase, I should first install the new drive with XP
and to avoid problem, updated the OS to the one I backed up. So I did,
updated everything and all the way to SP 1a.

The I used the backup utility in the new system to restore the old files in
another hard disk and select to "Replace ALL" which is instructed by NB
article.

After everything is done. The computer hang during re-boot and turned into
a black screen.

Then I tried to use ASR disk with XP CD. Wonderful, it just told me that I
don't have "enough" disk space to perform the work. It is a brand new 80G
HDD.

Then, I read a few more KB articles and tried this. Boot from CD and use
"normal installation" procedure to the point where set up detected that I do
have one XP copy installed. It asked me if I wish to recover it, and I
answered yes.

Then installation went on to install and remove files and sometime it asked
me where is the drivers (in my case, it is VGA and TapeController or
TapController which I don't know and don't have)..

Finally, it completed and guess what? I got my old files back.

But after logged into the account, something will be missing. So far, I know
that VGA needs to be re-installed, and if Norton Internet Security or
Anti-Virus is installed, it needs to be removed and reactivate and
reinstall.

But so far, I've seen desktop is the same, program shortcuts are --- looks
familiar. I need to do more tests in order to know how close it is to my
original disk. But it looks very close.

What I am still wondering is - how to use ASR disk with backup files, and
why the installation told me that I cannot use it.

After checking the new system, I will try to see the original hard disc and
tried to use some tools to check if it can be reversed. Any suggestion on
tools?

In summary, I managed to get the old disc back with MS backup file.
Although it is not an easy task, it can be done in certain ways.

 

[Rick Brandt]

Hi:

I understand this might related to the topic but it seems to be that there
are some experts here so please help me on my failed ghost.

I have a drive is about to crash and I used Ghost to copy all data by
"disk-to-disk" under PC-DOS mode.

Unfortunately, I did not have this experience before and I messed up the
"source" and "destination" drive, which means I copied empty image from the
brand new drive to the old one with the original files.

Now, what can I do? Are all data in the original disk still there? Any ways
I can recover?

Thanks for your kind help.


PS: My personal experience of Ghost - every experts I talked to have
recommended it. But the use is not very friendly - at least for a fresh
hand like me.

Ghost is not reliable against NTFS partitions. I would find another
alternative. I was burned by this myself about a year ago.

 

[CS]

Ghost is not reliable against NTFS partitions. I would find another
alternative. I was burned by this myself about a year ago.

Perhaps that's your experience, but many users including myself find
it reliable both for FAT-32 and NTFS. No problems whatsoever. Same
with Drive Image and Acronis True Image. All work well.

 

[Rick Brandt]

Perhaps that's your experience, but many users including myself find
it reliable both for FAT-32 and NTFS. No problems whatsoever. Same
with Drive Image and Acronis True Image. All work well.

Yes, but reliability is not measured by whether you have been burned "so far".
My experience was three different images created a few months apart that all
created without error, verified without error, yet would not restore. Tech
Support at Symantec basically admitted that this was possible with NTFS
partitions (though should be rare).

I don't know about you, but I need a backup that I can trust absolutely.
Finding out that all my images were crap at the exact moment that I needed them
is not acceptable for any kind of backup software.

My biggest beef wasn't that an image might not be any good, but that these
images passed the Ghost verification process. This means that with a Ghost
image of an NTFS partition you can never know 100% that it's any good until you
actually try to restore from it. That might be practical if you have a second
identical system to try it on, but if you don't you're screwed because the
nature of the problem is that you don't find out the image is no good until
after it has already wiped your disk.

In my case I was simply trying to restore to a point before some system changes
had taken place. So I had a working system before attempting to restore from
the images. Afterwards I had nothing but a disk that had to be reformatted and
loaded from scratch. Luckily with Ghost explorer I was able to retrieve a few
individual data files from the images that otherwise would have been lost.

 

[Crusty \(-: Old B@stard :-\)]

I don't know about you, but I need a backup that I can trust absolutely.
Finding out that all my images were crap at the exact moment that I needed them
is not acceptable for any kind of backup software.

Exactly!

In 10 years of using Drive Image I have "never" doubted that I could
successfully do a restore, and every restore I have done (many of dozens
with the various versions) has been successful!

 

[tony]

Did the restore finish, but the system would not boot?
Or did Ghost not finish it's actual restore?

 

[Bob Horvath]

On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 22:28:31 -0500, Bob Horvath wrote:

Are you by any chance using DI 2002, XP, and NTFS? If so have you
tried a backup yet? I have DI 2002 and was wondering if it will work
with the above mentioned setup, or would I have to buy the new DI ?
Bob

 

[Crusty \(-: Old B@stard :-\)]

Even though I have Drive Image 7.01, I always use the floppy version of
Drive Image 2002 to create my 1st backup (when building a new system). After
I have all the Windows Updates installed, I then install Drive image 7.01
and continue using the latest version.

And yes, I have frequently rolled back to the very 1st image, created with
D.I. 2002. I have never had a failure!

 

[Alex Nichol]

I have tried Ghost and Drive Image software but not to happy with
them.
Anyone know of any freeware, shareware or other software that will
make a drive or partition image from either a FAT or NTFS drive and
store on either a FAT or NTFS local drive?

The one I use is Image for Windows (associated with Boot IT NG, which
also does complete partition management, but runs, deliberately, outside
*any* operating system). This is shareware, with a fully functional
trial period, and will make a compressed backup to a separate
partition, either FAT or NTFS, as a set of files. or direct to a set of
CDs or DVDs. Its recently released version 1.2, used with a free add on
(PHYLock) will backup the partition from which it is being run, though
you should of course suspend any program that might write to the
partition during the backup

I find one DVD big enough to take the entire content of my system
partition, up to about 7 GB of uncompressed data.

www.bootitng.com

 

[Jeanette Harper]

I have used GHOST for years and have never had a problem
I do a lot of beta testing for various companies and GHOST is in-valuable to
me.
I do not like Drive Image

Everyone has different experiences

jeanette

 

[Jeff Malka]

How about True Image 7? Any experiences, good or bad?

--

Jeff McPherson
Email address deliberately false to avoid spam
(e-mail address removed)
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free by AVG

 

[CS]

How about True Image 7? Any experiences, good or bad?

Great software! Of course this is just my personal experience, but
True Image worked for me in several situations where I could not get
Ghost 2003 or Drive Image 2002 to work. As a matter of fact, when
trying to image to an external USB 2.0 device, not even BootIt Next
Generation (which I use and love) could create and verify the image.

Only True Image from Acronis worked. Of course your mileage may vary
but I would definitely give it a try.

Regards.