See below.
You have to be an absolute expert to do that.
*** Not correct. The vast majority of people use imaging
*** programs without any problems whatsoever. There are
*** exceptions, of course.
I have had so much
downtime trying and using these monstrosities that you will not
believe it.
*** I don't.
I have had lot of images that just came up with a
'corrupt' message. I have an external in which I trusted all my
information of E: drive. Every time I tried to restore E: drive it
went belly up.
*** Acronis TrueImage lets you test each image file on
*** the spot. Maybe the current version of DriveImage
*** has this facility too - I don't know.
CURE: Format the drive and input the data from the
external.
Do yourself a favour - stick to a MS backup and put that on your
external.
*** That's fine, but you need to remind the OP that he needs
*** an operative version of Win2000 in order to restore an
*** ntbackup file. With TrueImage you can restore an image
*** with a boot CD that Acronis makes for you on the fly.
*** In other words, you can restore onto a blank hard disk.
Now I sleep at night. I cannot tell you which program I used
but it was one of them and I promised not to mention that name as I
got my money back. Best of luck if you do not take my advice. Just
because it is free it is not necessary that it is faulty - far from
it.
*** Neither TrueImage nor DriveImage is free. Both are
*** nicely engineered products, and they cost a moderate
*** amount of money. Ghost is another imaging product.
*** I haven't used it but many people are impressed.