Best Drive Imaging Program?

[Gene K]

I guess Norton's Ghost is the best known drive imaging program; however, I
have seen many critical comments in these and Forums about it. I need such a
program. Please recommend/criticize any that you have experience in using.
Also which is better for the average home user, backup programs or drive
imaging programs?

 

[Jerry]

Do a Google search and see what you find.

 

[CS]

I guess Norton's Ghost is the best known drive imaging program; however, I
have seen many critical comments in these and Forums about it. I need such a
program. Please recommend/criticize any that you have experience in using.
Also which is better for the average home user, backup programs or drive
imaging programs?

I own and have used:

Drive Image
Ghost
BING
True Image

Of the lot, I prefer True Image as it is the easiest to use. It also
(in my experience) has no problems with copying images to an external
USB 2.0 hard drive. You can find out more about the program by going
www.acronis.com $49 for the new version 7.0.

BING (BootIt Next Generation) gives you the most bang for your buck as
it does much more than make images. However, it has a difficult to
understand interface and is definitely not for the novice. Go to
www.terabyteunlimited.com and take a look at it. $35.00 shareware,
30 day trial full functional download.

Drive Image 7.0 is bloat ware (needs the MS Net Framework to be
installed before it will work) and since has been bought by Symantec.
I have Drive Image 2002 and use it occasionally. Drive Image 7.0
includes a copy of Drive Image 2002. Drive Image 2002 does not
support external USB drives. www.symantec.com

I also use Ghost 2003 on occasion. Ghost 2003 supports some external
drives but not all. www.symantec.com

 

[I'm Dan]

I guess Norton's Ghost is the best known drive imaging program;
however, I have seen many critical comments in these and Forums
about it. I need such a program. Please recommend/criticize any
that you have experience in using. Also which is better for the
average home user, backup programs or drive imaging programs?

I use BootIt-NG and DriveImage 2002, and will second CS's excellent
summarization.

As for backup programs vs. imaging programs, I think both serve different
purposes. Imaging programs should be used occasionally for your *OS and
apps* -- stuff that doesn't really change daily. A backup program should be
used daily for your *data* so you're protected for today's work. Using an
imaging program daily is a waste of time and disk space because probably 98%
of what you're imaging hasn't changed from the last image. With a sensibly
configured backup regimen for your data, you can quickly save incremental
backups daily inbetween periodic full backups. This can be made even easier
to manage if you separate your data on a different partition from the
OS+apps. You can also retain past backups because they're small, something
which is not so convenient to do with multi-GB images.

I image my system about 3-6 times a year, backup my data daily (automatic
and usually takes seconds), keep the prior iterations, and periodically dump
them to CDR. With multiple iterations of data backups, if I screw up this
Excel file or accidentally delete that Word doc, I can restore to any of
several prior versions -- yesterday, last week, last month, or whenever. In
contrast, I don't keep more than a couple iterations of OS images.

 

[Alex Nichol]

BING (BootIt Next Generation) gives you the most bang for your buck as
it does much more than make images. However, it has a difficult to
understand interface and is definitely not for the novice. Go to
www.terabyteunlimited.com and take a look at it. $35.00 shareware,
30 day trial full functional download.

It now has a sister program - Image for Windows, which is what I use.
The interface is easy. That will run under Windows to make images,
either to a set of files in another partition, or direct to a set of CDs
or DVDs. And those are bootable against a restore. $27

 

[Fred]

It now has a sister program - Image for Windows, which is what I use.
The interface is easy. That will run under Windows to make images,
either to a set of files in another partition, or direct to a set of CDs
or DVDs. And those are bootable against a restore. $27

Alex,

Will Image for Windows make an image to an external USB 2.0 HDD? Your post
says to another partition or CD.

Thank, Fred

 

[dev]

/[email protected]/ said:

Will Image for Windows make an image to an external USB 2.0 HDD? Your post
says to another partition or CD.

If not directly, an alternative is to copy an image from the main drive to
the device.

 

[Fred]

/[email protected]/ said:


If not directly, an alternative is to copy an image from the main drive to
the device.

--
For most XP answers and tweaks...
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_abc.htm
http://dougknox.com http://aumha.org
http://support.microsoft.com

Thanks dev,

That's really what I do now using BING.

BING will image and restore directly, however, to the USB 2.0 HDD. I'm asking
because I would like to recommend an alternative to others in need of the
friendlier interface. Bing is a little odd and certainly confusing to many.

Fred

 

[Gene K]

Thanks dev,

That's really what I do now using BING.

BING will image and restore directly, however, to the USB 2.0 HDD.
I'm asking because I would like to recommend an alternative to others
in need of the friendlier interface. Bing is a little odd and
certainly confusing to many.

Fred

Fred,
I take Alex Nichol's reply simply to mean that "Image for Windows" will not
copy directly to the external Hard Drive [as is true of many other programs;
they have not caught up to the existance of externals as yet. Rather you
copy to My Documents [or whereever] on the existing drive and then send it
to the external. I would think you would then delete the copy on the
exixting internal drive [usually C] to avoid clogging your system with
fairly useless stuff.
That said, what is a GOOD backup program? In my view, you need both types.
That is, drive imaging [once a week, month, whatever?] plus a good backup
for every day.

 

[R. McCarty]

Here is some information that may help. Whatever imaging program
you choose, you are faced with Data transfer rates to external drives.

If you use one of the DOS boot programs - Drive Image, Ghost etc,
the best/quickest method is to Image to another physical hard drive
in your system. This is especially true if you use the "Verify Image"
option. Then reboot to Windows and then Burn the images to your
CD/DVD drive. Doing this allows you to use the Image Explorer
tools to actually view the content of the image, before you burn it
to disks. (Just an additional sanity check).

For example I have a Maxtor 80 Gig USB 2.0. Imaging with Drive
Image 6.0 the system Partition of 2.8 Gigabytes can take up to 20
minutes. Even with USB 2.0, the Maxtor usually can only reach a
data transfer rate of around 20.0 Meg a Second.

If I image it to a "Scratch" drive and verify, it takes less than
5 minutes. The same holds true for a CD-R/DVD-RW drive. I have
a Plextor 708A. Imaging directly to it is also fairly slow. Since it
runs at Ultra-DMA mode 2. Drive Image 6.0, seems to have a
problem spanning DVD-R based backups.

Maybe speed shouldn't be an issue. However, on large partitions
doing a image backup to removable media is always going to be
slower than a IDE/SATA/SCSI drive.

I can't speak to the new "Hot" Imaging process, as I've never tried one.

However, I'm seriously considering Acronis "True Image" as my
next imaging software purchase.

Thanks dev,

That's really what I do now using BING.

BING will image and restore directly, however, to the USB 2.0 HDD.
I'm asking because I would like to recommend an alternative to others
in need of the friendlier interface. Bing is a little odd and
certainly confusing to many.

Fred

Fred,
I take Alex Nichol's reply simply to mean that "Image for Windows" will not
copy directly to the external Hard Drive [as is true of many other programs;
they have not caught up to the existance of externals as yet. Rather you
copy to My Documents [or whereever] on the existing drive and then send it
to the external. I would think you would then delete the copy on the
exixting internal drive [usually C] to avoid clogging your system with
fairly useless stuff.
That said, what is a GOOD backup program? In my view, you need both types.
That is, drive imaging [once a week, month, whatever?] plus a good backup
for every day.

 

[NobodyMan]

Fred,
I take Alex Nichol's reply simply to mean that "Image for Windows" will not
copy directly to the external Hard Drive [as is true of many other programs;
they have not caught up to the existance of externals as yet. Rather you
copy to My Documents [or whereever] on the existing drive and then send it
to the external. I would think you would then delete the copy on the
exixting internal drive [usually C] to avoid clogging your system with
fairly useless stuff.
That said, what is a GOOD backup program? In my view, you need both types.
That is, drive imaging [once a week, month, whatever?] plus a good backup
for every day.

Good summary. Daily imaging just to keep copies of your files that
changed since the last image is like using a 2 ton piece of marble to
smash a fly. It's overkill.

We use Imaging programs (specifically Drive Image) for system
deployment and OS repairs. It's quick and easy to take a stock
system, put the image on it that contains the Enterprise standard
OS/Apps/Tools, then deploy it. It also works great to quickly repair
machines that have become heavily infested with viruses/spyware to the
point they are practically useless to the end user.

Daily backups are good for those few files that do change on a daily
basis. Most of our users don't do it; they keep their critical files
in their mapped Server folders. However, those files are backed up
daily since we back up the servers every night.

 

[Edward W. Thompson]

If you use Acronis True Image it will do incremental backups.

Fred,
I take Alex Nichol's reply simply to mean that "Image for Windows" will not
copy directly to the external Hard Drive [as is true of many other programs;
they have not caught up to the existance of externals as yet. Rather you
copy to My Documents [or whereever] on the existing drive and then send it
to the external. I would think you would then delete the copy on the
exixting internal drive [usually C] to avoid clogging your system with
fairly useless stuff.
That said, what is a GOOD backup program? In my view, you need both types.
That is, drive imaging [once a week, month, whatever?] plus a good backup
for every day.

Good summary. Daily imaging just to keep copies of your files that
changed since the last image is like using a 2 ton piece of marble to
smash a fly. It's overkill.

We use Imaging programs (specifically Drive Image) for system
deployment and OS repairs. It's quick and easy to take a stock
system, put the image on it that contains the Enterprise standard
OS/Apps/Tools, then deploy it. It also works great to quickly repair
machines that have become heavily infested with viruses/spyware to the
point they are practically useless to the end user.

Daily backups are good for those few files that do change on a daily
basis. Most of our users don't do it; they keep their critical files
in their mapped Server folders. However, those files are backed up
daily since we back up the servers every night.

 

[Natéag]

I wonder if it will do emergency recovery from a diskette or CD
from or to a SATA drive. There does not seem to be any way
of loading the required drivers.

I know that is possible with (Norton/Powerquest) Drive Image 7.

If you use Acronis True Image it will do incremental backups.

Fred,
I take Alex Nichol's reply simply to mean that "Image for Windows" will not
copy directly to the external Hard Drive [as is true of many other programs;
they have not caught up to the existance of externals as yet. Rather you
copy to My Documents [or whereever] on the existing drive and then send it
to the external. I would think you would then delete the copy on the
exixting internal drive [usually C] to avoid clogging your system with
fairly useless stuff.
That said, what is a GOOD backup program? In my view, you need both types.
That is, drive imaging [once a week, month, whatever?] plus a good backup
for every day.

Good summary. Daily imaging just to keep copies of your files that
changed since the last image is like using a 2 ton piece of marble to
smash a fly. It's overkill.

We use Imaging programs (specifically Drive Image) for system
deployment and OS repairs. It's quick and easy to take a stock
system, put the image on it that contains the Enterprise standard
OS/Apps/Tools, then deploy it. It also works great to quickly repair
machines that have become heavily infested with viruses/spyware to the
point they are practically useless to the end user.

Daily backups are good for those few files that do change on a daily
basis. Most of our users don't do it; they keep their critical files
in their mapped Server folders. However, those files are backed up
daily since we back up the servers every night.

 

[Alex Nichol]

Will Image for Windows make an image to an external USB 2.0 HDD? Your post
says to another partition or CD.

The problem there is not so much the *making* of the image, which I
think Image will do without being certain, provided the drive is
capable of being seen, say in My Computer, as in the restoring it should
that be needed. And that is going to be the same with any imaging
program. It implies that either you can boot the machine from that
device (and booting from USB is rare), or that you have a DOS bootable
floppy of some sort that has drivers for USB - also rare.

You would be able to boot a BING floppy and use that (it supports
making images to USB and Firewire drives), but that is then buying two
programs to do the one job

 

[Alex Nichol]

If you use Acronis True Image it will do incremental backups.

But then it is not living up to its name. A true image is an exact
track by track affair (probably leaving out tracks shown as not in use
by the file system, and that is not compatible with the idea of an
incremental backup. To do that needs something based on the files.
and hence it is file system dependent

 

[CS]

The problem there is not so much the *making* of the image, which I
think Image will do without being certain, provided the drive is
capable of being seen, say in My Computer, as in the restoring it should
that be needed. And that is going to be the same with any imaging
program. It implies that either you can boot the machine from that
device (and booting from USB is rare), or that you have a DOS bootable
floppy of some sort that has drivers for USB - also rare.

You would be able to boot a BING floppy and use that (it supports
making images to USB and Firewire drives), but that is then buying two
programs to do the one job

Alex:

My experience with BING is that it had difficulty creating an image to
my external USB 2.0 hard drive. (a Maxtor) This is of course when
running BING from the floppy disk. Didn't make any difference if USB
2.0 support was checked off or not. Tech support was superb in that
they stuck with me for several days trying to get it to work. It
never worked. Acronis True Image worked the first time I tried it.

Now, are you telling us that Image for Windows (which includes Image
for DOS) will support external USB 2.0 devices better than BING does?
I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that Image for Windows and the imaging
program in BING were one and the same. Is this not true?

 

[Alex Nichol]

Now, are you telling us that Image for Windows (which includes Image
for DOS) will support external USB 2.0 devices better than BING does?
I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that Image for Windows and the imaging
program in BING were one and the same. Is this not true?

I don't *know* what Image does on external USB drives. My expectation
would be that it would treat them in the same way as it does hard
drives, working through the windows drivers for the device (as opposed
to BING that has to manage as best it can with BIOS access) - but I do
not have one to try. But your experience stresses the potential problem
of retrieving the image when needed if only a basic boot with no OS is
available