Creating "Ghost CD" on XP for System Recovery

[Guest]

I'd like to ask whether it is possible to create a "Ghost CD" for my computer
(with Windows XP). I want to create a CD such that if anything happened to my
computer, I could recover all my settings, files and everything with the CD
at any computer. Is this possible? How do you do it?

 

[Steven L Umbach]

You can't really do what you want with the operating system alone though you
can use the File and Settings Transfer Wizard to back up your user profile
settings and files. Go to programs/accessories/system tools to find FSTW.
What you seem to want is a third party imaging program if you also want to
be able to restore the operating system and applications. Ghost is great and
it comes with some versions of Norton Systemworks. There may be free
alternatives though I can not recommend one but maybe someone else can. A
Ghost image of the system partition however may not be able to be restored
on any computer because of differences of hardware so you would want to keep
separate backups of your files/settings. You can however extract specific
folders from a Ghost Image onto any computer running XP Pro, etc if you
install Ghost on that computer.

I personally use Ghost and I can reinstall my operating system and all
applications in under five minutes from my image. After that I need to spend
a few minutes making sure that my operating system is current with critical
updates, update my virus definitions, and restore my current data. Make sure
you keep track of any password changes because an image of the operating
system will use the passwords in effect at the time of the image and ALWAYS
backup your EFS private key if you use EFS encryption and keep clear text
backups of encrypted files on secured media.

Steve

 

[Guest]

What about Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Backup? What is that for? It
says it can create a sysem recovery disk. Does that include the data?

And by the way, for Norton Ghost, I tried it once before, but I create the
image on another hard disk. Is it possible to use it to create the image on a
CD?

 

[Steven Umbach]

You can use that to backup your folders and files but it is not an image type
backup and requires a working operating system to be able to restore files which
an image of the system drive does not. Automated System Recovery is a great way
to be able to rstore your operating system quickly but it will not backup all
data and applications. The link below covers all the built in options in detail.
You can use Ghost to create images to cdrom or DVD and it will use multiple
disks if it can not fit on one.

Steve

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/reskit/c14621675.mspx