DriveImage - free hard drive backup program

[Stephen Harris]

The development of a person's thinking depends much more
on local social factors than on possibilities to publish.

Publishing in a global medium has both negative and positive effects.

I was thinking about before the internet, important papers in the
scientific world would take a few years to circulate. The local
influence might well be non-existent. There is a forum called the
Foundations of Mathematics (FOM). I think that exchange of
ideas has much more impact or shapes thinking more than local
social inputs which will often lack the qualifications to change
views, so virtual reality now exerts a social pressure.

One effect of this global medium I have seen myself is that
you realize that there are always people around who know
much better.

Yes, it is a humbling experience.

I cannot use scientific examples which I am not very sure
of, in my philosophical writings, because I know it will be
chopped to pieces by people who know a lot more than
me about such things.

I've seen people try to twist quantum mechanics into support
for certain New Age ideas. It is strange in a way, how little
connection there is between philosophy and physical reality.

The best recent example of that was Roger Penrose trying to
argue that artificial intelligence was impossible because of the
formal consequences of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.
Penrose is an extremely gifted physicist who strayed just a
little too far out of his area of expertise and used the wrong tool.

Alas, the search for certainty,
Stephen

 

[H-Man]

So you're saying that it takes an enormous amount of space to back up
a disk, relative to the original space you're backing up. More than
twice the size, in fact, because a byte has to be represented, in xml,
as 2 bytes, and you have the xml overhead added.

While a program like Ghost can store whatever you want and compress
the resulting file. Especially when you're backing up a lot of empty
sectors - it doesn't really "store" them.

If you look at the screenshot the program uses XML to store drive
information but stores the actual data in a DAT file. I think Roger made an
assumption here.

 

[H-Man]

It seems to me that for free you can download a program called xxclone
at....

xxclone.com

I have been using it for years and it is probably only one of two that I
know of that will do an exact clone of XP from one HDD to another.

Well, technically it's not an exact clone of a drive, just an exact
duplication of the collection of files (filesystem). To create an exact
clone of a drive you need to copy the information the drive contains at a
much lower level. Xxclone copies the data as files, not sector by sector,
which means that the files will not necessarily end up in even the same
order on the new drive.

 

[Roger Johansson]

If you look at the screenshot the program uses XML to store drive
information but stores the actual data in a DAT file. I think Roger made an
assumption here.

I read the article and this line:

"Once the files were converted to XML and the Back-up process
completed,"

so I assumed that it was storing in XML formatted files.

 

[H-Man]

I read the article and this line:

"Once the files were converted to XML and the Back-up process
completed,"

so I assumed that it was storing in XML formatted files.

Good assumption, bad information.

 

[Al Klein]

so I assumed that it was storing in XML formatted files.

Roger, do you actually understand what an "XML-formatted" file looks
like? What XML does?

It's like storing your orange juice in a green sky. Just because the
sentence parses, don't assume that it means something.

 

[burris]

Well, technically it's not an exact clone of a drive, just an exact
duplication of the collection of files (filesystem). To create an exact
clone of a drive you need to copy the information the drive contains at a
much lower level. Xxclone copies the data as files, not sector by sector,
which means that the files will not necessarily end up in even the same
order on the new drive.

You may be correct but this doesn't detract from the function of the clone.

For me, xxclone is a complete backup to another HDD and it allows that
target to become bootable as well.

Insofar as expecting the target drive to be in the same order, a simple
defrag could arrange it more efficiently.

 

[Archangel]

H-Man wrote:

For me, xxclone is a complete backup to another HDD and it allows that
target to become bootable as well.

Insofar as expecting the target drive to be in the same order, a simple
defrag could arrange it more efficiently.

=

In regard to XXCLONE, all the above is fine ... when you have a working
WINDOWS, and you have the wherewithal to open a computer, and/or
knowledge how to make the storage drive the main boot drive. But, XXCOPY
is totally useless for rebuilding a working operating system when a
computer has crashed and you absolutely cannot raise Windows on that
drive. In simplest terms, XXCopy is really no more than copying your
entire C: drive contents from one drive to another while in Windows.
Any simple copying manuever will do that. XXCOPY is merely a backup
copying program. It is not an effective tool when you are dealing
with a single harddrive inside your computer, which is the normal
scenario in most cases.

So, to resurrect a bald hard drive back to the date of the imaging,
you have to work in ... DOS. XXCopy does not work in DOS.
The most successful imaging software programs do work in DOS, where it
counts. You do not need Windows anywhere on the planet to replace the
contents of your failed computer harddrive (or even a new one, as long
as it is the same or larger than the old one).

There absolutely is NO substitute for a single standalone executable DOS
program like GHOST or TERABYTE to make backup images and replace them.
Further .. they are lightning speed compared to file-copying techniques,
both for making the image and for repainting the image. If ONLY people
could be shown, they would never use anything else. Really! What a
travesty that few people understand the blazing power of DOS. A pox on
Billie Gates for that!

 

[burris]

=

In regard to XXCLONE, all the above is fine ... when you have a working
WINDOWS, and you have the wherewithal to open a computer, and/or
knowledge how to make the storage drive the main boot drive. But, XXCOPY
is totally useless for rebuilding a working operating system when a
computer has crashed and you absolutely cannot raise Windows on that
drive. In simplest terms, XXCopy is really no more than copying your
entire C: drive contents from one drive to another while in Windows.
Any simple copying manuever will do that. XXCOPY is merely a backup
copying program. It is not an effective tool when you are dealing
with a single harddrive inside your computer, which is the normal
scenario in most cases.

So, to resurrect a bald hard drive back to the date of the imaging,
you have to work in ... DOS. XXCopy does not work in DOS.
The most successful imaging software programs do work in DOS, where it
counts. You do not need Windows anywhere on the planet to replace the
contents of your failed computer harddrive (or even a new one, as long
as it is the same or larger than the old one).

There absolutely is NO substitute for a single standalone executable DOS
program like GHOST or TERABYTE to make backup images and replace them.
Further .. they are lightning speed compared to file-copying techniques,
both for making the image and for repainting the image. If ONLY people
could be shown, they would never use anything else. Really! What a
travesty that few people understand the blazing power of DOS. A pox on
Billie Gates for that!

What am I missing in this conversation?

I have 2 HDDs in my PC. I use XXClone to mirror my main drive to my
backup HDD. My backup drive now also becomes bootable.
I set up a dual boot.ini and when I boot, I choose which drive I want to
boot. All this without opening the case. Has worked this way for 2 years
now.

In the days of 98, xxcopy would also do a complete clone, making the
target HDD bootable. XXcopy cannot make a bootable drive with XP and
this is why XXclone was developed.

If we are talking about working with a single HDD, then this entire
conversation may be moot.

 

[Thore]

There absolutely is NO substitute for a single standalone executable DOS
program like GHOST or TERABYTE to make backup images and replace them.
Further .. they are lightning speed compared to file-copying techniques,
both for making the image and for repainting the image. If ONLY people
could be shown, they would never use anything else. Really! What a
travesty that few people understand the blazing power of DOS. A pox on
Billie Gates for that!

You are so right...
I use Ghost ver. 6.5 twice a week on my '98SE-box, and have been
restore'ing everything a few times.

The backup in DOS takes about 4 minutes (ca. 2.6 -2.8 GB compressed to
an image-file 1.9 GB big) (The file-limit in ver. 6.5 is 2GB)

The restore takes about 4 minutes too...

Ghost ain't freeware though..

--
Venlig hilsen / Best regards
Thore Sorensen - DK2700 Brønshøj / DK2620 Albertslund

(Erstat evt. AT med @ i mailadressen hvis du mailer direkte)
Min hobbyside: www.RacePhoto.dk

 

[Archangel]

What am I missing in this conversation?

=
Yes .. you missed the premise in the response post
of dealing only with a single HD, the normal way that
most people buy computers. Most such people haven't
experience such as yours. You apparently have no
need to follow the thread.

Plus .. dealing with replacement of an image file when
you do NOT have access to Windows, ala .. crash.