Leo Davinci said:
Been reading about this thing. What happens when your computer crashes
absolutely, requiring a dreaded re-install from scratch? What good are
the DriveImage XML files to you then? How do you replace the image
files when Windows is required to replace them? I haven't read too much
about this thing, but what am I missing? Does this XML thing also
provide a DOS replacement engine to put the images back .. ala
Ghost or TeraByte?
http://freewarewiki.pbwiki.com/DriveImage review by Onestep
"Once the files were converted to XML and the Back-up process
completed, I formatted the source drive, just as would be necessary
to be rid of the corrupted files, or file system. Then I used the
Restore option to regenerate a perfect replication of the files. But
I want a boot image on another hard drive which is startable if/when
WinDoZe throws a wobbly BSOD. Unfortunately, this function is
lacking from DriveImage. While you can create a 'perfect' replica
of a hard drive the replica is not bootable - when I tried I got
thousands of the word "Grub" (which is one of Linux's boot-loaders)
flashing across the screen. In any case, the time taken will depend
on the size of the partition being imaged and, of course, the grunt
of the machine doing the work. As an example, my test machine
which is an Athlon 3.2.GHz with 1GB DDR400 RAM, took nearly
3 hours when imaging a 30GB partition using IDE hard drives.
Without the ability to create a bootable image, DriveImage is
seriously lacking. It will back-up and restore your files but it won't
save you from an operating system crash. --
but, unless I missed something, DriveImage is not the tool to
resurrect a crashed XP system."
SH: I'm wanting a backup/clone program that will copy the entire
disk to cds or dvds, including the MBR. I suppose the Terabyte
boot floppy will format a new hard drive (maybe fdisk it) without
being installed to disk. This is hard to find, a backup made bootable
drive, the cloned bootable drives (drive to drive) are available.
I found the report of the word "Grub" a bit odd as I don't think it
is part of the windows xp OS. So is it an artifact of DriveImage XML?
Maybe so because grub is also open source. I wondered if the MBR
from the original drive which was then cloned could be saved to the
newly cloned drive and fix the bootup problem. I like this reference:
http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/backupandimage.shtml
I have Ultimate Boot CD which incorporates Partition Saving.
Cloning and Backups are not the same type software although
the word backup is often used in describing the cloning operation.
Regards,
Stephen
