mirror imaging XP

[Sam Lewis]

Hi

I recently used Norton ghost to try and image a fresh install of XP/Programs
only to be locked into a "PC DOS" boot partition.Symantec helpdesk informed
me that Ghost is "tricky" to use with NTFS partitions....My overall
experience with Symantec products has been dissapointing.
So is there a better imaging program out there? Could the native XP "Backup
whole computer" be used for same purpose ( restore OS with installed progs
and SP's)?
BTW What really is the difference betweem imaging,cloning and backing up?

Thanks

Sam

 

[Hilary]

PowerQuest Drive Image Pro is another imaging program. I use it and
have had no problems.

 

[Guest]

A copy is a copy. A Image is a image. A
clone/copy/backup is bootable, it has everything your
original drive has,OS, Programs, Email, Address Book,
Data and Registry. You can update it at anytime, any part
of it. Casper XP does that from the windows platform. I
have had Image files for years, the problem with them is
it's a whole file. You cannot make changes to them, you
cannot access them, you have to restore them. Some will
boot some won't. A image file cannot be written to a
smalled disk unless you can change the partition size to
fit the smaller drive. Lets say you have a 40gb main HDD
with 10 gb of data, you cannot put a image of it on a
20gb disk. If you're up-grading to a larger drive
wouldn't it be nice to have the old drive for a back-up

I have all the backup programs made I think, Drive
Image, Ghost ( 3 versions ), Drive Wizard, Copy
Commander, Drive Back , TrueImage etc. I mentioned Casper-
XP because someone in here made a post about it , I said
what the heck, just another $39.00, I love it. It works
so easy and I have made 30 copies and they all booted,
proof enough for me.
Buy a second Hard drive $69.00 these days and a good
copy/backup program to make a clone. XP-Casper is one.

http://www.fssdev.com/products/ $ 39.00 make the clone
and then un-plug the power to the drive if you want.

Want to test drive a Demo for 30 days. It has some
features disabled.

http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/3000-2248-10161151.html



XP is the most stable of all the windows, but it has the
highest corruption rate i have ever seen. I have Win 3.1,
Win 95 Win98 that never been re-installed , XP machines
have been done 10 times. At some point you have to wonder
what your time is worth.

I mentioned the second drive because the backup/clone is
made at IDE speed. Change two plugs and your back
running with 5 min of down time. Just the filters on my
mail program make it worth it to me.

-----Original Message-----
Hi

I recently used Norton ghost to try and image a fresh install of XP/Programs
only to be locked into a "PC DOS" boot

partition.Symantec helpdesk informed

me that Ghost is "tricky" to use with NTFS partitions....My overall
experience with Symantec products has been dissapointing.
So is there a better imaging program out there? Could the native XP "Backup
whole computer" be used for same purpose ( restore OS with installed progs
and SP's)?
BTW What really is the difference betweem

imaging,cloning and backing up?

 

[I'm Dan]

I recently used Norton ghost to try and image a fresh install of
XP/Programs only to be locked into a "PC DOS" boot partition.
Symantec helpdesk informed me that Ghost is "tricky" to use
with NTFS partitions....My overall experience with Symantec
products has been dissapointing.
So is there a better imaging program out there? Could the
native XP "Backup whole computer" be used for same
purpose ( restore OS with installed progs and SP's)?
BTW What really is the difference betweem imaging,cloning
and backing up?

Ghost is normally a reliable program, though for highest reliability it
should be used from a boot floppy, not run from within Windows. As you've
noticed, when run from Windows it reboots into DOS to do its work and (is
supposed to) reboot back into Windows when it finishes. It should be
intuitive that avoiding the before-and-after transitions can improve
reliability.

A clone is a *partition* that is an exact copy of the source partition --
boot sector, directories, and all files -- copied sector-by-sector. A copy
is like a clone, but doesn't necessarily imply that everything is
sector-by-sector identical -- all the files will be the same but may be in a
different order or different places on disk.

An image is a *file* containing a compressed snapshot of the source
partition, which can later be extracted to a blank area of hard disk space
to recreate a clone of the original. Think of it like zipfiles, just on a
grander scale. You probably know that entire directories (er, "folders") of
files can be compressed into a single zipfile, and you can later use WinZip
or similar to unzip everything to restore all the encapsulated files and
even the directory structure. An image is like a zipfile -- it's not an
exact duplicate of the original files, but it contains within it the means
to restore exact duplicates.

A backup is really a different issue -- a clone, copy, or image can be a
backup, it's instead a matter of how you use them. "Backing up" just refers
to some method of saving data and being able to restore/recover it when
needed. A backup could include specific files, a whole partition, or even a
whole disk.

So which is better -- a clone or an image? Well, you generally do not need
to create a clone/copy unless you are ready to use it now. For example, if
you're replacing your hard disk, you want a clone now, so if you make an
image you'd just have to extract it immediately anyway. In contrast, an
image is more appropriate if you are just making a backup to store away in
case you might need to restore your original later. Then when you need it,
you extract it to restore the enclosed partition on a hard disk. An image is
much smaller -- a 20GB partition that is half full might fit in a 5GB image
file, but if cloned it would still be 20GB. An image can also be saved on
CDR or DVD-R (remember, it's a file), but a clone of the partition cannot.

 

[Sam Lewis]

OK and thanks
Sam

PowerQuest Drive Image Pro is another imaging program. I use it and
have had no problems.



--

Hilary

Remove DELETE from email address to message me

 

[Sam Lewis]

Thanks for detailed reply,responses inline..

A copy is a copy. A Image is a image.

Did I ask a silly question?LOL

A clone/copy/backup is bootable, it has everything your
original drive has,OS, Programs, Email, Address Book,
Data and Registry. You can update it at anytime, any part
of it.

Yes,this is what I want.One basic version (OS -personally configured,updates
and SP's,all progs and registry,IE settings,Favorites,OE
filters/stores/folders,WAB,... but minus data files) to serve as a clean
install in case the Second updatable version (including data files) becomes
corrupted or infected.

Casper XP does that from the windows platform. I
have had Image files for years, the problem with them is
it's a whole file. You cannot make changes to them, you
cannot access them, you have to restore them. Some will
boot some won't. A image file cannot be written to a
smaller disk unless you can change the partition size to
fit the smaller drive. Lets say you have a 40gb main HDD
with 10 gb of data, you cannot put a image of it on a
20gb disk. If you're up-grading to a larger drive
wouldn't it be nice to have the old drive for a back-up

Thanks for explanation

I have all the backup programs made I think, Drive
Image, Ghost ( 3 versions ), Drive Wizard, Copy
Commander, Drive Back , TrueImage etc. I mentioned Casper-
XP because someone in here made a post about it , I said
what the heck, just another $39.00, I love it. It works
so easy and I have made 30 copies and they all booted,
proof enough for me.
Buy a second Hard drive $69.00 these days and a good
copy/backup program to make a clone. XP-Casper is one.

Thanks for heads up.I gather then that the backup prog with XP (back up
whole computer option) doesn't do the job?

http://www.fssdev.com/products/ $ 39.00 make the clone
and then un-plug the power to the drive if you want.

I have removable rack drive for this purpose

Want to test drive a Demo for 30 days. It has some
features disabled.

http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/3000-2248-10161151.html


XP is the most stable of all the windows, but it has the
highest corruption rate i have ever seen. I have Win 3.1,
Win 95 Win98 that never been re-installed , XP machines
have been done 10 times. At some point you have to wonder
what your time is worth.

XP is my first excursion into windows.I used mac until it became painfully
obvious that interfacing with the rest of the world was more difficult ( but
still possible)
Another silly question but if XP becomes corrupt it is kind of equivalent
to unstable in that both don't work correctly and cause headaches and
excessive time wasting.?!

I mentioned the second drive because the backup/clone is
made at IDE speed. Change two plugs and your back
running with 5 min of down time. Just the filters on my
mail program make it worth it to me.

Exactly
I have designed my new computer around removable rack mounted SATA
drives(one each for separate OSes on C, and two data/storage/video
discs).They are theoretically hot swappable but at any rate very easy to
interchange.Works very well and great alternative to multibooting.The
problem is one or either of my rack mounted OS disks becomes corrupted and I
nneed to reformat which takes hours.Or It can otherwise take me hours to
track down the "problem",presuming it is fixable


Thanks for help

Sam

 

[Yves Leclerc]

In order to use Ghost on XP, Ghost needs to be able to read it. Makre sure
you use Ghost 2002 PE (part of SystemWorks) or Ghost Corporate 75. This is
supposed to be be when Ghost started to able to read XP NTFS format.

Y.

 

[Sam Lewis]

In order to use Ghost on XP, Ghost needs to be able to read it. Makre sure
you use Ghost 2002 PE (part of SystemWorks) or Ghost Corporate 75. This is
supposed to be be when Ghost started to able to read XP NTFS format.

Ghost 2003 can apparently read NTFS but can't write to it ie you need a FAT
32 partition to store image....if i understood symantec help desk
properly.On my PC it infact created a fAT32 partition and renamed it C
drive!!The symantec response was it was really designed for W95 orW98.I may
be wrong but all things Norton seem to have gone bad since Symantec took
over??Try uninstalling their firewall or anti viral software and then spend
hours raking through the registry to get rid of residual bits (yes even
after you use rnav and rnis special removal tools)

Sam

 

[Sam Lewis]

Thanks for explanations/definitions

Sam

Ghost is normally a reliable program, though for highest reliability it
should be used from a boot floppy, not run from within Windows. As you've
noticed, when run from Windows it reboots into DOS to do its work and (is
supposed to) reboot back into Windows when it finishes. It should be
intuitive that avoiding the before-and-after transitions can improve
reliability.

A clone is a *partition* that is an exact copy of the source partition --
boot sector, directories, and all files -- copied sector-by-sector. A copy
is like a clone, but doesn't necessarily imply that everything is
sector-by-sector identical -- all the files will be the same but may be in a
different order or different places on disk.

An image is a *file* containing a compressed snapshot of the source
partition, which can later be extracted to a blank area of hard disk space
to recreate a clone of the original. Think of it like zipfiles, just on a
grander scale. You probably know that entire directories (er, "folders") of
files can be compressed into a single zipfile, and you can later use WinZip
or similar to unzip everything to restore all the encapsulated files and
even the directory structure. An image is like a zipfile -- it's not an
exact duplicate of the original files, but it contains within it the means
to restore exact duplicates.

A backup is really a different issue -- a clone, copy, or image can be a
backup, it's instead a matter of how you use them. "Backing up" just refers
to some method of saving data and being able to restore/recover it when
needed. A backup could include specific files, a whole partition, or even a
whole disk.

So which is better -- a clone or an image? Well, you generally do not need
to create a clone/copy unless you are ready to use it now. For example, if
you're replacing your hard disk, you want a clone now, so if you make an
image you'd just have to extract it immediately anyway. In contrast, an
image is more appropriate if you are just making a backup to store away in
case you might need to restore your original later. Then when you need it,
you extract it to restore the enclosed partition on a hard disk. An image is
much smaller -- a 20GB partition that is half full might fit in a 5GB image
file, but if cloned it would still be 20GB. An image can also be saved on
CDR or DVD-R (remember, it's a file), but a clone of the partition cannot.

 

[Harry Avant]

So after Ghost clobbered your C drive then what? Does this mean that
your original C drive has a new letter? If true that's a mess!

 

[Sam Lewis]

I reformatted, deleted old C partition, and started over with new C
drive/OS - thanks to Symantec.Fortunately I keep ALL (including
favorites,WAB,OE stores etc) data on separate physical disk
Sam

 

[I'm Dan]

I reformatted, deleted old C partition, and started over with new C
drive/OS - thanks to Symantec.Fortunately I keep ALL (including
favorites,WAB,OE stores etc) data on separate physical disk
Sam

Ah, another testimonial from the voice of experience. When the subject of
partitions regularly comes up, it utterly amazes me how otherwise
intelligent people see no reason to keep data separated from the OS. Sadly,
there was even a posting today with that very advice.