Q re Drive Image 2002 NTFS Restore

[Bob Haroche]

Hope this isn't considered too OT:

I have Win XP Pro, which I intend to change (using Partition Magic)
from FAT 32 to NTFS. After that, I intend to use Drive Image 2002 to
create an image of the C: partition.

Assume my system one day becomes utterly unbootable (due to
OS/software, not hardware, issues) and I want to restore my image.

Can I simply restore the C: drive data from the image I created (using
Drive Image floppy disks), or do I first need to re-install the OS,
convert from FAT32 to NTFS and then restore from the image?

(I ask b/c I believe, perhaps incorrectly, that with a clean install
of windows, the original file system has to be FAT32, after which you
can covert to NTFS -- or am I mistaken here?)

Thanks.

 

[Mark Weinreb]

Hope this isn't considered too OT:

I have Win XP Pro, which I intend to change (using Partition Magic)
from FAT 32 to NTFS. After that, I intend to use Drive Image 2002 to
create an image of the C: partition.

Assume my system one day becomes utterly unbootable (due to
OS/software, not hardware, issues) and I want to restore my image.

Can I simply restore the C: drive data from the image I created (using
Drive Image floppy disks), or do I first need to re-install the OS,
convert from FAT32 to NTFS and then restore from the image?

(I ask b/c I believe, perhaps incorrectly, that with a clean install
of windows, the original file system has to be FAT32, after which you
can covert to NTFS -- or am I mistaken here?)

Thanks.

If/when you need to, just restore the image created by Drive Image. Since it
is an image, not a file-by-file backup, it has to be restored to
un-formatted disk space. That means if you are restoring an image of C: and
a C: already exists you have to delete the partition from within Drive Image
before it can perform the restore.

So re-installing the OS etc before restoring the image is a complete waste
of time.

Assuming no significant hardware changes since you created the image,
re-activation shouldn't be required.

Also, you do believe incorrectly. It isn't required or necessary that the
initial file system be FAT32 when installing Windows XP. Formatting as NTFS
during installation is, in my opinion, much more efficient.

 

[Fred S]

Bob,

Drive Image will make a complete "image" of the partition and as a result,
whenever you need/want to restore, it will format the partition and will
write the image file to that partition. Therefore, the file structure
(NTFS or Fat32) will be restored as it was imaged. So if you convert to
NTFS and then image, any restore of that image will be restored as the
NTFS file structure that you made. Same is true if you left it as FAT32,
in that case, it would be imaged as FAT32 and would restore to Fat32.

I suggest that you create an image BEFORE you convert and just have it in
case of some problem. That's the beauty of an image file, one can always
restore to the state of the last image. THEN do your conversion to NTFS,
and IMAGE again. Now you will have one image (FAT32) and another (NTFS) -
you will be protected this way in case of some catastrophe during the
conversion.

Also, there are reports that Drive Image 2002 does not work properly with
NTFS files AFTER the Windows XP Service Pak 1 install. I believe that the
problem has more to do with running DI 2002 from Windows and not from the
floppy disk, but not sure. I suggest that you install DI 2002, create the
floppy from the install program and make ALL images using the floppy.

If you did have a problem where the system is unbootable as you noted, you
would have to use the floppy anyway - so learn how to use it and be
prepared.

I make an image file BEFORE all Windows Updates, or any other install that
might mess with system files. Only takes a few minutes and I can always
get back to where I need to be in case of a problem.

Once again, try to find out more about the "problem" with DI 2002 and
WinXP w/SP1 AND NTFS - someone here might add to this but I suggest you
try to find out yourself. I use DI 5.01 and it works fine and although DI
2002 is a newer version there many folks that have had problems with the
NTFS and SP1 issues.

Hope this helps, Fred