Good alternative to Norton Ghost - computer question

I use to use Norton Ghost 2003 to make an image backup of my harddrive. Does anyone know something similar that I can use to do that? Or even something that would allow me to slipstream all my programs and settings? I just hate having to reload everything each time I want to re-install windows. I need something relatively new because Norton Ghost 2003 doesn't recognize my new CD drive. I'd like to put everything on a 4.7 GB DVD disk.

I've had good experiences with apricorn ez gig. Supports usb gizmos. They make good hardware also.

I use DriveSnapshot and have done for years. It costs about £30 but there is a 45-day free trial so you can try before you buy. I would recommend that you split your hard disc(s) into smaller partitions so that backups and restores are quicker. I have a Windows partition, and for Linux I have a root partition, a home partition, a graphics partition, an audio partition and a video partition. This means that I can backup in 5-10 minutes (5-10Gb) and restore in 10-15 minutes. You run DriveSnapshot from Windows but you can backup and restore Linux partitions from there. One word of warning: make a list of the size of your partitions so that you can identify which partition you are dealing with; carelessness will mean you restore the partition to the wrong place! My practice is to store the backup files on another hard disk partition; this is not totally secure, but makes for these very quick restores. If you want to be more secure, then copy the backups to a DVD or external USB hard disk.
You can also install DriveSnapshot to a pendrive using BartPE. This means that if you have an unbootable machine, you can still restore because you have installed Windows on the pendrive together with Drivesnapshot and you have your backups on an external USB drive.
Good Luck.
Feel free to ask any questions.
Goto:
http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/

Acronis True Image is the gold standard for this class of software with the exception that there are reported incompatibilities with certain SSD drives where partition alignment has to be preserved.

Drive Snapshot, however, do preserve partition alignment.

Check to see if the latest version of Acronis True Image preserves alignment.


However, in all cases, you are better off to do a fresh install at least once a year as there are certain classes of errors that simply cannot be fixed with a fresh install.

thanks guys. I'd really like to use apricorn but the apricorn website says it's not for sale. I might end up getting acronis true image.

I use a backup hard drive, as a slave drive and then use winhex, to clone the drive.

I was just wanting everyone's thoughts before I go through the hassle of cloning it. I've heard that some of the programs aren't as good as the others.

Check your pms morph!

Thanks Vanilla !!

Just came across this, haven't used it:
http://www.clonezilla.org/

I believe this one is free.

http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp

Another vote for Acronis True Image

KiM

Personally I use "System Rescue CD" which is a small linux bootable distro built in with dozens of utilities like gparted (partition manager clone) and partimage which is a nice clone utility.

Also it has a NT,XP,Vista,Win7 password reset utility to zero out admin password when needed (very helpful for restoring backups)

Finally it can be installed to either a USB, external, internal or CD/DVD disc for later boot and recovery... Can be combined with archive images to make self restoring image backups.

Hope this helps!

-Mike

AussieJester said:

Another vote for Acronis True Image

Click to expand...

Does this software also clone the viruses and other nasty stuff along with our pictures, and music, etc?

Or is it just a back-up if our hard drive fails.

What's the safest way to transfer files from our old computer to a new computer with Windoze 7 for example? sorry, i've never used this kind of software before.

Acronis True Image makes an exact duplicate of your hard drive or partitions on a hard drive. That means all files, good or bad.

As far as recommendations previously made, another vote for Acronis True Image from me as well.

Many users have experienced the 'hanging winxp' on the splash screen due to Norton Ghost's failure to address a vital issue of DISK ID.

After doing quite a bit of searching on the web I found that this is a common problem, with many and varied attempted fixes.

I believe the root of my problem came from a combination of XP's drive letter assignment behavior and Ghost's failure to deal with it. If the original XP system ever sees the partition of the new drive (and assigns a drive letter to it) before Ghost clones the old system to the new drive, then the new drive will have a registry entry with its own Partition ID listing it as being something other than Drive C. When you install the new drive in the PC and reboot, the new drive is discovered by the BIOS and starts booting XP as Drive C. Once XP is fully loaded, it thinks the current drive should be some other drive letter, and you lose the boot drive, causing the hang at the Windows Logon screen.

Personally I solved the problem by using the widely recommended Acronis TrueImage. TrueImage deals first with the drive letter assignment and then gets out of Windows proper to perform the disk copy. Then when the system reboots into XP, even if you leave the new drive connected as a hard drive it is OK. Even though the old system will now see the cloned partition and likely assign it a drive letter other than C, the image on the new drive has already been copied without that assignment. When you swap the drives the new drive will boot properly into Windows.

If you really want to use Ghost's Disk Copy function, be sure that the old system does not have a drive letter assigned to the new drive's partition. You may need to go into Control Panel.. Computer Management.. Disk Management to make sure that there is no drive letter assigned to the new drive and even delete the new drive's partition if one exists.

No guarantees on the specifics here, but hopefully that will be helpful to someone. In my experience, Acronis got it right, Symantec didn't.