O.T. Best Cloning Software

[Fish40]

I need a little help guys. I recently purchased an 160gig Seagate FreeAgent External HD for the sole purpose of makeing a backup of my current HD. My rig is getting up there in age, and I'm not going to wait for my HD to fail. Anyway, I heard about a software utility called Norton Gohst, which will clone your current HD, OS and all. The problem is, the reviews I saw were less than favorable concerning this product.

I was just wondering if anyone here has used Gohst, or could advise me of a similar product. Thanks for your help

[DaveCrom01]

Hi Fish....

I use a product called TRUE IMAGE by ACRONIS. It works a treat.

www.acronis.com


Cheers,
Dave

[kriller2]

Yeah me to, can't live witout it in these virus/trojan infested times..

[Taurolas]

Hi Fish40

I've used Ghost in the past but i currently use Acronis True Image which i believe is just the business.

[FIREWALL]

I would also like to know more about Norton Ghost as I have the software and have never used it.

I have a different problem but, this might be a solution.

After seeing some replys I will post problem on new thread.

[Snuffy]

Got my hands on a copy of Laplink's PC Mover.

It moves registry links and everything to make sure you programs run on your new drive "error free".

But with any transfer software ... beware of virus' trojans and other potentially dangerous stuff you have on your system.

Good Luck.

[Rockin Robbins]

for Acronis True Image. It's a true backup situation like Norton Ghost, but with modern interface and no Norton delusions of grandeur. For those not quite keeping up with the concept, these two programs make a disk image onto another hard drive. If there is some kind of system disaster, like a software snafu, you can just restore the image from the backup to your primary boot drive. This restores all installed programs, system settings, fonts, SH4 save games, etc, basically puts you back in business without requiring any new installs of software. My 320 gig HD takes about 5 hours to make the image of both Windows and Kubuntu, so I just do it at night and forget about it.

Beware of depending on RAID. It instantly copies a disaster on one disk to the other, leaving you with two bad drives. RAID is for hardware security or speed but is not a backup solution.

[CaptainHaplo]

As a guy who has been in some form of IT for the last decade and a half - Ghost is a wonderful tool. Heck, you can run the bugger off a boot FLOPPY for crying out loud still, and its a true disk image. With ghost explorer, you can even work within an existing image as needed.

I can't speak to trueimage - as I haven't used it. It could be a grand package, and it could be a bust, I wouldn't know. I can tell you however that if you have a drive failing - and you just have to save everything on it - ghost is a good tool. Create an image file (or in most cases files as it will create spanned images when putting the files to a FAT file system) - even burn em to dvd's as needed. Every drive on your block can fail if ya do that - and you can slap in another and be running just like before the crash within about 30 minutes (for a full size, all apps and games installed image).

Let me give you a perfect example - when I "upgraded" my game machine to vista the first time - it was an RC version. I ghosted the existing XP OS with all my games, and kept the image files handy. After playing with the RC - I decided I wanted my XP back so stuff would actually run. Instead of a full format and rebuild - I just popped in an ole pcdos boot floppy with ghost on it, rebooted, and reloaded the image. 30 minutes later - I was gaming again.

[AkbarGulag]

Norton Ghost rocks. The latest one I used when setting up a LAW firm's PC backup and Memo solutions.

While playing around, taking a clean install of windows with a few apps onboard, I put the data onto a USB key... yep, USB. This method via USB2 allowed me to ghost the OS back onto a pc in under 2 minutes, I jest you not.

User Interface took a little getting used to, but found it the greatest ghost version to date. No corruption or non-user created errors, not one.

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

I can't speak to trueimage - as I haven't used it. It could be a grand package, and it could be a bust, I wouldn't know. I can tell you however that if you have a drive failing - and you just have to save everything on it - ghost is a good tool. Create an image file (or in most cases files as it will create spanned images when putting the files to a FAT file system) - even burn em to dvd's as needed. Every drive on your block can fail if ya do that - and you can slap in another and be running just like before the crash within about 30 minutes (for a full size, all apps and games installed image).

Same with True Image. The difference is only that True Image is a GUI based program. With either method one thing is necessary and I've been surprised how many people have these programs and don't do it.

You have to make that bootable rescue disk to run Ghost or True Image independently of your installed operating system. OK, there's two things: your disk image should be on another medium than your functioning boot drive. If the boot drive augers in it takes its image with it. So both your Ghost/True Image and your disk image should be on separate media. Your Ghost/True Image program has to be on a bootable media because your worst-case scenario (the one you WILL encounter unless you're ready for it) is that your boot drive becomes a paperweight and your computer won't boot at all. (this space reserved for overly technical nit-picking clarifications)

When everything is in order for restoration, hard drives' lives are measured in decades.:rotfl:

[Berinhardt]

If you're running Windows Vista, the install CD has a backup option that will create or restore a .VHD image of your current system using the new Windows Image Format. Just upgraded my laptop from a 110GB drive to a 250GB in less than an hour.

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Berinhardt

If you're running Windows Vista, the install CD has a backup option that will create or restore a .VHD image of your current system using the new Windows Image Format. Just upgraded my laptop from a 110GB drive to a 250GB in less than an hour.

Bill Gates is a genius! "Let's invent a new disk image format, when plenty of great and available formats already exist to back up an operating system not worthy of a backup anyway." Vista is the new ME. Best avoided. There will be another operating system coming along, just like XP did.

My copy of Vista sits harmlessly on a shelf, collecting dust: the only job it seems to be able to do well, unless you consider the requirement to own a top gaming graphics board just to run the bare operating system a "feature" you can't live without.

If they ported SH4 to Linux, Windows would become a backup hobby system. Linux is far from perfect, but at least it's not controlled by a company who has forgotten what an operating system is.

[Berinhardt]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Bill Gates is a genius! "Let's invent a new disk image format, when plenty of great and available formats already exist to back up an operating system not worthy of a backup anyway."

Not to get off topic, but the new disk image format is alot better than many 3rd party products, partly because the .WIM image is file based not sector based (like Ghost). This means you can restore the image to different drive geometries and even edit a single file, add directories, and insert drivers into an offline image. Maybe not something home users and gamers may care a lot about, but in the corporate environments I work in, it's a big deal. I'm seeing many IT departments stop using Ghost and other imaging tools in favor of the Windows Image Format.

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Vista is the new ME. Best avoided. There will be another operating system coming along, just like XP did.

There really is nothing wrong with Vista - just a lot of FUD. (Fear, Uncertaintity and Doubt) I've been working with Vista professionally since the early Beta's and have had few issues. It's more stable, more secure, and more robust than any previous Microsoft OS, and is certainly not the new WinME. Yes, some old software won't work and many OEM's haven't written drivers for their low end or outdated products. But the vast majority of the software in my personal library works just fine, my company has migrated to Vista without any major issues, and I've helped several companies make the switch as well. Windows 7 builds on the Vista code, so I wouldn't expect a radically different OS in 2 years - except that it may be the last 32-bit OS Microsoft ever makes.

[CaptainHaplo]

Its offtopic technically - but I agree with Berinhardt (I keep wanting to type Bernard). While the RC's sucked - I am typing this from my game machine that has been running vista ultimate for a couple of months. Not one crash of the OS - something I couldn't say for XP when it first came out. Yea there are some issues and it is a resource hog, but its actually a better OS than most know - as long as you stay away from the home basic flavor.