Topic: Ghosting Software

[[SiNNeR]]

I've recently re-installed winXP (like last night) and it always take quite a while with all the drivers and fumbling with CD's, updates, etc.

I'm looking for a practical solution to "ghost" my C: drive. System restore can't save a specific state (as far as I know) so that's no help. I'm looking for software (free or commercial) that does Ghosting and that's not a hassle to use, my past experiences with these apps all made me give up before even finishing. Prefferably, I'd like to ghost my drive, toss it on a bootable DVD. Any recommandations ?

And something I always wondered, if I ghost my C: drive (it's a partition of an 80gb), will the other partitions also show up as the moment of the ghost or they are unaffected ? I just want to keep the C: partition in its *clean* state.

[anomaly]

i know software of this nature is around my friend uses this stuff all the time. as for the bootable dvd part i dont know. the way he does it is with 2 separate hard drives. and in that case your other partitions are not affected be cause you just "ghost" over the image to any partition you want and the system is not the wiser.

but this is all hear say. i have not done any of this my self.

[[SiNNeR]]

I do have another hard drive but sadly it is filled with bad sectors, its slow and its quite old. I would not trust it with my data anytime soon. Maybe a USB drive big enough could do the trick...

[anomaly]

i think that would work in some situations but the USB factor may create problems for some mother boards and ghosting programs. i would just stick with ide or sata interface that you are already working with...it would be a ton faster and probably less hoops to jump thru in getting everything set up. on top of it you can get OEM ide or sata drives on www.newegg.com for CHEAP! 

[Gad]

Maybe this will help:

Cloning-Wikipedia

Ghost-Wikipedia

[[SiNNeR]]

Well, so far I found Ghost 12.0 and trying to understand how it works. It seems they improved the application because its a lot more clearer how to do your backup and restore. Now I just need the Symantec Recovery Disc that didn't come with my *purchase*.

Any other alternatives than Ghost ? How about Windows' built-in backup ?

[BoneyOne]

Another you may want to consider is Acronis True Image.

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

[DAwG]

Helix!

[[SiNNeR]]

I think I'll stick with an OS that doesn't require a 1000 pages book to read for it to work properly 

I even got it here and it is quite boring. I know it's a reference book but you must do a lot of stuff manually in Linux. Maybe I could put it in dual-boot, it's not I dont find it interesting, it just doesnt do what I need (games/medias) easy enough for my tastes.

I hate Windows but as a gamer, not much choice 

[DAwG]

ditto

[mephisto_kur]

99% of what 99% of the population needs to do can be done with a "next next next" style install of a modern Linux distro.

For Debian distros (like Ubuntu), adding functionality is actually easier than in Windows.  Open your favorite apt-get frontend (like Synapse), browse for the kind of thing you want to do, read the descriptions of the software available to do it, click install and poof it works.  even most Windows apps run fine on Linux now that Wine is normally included and fairly easy to get to.

Its just the gaming that's more difficult.  If it wasn't for the games, I would have gone Linux years ago.

[[SiNNeR]]

heh, that's good to hear then, I haven't bothered with Linux for years, maybe for browsing and stuff I could learn to like it. It's... different... like using a Mac...   

[DAwG]

and then there's YUM