Image my computer?

[VietBoyVS]

Hi people,

Does any one know how I could copy my software and data files to DVD or CD as an image?

So later when my computer is crashed, I can just launch the CD or DVD to get back to my fresh state of my computer (like recovery CD but have with the setting when added?

Please help, I am tired of installed everything over again when my laptop is screwed up.

Thxxxxx all.

[oracleguy]

You need a program like Norton Ghost to do that.

[Celtboy]

Use a "disk imaging" or a "drive imaging" application

This includes: Symantec (formerly PowerQuest) Drive Image, Norton Ghost, Altiris RapiDeploy, Novell ZenWorks. (Commercial Solutions)

You can also try:

Trueimage, WinImage, DrvCLonerXP, DrvImagerXP, r-drive


(some commercial, some free).


I use both Drive Image and Norton Ghost.

Whenever I get a new, OEM computer (be it at home or work), I place an image of the machine onto a server hard drive.

I then repartition the disk into 2 partitions: 1 for OS & applications, 1 for data.

Next I install all of my applications and spiffy tools. I customize everything and get my OS exactly how I want it. Then I make an image of that partition, and place the image file on server, 2nd partition, and cd-r/dvd-r.

I've found that keeping data on a seperate partition/drive makes backups/maintenance/finding files infinitely easier.

hth,
-Celt

[sweenster]

i've never really used any of these, preferring instead to go for the option of just copying the entire contents of hard disk onto a CD or DVD.
Seeing as i'm using a dual boot if one operating system crashes I can just boot up the other one, format the drive then copy the contents back on that way.

I'd like to create some sort of imaged CD like this that I can just boot from and it will install itself automatically. Would the software you mentioned do the trick?

[Celtboy]

yeuppers.

When I create the image of my application/os partition, one of the places I put it is on a cd. Sometimes I make the cd bootable, other times I just use a bootable floppy.

When it comes time to return the machine to the previous state,
I reboot with floppy and launch the associated dos-version of the application (pqdi, ghost, whatever). Then I tell it to restore the partition using the image file located on the cd. About 10 mintues later, I'm done. and right back to where I want to be.

If using a dvd, this is especially cool.

Let's say you're using a dual-boot XP / Linux install, on sep. partitions, with a data partition.

You image each os partition and place on dvd (2 sep. images, 1 disk).

Then you boot to media (either floppy or dvd), and restore the partitions. You may at that point need to reinstall a bootloader, but that should be easy enough.

-Celt