What imaging software do you use?

[Mushin]

I remember when Ghost first came out.. Stopped using it once norton got there hands on them..

+ 1 to this!!! It went down hill about Symatec bought it out. I am glad I am not the only one that did this.

 

[Martyn]

Yes I think it was version 2003 that was boxed in in later editions of Ghost. I used the 2003, it was good and solid.

 

[Snazzy PC Repairs]

Following on from rdctech's point, and the acronis forum post he linked where acronis clarified their licencing policy, they are saying you need to buy a separate licence for acronis true image for every PC you backup, even if you are just using the bootable media to make an image before working on a machine, and you're likely dumping that image when you're done!

I don't use acronis myself, although I've always been interested in trying it. But that licencing condition would completely rule it out for me. If I had to pay an extra licence fee to them every time I wanted to take an image of a PC before working on it, I would have to raise my prices accordingly.

 

[Larry Sabo]

Macrium Reflect also has a Technician's License for $175 CAD. I find many times Macrium Reflect won't boot to their linux recovery CD and I have to take the drive home and recover it from a Windows-installed version. What a bummer that Acronis doesn't have a technician's license, as it is terrific, in my experience. Tried Easeus Todo backup because it's free for private and commercial use, but found it pretty slow compared to Acronis. Maybe I'll give it another try.

 

[Martyn]

Yes too right. As brought up in another thread these companies need to look at a technician licence for us repairers.

 

[MobileTechie]

Ghost seems like a pretty good product to me. It's one of the few that handles Dynamic Disks out of the box and does it well.

 

[Martyn]

Ghost seems like a pretty good product to me. It's one of the few that handles Dynamic Disks out of the box and does it well.

Which version are you using?

 

[Innotech]

I use another Symantec product called Backup Exec System Recovery (BESR). Version 8.5 and 2010 work well, but I still prefer 8.5. You can create an image by either booting directly from the cd or you can install the software and create an image that way.

 

[datadatau]

]I use another Symantec product called Backup Exec System Recovery (BESR). Version 8.5 and 2010 work well, but I still prefer 8.5.

How does the licensing for BESR work, I have used it before in a corporate enviroment, but not as a technician. Does it allow technician use?

 

[Bobbing]

I have had good luck with Ghost 11 running it on UBCD4WIN.

 

[Innotech]

I am not 100% sure. I purchased the Server Edition and the Desktop Edition for myself. I never leave it installed on my clients PC's, I just make the image or restore from the image and remove the software. Most times I will not install the software at all, I will just use the Recovery cd. One other feature that it has is Restore Anywhere, which allows you to restore the image to dissimilar hardware. It works well and I find it easier to use than True Image.

 

[MobileTechie]

Which version are you using?

I think it was 15

...........................

 

[PcTek9]

AncientGeek,

Thank you for that awesome list. Napoleon Hill thought that making lists was the secret to getting stuff done, I agree. I think you are the king of backup and cloning software.

Norton realized their later ghost products were not up to par. So... in all the later versions they included a copy of Ghost 2003. Free.

2003 was the last dos version.

What I did b/c of my interest in this realm was to create a unique project.

I stole a boot sector from a windows 98 boot disk, using win image and put the .img file on my c drive.

I then used bootimage to open the small 1.44 megabyte image on the c: drive and enlarge it to 2.88 meg.

Then I found these universal drivers from panasonic for usb devices. Panasonic was the only company in the world that said "let's make a usb driver that supports ohci, uhci, and ehci devices so we never have to do this agian..."

So I 'injected' their usb device driver into my 2.88 megabyte win 98 disk image.

Then I got out my copy of ghost 2003 and injected the ghost and ghostwalk programs into my 2.88 megabyte win 98 floppy disk image.

Finally I got in there and edited the autoexec.bat and config.sys files inside the image.

I changed it so that it would load up the universal usb drivers, then load ghost, but allow you to exit ghost of course so you could use ghost walk.

What I wound up with is a cd that to date no one else on the web had made.

I then took the 2.88 megabyte floppy image, and burned it to a blank cdr setting it to work as a bootable floppy/cd image.

This worked.

Now I can 'boot up' in dos from a cd, and I can activate and engage any USB device in dos. I can also run Ghost.

Using this 'system' I can backup and restore images to any thumb drive, or multiple cd's and dvd's. I can also clone any hard disk across the network or from the network location to the current hard disk or another drive such as a usb drive or drive 1 or 2 in the same system. etc.

It's much faster in dos, and being able to access everything doesn't hurt. I can typically restore an image in 20 minutes using this faster dos based method, great for servers that are down and in need of help.

Of course we have virtual disk images now, so who needs to restore images right?

I need to post more intensely how I did this I guess, b/c there is a guy on the web that has sort of half gotten to where I was, and he posted a project about it, and that he wanted to do what I did, but never got there.

 

[Martyn]

AncientGeek,

Thank you for that awesome list. Napoleon Hill thought that making lists was the secret to getting stuff done, I agree. I think you are the king of backup and cloning software.

Norton realized their later ghost products were not up to par. So... in all the later versions they included a copy of Ghost 2003. Free.

2003 was the last dos version.

What I did b/c of my interest in this realm was to create a unique project.

I stole a boot sector from a windows 98 boot disk, using win image and put the .img file on my c drive.

I then used bootimage to open the small 1.44 megabyte image on the c: drive and enlarge it to 2.88 meg.

Then I found these universal drivers from panasonic for usb devices. Panasonic was the only company in the world that said "let's make a usb driver that supports ohci, uhci, and ehci devices so we never have to do this agian..."

So I 'injected' their usb device driver into my 2.88 megabyte win 98 disk image.

Then I got out my copy of ghost 2003 and injected the ghost and ghostwalk programs into my 2.88 megabyte win 98 floppy disk image.

Finally I got in there and edited the autoexec.bat and config.sys files inside the image.

I changed it so that it would load up the universal usb drivers, then load ghost, but allow you to exit ghost of course so you could use ghost walk.

What I wound up with is a cd that to date no one else on the web had made.

I then took the 2.88 megabyte floppy image, and burned it to a blank cdr setting it to work as a bootable floppy/cd image.

This worked.

Now I can 'boot up' in dos from a cd, and I can activate and engage any USB device in dos. I can also run Ghost.

Using this 'system' I can backup and restore images to any thumb drive, or multiple cd's and dvd's. I can also clone any hard disk across the network or from the network location to the current hard disk or another drive such as a usb drive or drive 1 or 2 in the same system. etc.

It's much faster in dos, and being able to access everything doesn't hurt. I can typically restore an image in 20 minutes using this faster dos based method, great for servers that are down and in need of help.

Of course we have virtual disk images now, so who needs to restore images right?

I need to post more intensely how I did this I guess, b/c there is a guy on the web that has sort of half gotten to where I was, and he posted a project about it, and that he wanted to do what I did, but never got there.

In my last company we had to a national roll out of our software and new pcs into print shops a few years ago. We used to package I think Norton 10 at the time and included was the free Ghost 2003. I used the later all the time for my image backups, very quick. I haven't tried it for a couple of years or so , so if anyone has how does it work now?

 

[PcTek9]

I haven't tried it on larger drives, maybe I should. But the servers of the client usually run some proprietary software they need on a basic windoze machine. Thusly it's an easy backup and restore, why buy terabytes of storage if you only need 20 gig... See what I mean?

 

[dmurphy315]

Acronis True Image here, used Norton Ghost in the past,, and thanx for all the info posters for the input on various programs!



www.LaptopRepairAugusta.com

 

[rainking]

I've been using Macrium Reflect, price is good and I've found it fast enough, I was also impressed by detail in the log. At first I did try the free version or trial version, can't remember which one it was but found it irritating to use, couldn't do automatic incremental backups, and each time the schedule ran it created a new backup each time, before you know you've used up a whole drive, almost put me off buying it the first time. But decided to go for it after reading some good reviews so I'm happy to recommend it now... Has anyone suggestions for on-line backup software????

 

[dbdawn]

What about Image for Windows? Anybody ever used it?

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/image-for-windows.htm

 

[qamarjrk]

How to back up and recover Program and application

One of my client sent me this. I am looking for good Backup Program to backup not only data but the installed program as well. Please help.

Here is my clients message to me.

"I share this computer with my daughter. There are a lot of programs on it that will be lost when I do the restoration. In some cases, I no longer have the program disks and I don't want to lose the programs or have to buy them again (e.g., Photoshop and Microsoft Office). Do you have some way to back up programs from my hard drive so that they can be re-installed after the restoration without having the original program disks?"

 

[RegEdit]

Here is my clients message to me.

"I share this computer with my daughter. There are a lot of programs on it that will be lost when I do the restoration. In some cases, I no longer have the program disks and I don't want to lose the programs or have to buy them again (e.g., Photoshop and Microsoft Office). Do you have some way to back up programs from my hard drive so that they can be re-installed after the restoration without having the original program disks?"

Tell them to go the Geek Squad. Maybe they'll get a yes answer.