What Imaging Software Do You Use?

[Bryce W]

I am doing some research for an article. I have 2 questions for you guys:

What imaging software do you use before format? If it has mutliple editions (eg. Acronis), what edition do you use?

Do you back it up to a local hard drive (IDE/SATA, USB or Network)?

 

[iisjman07]

I use the dos version of norton ghost (I think it's version 8) and I back up to one of several USB external hard drives. Ghost does all I need - it's fast, reliable and just works.

 

[Bayta]

+1 for Ghost. I use NG v15, cold backup from boot CD, to a bare 3.5" HDD in a Thermaltake dock.

I've heard lots of complaints regarding Ghost, but I've never run into any issues running it from the WinPE environment.

 

[kagman]

In the past I was using Drive snapshot image, which is great for making an image inside of windows plus its a very small light weight program.

However I just started using Acronis Workstation 10. The live bootable CD is a nice touch and works really well for me.

I usually backup the image onto an external usb drive and transfer that image onto my windows home server for storage.

 

[arrow_runner]

I have Acronis True Image Workstation with Universal Restore and Disk Director.

I'll use the live boot CD and backup over a network to my server or, if it's SATA and I need the benchspace, I'll take the drive out and connect it directly to my server.

If it's a desktop, it's already sitting next to my server, so I usually just unhook the sata cable from the desktop and then turn it on and then hook up the 3' long sata cable from my server to the desktop. I just started doing this recently and wish I would have started sooner.

I don't use USB because it would take up more workspace and is slower than gigabit or SATA.

 

[DarDar]

I use clonezilla live cd and backup mostly to usb hdd. I like it because its pretty fast and i can pull info out of it if needed by mounting the image. Also the info is not locked away in a proprietary format.

I have also used sysinternals disk2vhd app to make a copy of a live system on occasions. I then give the customer a loan system (or use one of their spares) and mount the vhd using virtualbox. This allows them to carry on using the system as they are used to and allows me to ts. Only had to do it a few times for those that really needed their system up and running asap. i actually ended up doing this for a customer permanently as they liked the virtual idea so much. They had a base image and if something went wrong they could just return to the base image. I could take away the vhd, fix it and then return with it and they were back to before the issue occurred.

 

[MobileTechie]

If I'm moving the installation from drive to drive then Disk Director's move function makes it a snap, even if dynamic disks are involved.

If I'm backing up to an image file and later restoring it to the same drive via my bench PC I currently use Paragon Backup and Recovery 10.2 because I happen to have it installed at the mo. Otherwise it's Acronis TI. It makes no difference really since they all do the same thing.

If I'm doing it via usb with Clonezilla off the Parted Magic cd because I've found it sees every internal or USB drive I've ever thrown at it, unlike Acronis or Ghost.

 

[tackify]

Clonezilla to a 2.5"/3.5" ESATA/USB Docking Station with a 1TB HD in it.

 

[BCC]

+1 for ghost 2003 - been using it for years but the only draw-back we've found is that when ghosting back some (not that many tbh) vista images we've to put a vista cd in & run the repair before it'll boot properly

also use RawCopy from the UBCD4Win but whereas ghost will dynamically re-size the partitions to fill the disk space RawCopy won't & on bigger drives you end up with unallocated space.

if we're in any doubt of the health of the hdd we'd do rawcopy rather than ghost cos it's sometimes quicker & (I stand to be corrected on this) it's maybe less stressful on the hdd

We ghost or rawcopy practically every machine we take in despite the time it takes simply because it's:
1) saved our 'bacon' many times when a repair has gone wrong & we've been able to go back to the original image & start again
2) it's great to be able to say to ppl 'we've got your data regardless of what's happened to the pc' & last but by no means least...
3) if anyone's arguing about the repair we can say 'would you like it put back to exactly how it was when you gave it in to us?' very few ppl say yes....

 

[stevenamills]

For personal use, I use Image for Windows.

I know of NO imaging software that a technician can legally use that I can afford.

 

[DarDar]

For personal use, I use Image for Windows.

I know of NO imaging software that a technician can legally use that I can afford.

You need to look at clonezilla then!
Free as a bird and open source!

 

[snifferpro]

I use Acronis TIH 2010 but I have used all versions of Acronis.

I usually remove the drive from the failing machine and image it
from my bench machine to a spare drive just for imaging.

 

[Bobbing]

I have Ghost 11 on my UBCD4WIN DVD and I image it to an external SATA drive.

 

[Vicenarian]

Clonezilla to USB ext. hard drive

 

[krutoi]

I know of NO imaging software that a technician can legally use that I can afford.

40% sale now on Acronis True Image Home 2010... only $30 at the moment.

 

[Cybjun]

I dont use any cloning software. I actually have never found a need for it. The closest thing I have is a drive duplicator device logicube echo plus it works great when clients need to upgrade a small hard drive or a drive showing the early signs of a S.M.A.R.T. failure.

 

[snifferpro]

What's the price of the ECHO?

 

[iisjman07]

I know of NO imaging software that a technician can legally use that I can afford.

Open Source, nice easy windows gui program - Self Image

 

[DavidF]

I was using Ghost because that is what I cut my teeth on until I ran into occasional problems with SATA drive problems (circa 2006)
Then moved to PQ for a while followed by Acronis.
I've run into problems with Acronis on a couple of occasions in the last 6 months wanting a password for drives that were imaged with no password, this might be a software version or donor drive issue, I started using todo backup while trying some others and it seems to work very well. Much faster at restoring data than it's predecessors but unfortunately has no "ignore error" option if it hits the wall.
There has been one issue where the image was taken on the XP Pro Workshop machine and when the drive was tranplanted into the Win 7 machine there were permission isssues which obliged me to put the drive back into the XP Pro machine to be able to properly access it. Otherwise it has worked very well.
I've also had problems with the current version of Acronis installed on 2x file servers running Win 7 Ultimate 64bit. It seems to be a known problem and their forum has a thread which provides a fix if you dig deeply enough and hit upon the right fix.
But I digress, Acronis has been good for a few years but todo backup is looking pretty good for workshop use, I must look at CloneZilla
Still using Acronis for business machines for unattended backup though