Image for Windows XP

[Icy Mt.]

Hello,
I don't post much, but I've learned a lot here. Thank you and here's a little payback:

After my son pushed the F10 button on my new HP box and restored the C drive to HP factory defaults, I went looking for software that would get me back to the latest good configuration QUICKLY after a boot drive disaster. I wanted to be able to image to bootable DVD (+R or +RW) or to another physical hard drive on the PC (even quicker). So to the research.

I purchased a copy of Image for Windows from www.terabyteunlimited.com for $28 US. I did a lot of research and this seemed to be the least expensive alternative for getting a byte-by-byte drive image to either a DVD or another hard drive.

IFW creates a set of bootable DVDs using a proprietary boot image, that requires only your BIOS to support your DVD as a bootable device. Simple interface in both Windows and from the boot disk. It takes about 1 hour to image the ~15G on my 120G HD to 3 DVDs and of course you must attend this whole process (1.5 hours with validation of the image).

The alternative is to image to a second physical HD. This takes about 15 minutes (20 with validation) for a completely verified boot image of the same 15G on a 120GB drive. Yay! that rocks!

Here comes the rub. Windows XP will not allow you to get access to your NTFS drives from DOS (at least not without some very expensive or very unreliable software). Soooo, your nice image on drive D is inaccessable to the Image for DOS program. Booo! So much for the cheap program.

Enter BartPE. If you use Windows XP you must go to Bart's Site immediately and download PE builder (IT"S FREE). This nifty little program will generate a bootable Windows XP CD or DVD, ALLOWING YOU TO RUN A WINDOWS XP ENVIRONMENT FROM DISK! Just add your Image for Windows program directory to the list to be copied by PEbuilder and viola.

In less than 1 hour I:
Downloaded PEbuilder
Built a bootable ISO image of XP with IFW included
Burned the image to CDR
Imaged 15G from drive C to D (compressed)
Totally destroyed the files on drive C
Booted to BartPE
Ran Image for Windows and restored the image from D to C
Rebooted and was up and running without reloading a single program or resetting a single Windows setting.


Do this now before you spend a week reloading software and tweaking it back to perfection. Don't spend $50-75 on overated, bloated backup software.
Sorry if this is old hat to everyone, but I've only been running XP and had a DVD burner since January 04. Opinions?

-ICY

 

[Duracell]

i use a similar procedure to backup my Win200;
booting up onto Bart's and then let run Norton Ghost 8 there for both cases, storing and restoring;
i know, i know, Ghost 8 will cost more than IFW, but as always "expensive" is a subject to one's viewpoint;

Greetings from
Duracell

 

[VIPER_1069]

yah know .... NERO'S little mentioned HD BACKUP does pretty much the same as what you described above

backs up windows in its entire form O.S. inclusive

 

[Duracell]

NERO'S little mentioned HD BACKUP does pretty much the same as what you described above

and Nero is implementable into Bart's too;

 

[scarecrow]

Ummm, lets see if I can do better:
1. The software I use is FREE- doesn't cost a single penny.
2. It can image partitions and store them either locally, or on the local network, or on CD and/or DVD, or finally somewhere on the web (I confess I've not yet tried that last option) and verify the images.
3. It can also access unbootable partitions and recover files+folders.
4. It works with all types of network controllers, SCSI and RAID adapters, all AGP cards.
5. It is 100% safe to use
6. Can be used even by a kid.

It's called Knoppix, and you know of course where you can find it. DVD burning will be introduced in the coming 3.4 edition, in approximately one week, although for the moment one can use the CVS build from here:
http://debian.tu-bs.de/knoppix/kdecvs/ -this CVS includes K3B 0.11.9 with full DVD burning abilities.
I can assure you that for the price it is simply unbeatable... and it does much, much more than backup and rescue operations!

 

[ipdave]

OR Try this (backs up live from within Windows):

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=559 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD colSpan=3>Acronis True Image 7.0

</TD><TD align=right><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>Price:

</TD><TD width=9 bgColor=#f0f0f0>

</TD><TD bgColor=#f0f0f0>$49.99

</TD><TD width=9 bgColor=#f0f0f0>

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top width=115>

</TD><TD vAlign=top width=181>Completely protect yourself from fatal system failure backing up and restoring exact hard disk and/or individual partition images.

</TD><TD width=12>

</TD><TD vAlign=top width=251>


</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

 

[scarecrow]

OR Try this (backs up live from within Windows):

I prefer mine, as "your" solution doesn't burn to DVD by itself... needs some third party software.
Also, no networking abilities... or to be more exact the analogous version costs $ 500, which I consider being a tad on the expensive side of things...

Surely enough my proposition is also a CVS/unstable beta, and some things ARE broken, but imaging and burning don't fall in there... There are other bugfree live CD's, but this is the first one which can burn to DVD.

 

[ipdave]

I prefer mine, as "your" solution doesn't burn to DVD by itself... needs some third party software.
Also, no networking abilities... or to be more exact the analogous version costs $ 500, which I consider being a tad on the expensive side of things...

Surely enough my proposition is also a CVS/unstable beta, and some things ARE broken, but imaging and burning don't fall in there... There are other bugfree live CD's, but this is the first one which can burn to DVD.

True. I use Knoppix also, and WinPE with Nero (costs $ though). The only reason that I like the Acronis solution is that I have a server that I don't like to take down to backup, plus I can image it via Terminal Service/RDP from work or while I sit in a training class or hotel. I cannot do that remotely with a Knoppix live linux CD, so for myself, I have to use the non-free solution. I definately love the Knoppix solution for the sheer price and fun factor, too though!

 

[VIPER_1069]

6. Can be used even by a kid.

heck theirs HOPE for me yet lol

good call SCARECROW never thought of that one ...mind you im not a penguin type of user unless its whacking them lol

but interesting enough to try

 

[ipdave]

K3b in Knoppix clone, KANOTIX...

This version of K3b burns DVD-/+R(W) ... Kanotix, a Knoppix knok-off.

http://www.ipdave.com/cougar/k3b.jpg

 

[Icy Mt.]

Knot Knocking Knoppix

A lot of interesting suggestions. Operated by a kid though? Remember, this is the same kid that pushed F10 and "restored" my HD. The biggest find for me was BartPE. Many, many of my "superuser" IT friends had no info how to get access to NTFS without big $$ to do something like this kind of restore.

I'd be interested to know what kind of backup/restore times to HD/DVD, compression, reliability you get with Knoppix or WinPE/BartPE with Nero, Ghost, Acronis on similiar equipment (4.8GHz P4HT, 120GB HD 7200rpm drives, 15G data, 4X DVD burn).

Not that I'm slammin' ya, it's just nobody's quotin' times, how small does 15GB look like on DVD or 2nd HD, did your image every "not really restore", etc. This process has gotten so quick for me, I have become much more reckless, since I can really "go back to yesterday" vs. a lame Windows System Restore. So, I might even get brave enough to put in a second partition and a Linux install.
-Icy

 

[ipdave]

@IcyMt:
I used to use DriveImage7, took about 2.5 hrs to backup 25gb. Had to reboot to backup/restore however. Restored everytime successfully (restored about 15 times, mostly to roll back to a previous state).

Now I use Acronis True Image 7. Takes about 1.5 hrs to backup the same data. Restores fine as well. Do NOT have to reboot to backup, and can mount the backup set to copy files out of it (RO). Still have it on a boot DVD to restore directly from a backup set (as to a new HD, etc).

Have no need or reason to do the WinPE with the GhostPE, and my boot CD/DVD can run the Drive Image or True Image from a bootable floppy IMG file on the disk. Sounds fun, though.

 

[Icy Mt.]

Feedback, Yes!

ipd, that's sweet! I assume that the 1.5hrs is for a backup to DVDs. Does that include an image verification pass? How many DVDs did your 25G backup set require?
IFW doesn't require a reboot before a backup, either. Terabyte has a free utility to let you pull specific files from the backup images. The only reason for the Win/BartPE is to be able to access the "restore from" images on an NTFS partition on a second (or 3rd) physical drive (looks like you have enough drives to do this, too). IFW finds all your physical drives and will restore to any partition that is big enough to hold the data. No need for a PE disc if you are restoring from a DVD set.

 

[BVV]

Ummm, lets see if I can do better:
1. The software I use is FREE- doesn't cost a single penny.
2. It can image partitions and store them either locally, or on the local network, or on CD and/or DVD, or finally somewhere on the web (I confess I've not yet tried that last option) and verify the images.
3. It can also access unbootable partitions and recover files+folders.
4. It works with all types of network controllers, SCSI and RAID adapters, all AGP cards.
5. It is 100% safe to use
6. Can be used even by a kid.

Can be used even by a kid. Right.
I feel pretty stupid asking this. How do you use it to image/restore partitions?

 

[scarecrow]

Can be used even by a kid. Right.
I feel pretty stupid asking this. How do you use it to image/restore partitions?

That one is included in virtually any Linux recovery CD, including Knoppix:
http://www.partimage.org/
Knoppix also has a GUI for it, although its usage is pretty straighforward. Webmin also has a module for partimage (so that you can image your partitions to harddisk remotely), and there might be more frontends I'm not aware about.

 

[BVV]

That one is included in virtually any Linux recovery CD, including Knoppix:
http://www.partimage.org/
Knoppix also has a GUI for it, although its usage is pretty straighforward. Webmin also has a module for partimage (so that you can image your partitions to harddisk remotely), and there might be more frontends I'm not aware about.

Partimage would be a great freeware back-up program, if it would work for me. Somehow, it only "sees" about 230MB of free space on the partition where I want to store the back-up (in reality there are several GB available). As a result it runs out of free space about halfway through making the back-up. It then asks where the rest has to be stored. When I select another drive\partition there still is not enough space.