taking image of harddisk drives

Hello,
My system gets corrupt frequently these days (due to virus, worms and other programs) and formatting and reinstalling everything is an hectic job. somebody told me about taking a image of the harddisk and burn it on a cd which can be easily restored. i think Norton Gost is one of those software. but before using anyone of them i would like to take u r advice regarding this. i have few questions in my mind:- which is the best software to take image of the harddisk? will the image be small enough to fit on a cd? what happens when system is crashed and i have nothing ...... how do i restore? what about the data?

bye

I use Ghost when I image my computer, works well and the new version allows you to browse the image file once you have created it. I tend to create an image just before i rebuild for all those little bit you forget to back up (forgot my pst files last week).
Ghost will ask you when you are creating the image if you would like to create recovery disks. These will either boot you Cd or external hard disk and restore the image.
As for the size of the image - it does have compression but really it depends how much space you are using. for example last week I imaged my laptop, 12Gb on hdd, it made 5 2Gb files so the is a little compression but not a lot. A CD will however get the OS and all drivers on it.

Hope this helps

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Originally posted here by aladdinhere
Hello,
My system gets corrupt frequently these days (due to virus, worms and other programs) and formatting and reinstalling everything is an hectic job.

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Perhaps, in addition to Norton Ghost, or whatever you eventually acquire, you invest a little time in securing your system? For example: get a firewall (sygate is good and free) , an anti-virus program (try AVG - good & free again) , a registry monitor (regprot - free & good), and some spyware protection ( Spyware blaster, IESPyad, Spybot, Ad-aware - all good & free). Then perhaps you won't have to keep reformatting!


Just a thought. :D

hi all ...
here i have an internet cafe` with 10 Pcs ... i used to fromate it all and reinstall every thing every 15 days and it was really not right and not good ... now for 1.5 month i didnt formate any on of them cause i use the cleaner and norton internet security with antivirus now...
and about the image i use norton ghost its good but every time it was big and dont fit Cds so i keep it in a apartition that i dont use... so like what meeeeeee saies try a good security and u will not need that formatting...
thx all

As has been mentioned above you should really secure you system rather than reinstalling every coulpe of days. Normally you should be thinking of using an image only as a last resort and it should be remembered even an image needs to be updated as new security patches become available.
Having said that I use either Nortons Ghost or powerquests drive image.

Your best bit is to use Norton Ghost it is a perfect tool to take an image of the HDD.

Acronis True Image
www.acronis.com

I like it better than Ghost as you can image your drive live in Windows.
Ghost might do that now but it didn't when I started using it.
The version I use has a nice CLI feature set that allows for simple scripted scheduling for automated disk or partition imaging.
It's also very fast and will compress the image to a small tight image file.
Will also auto split the image into CD or DVD sized chunks if needed.

we use norton ghost here at the county, its extremely convenient. i cant tell you how much time it saves. get about 60 new dells (same drivers 'n everything), format 1 and install everything how we want it, take an image, put it on the server and make a ghost floppy. Hook up 5 computers and put in the floppy and let it do the work, answer 1 or 2 questions like "do you want to install on this partition" and "continue" and its done in about i'd say 2-3 min. over a network with the new gigabit switches 'n nics. its really nice 'n convenient. as for just 1 computer, i guess it'd be nice, but i dont format all that often (once every 6 months?) and by then if its my windows machine 498230873440824043 more patches are out. so there is still a bunch of updating to do. However for backup reasons i'd say taking a snapshot of your OS with all your files on it is a good way to make sure you dont forget to back anything up.

Years ago I used to use this.
www.partimage.org/

Thought it might be fun for some to play with.

SGS

You can use ghost or maby norton ghost.... but why dont you just make a copy of a restore point so if any thing goes bad you should scan and kill the viruses and you can end them if you no how... it is a little simple with some just ctrl alt delete and then go to procces and then end them it is pretty easy it works with 90 percent of all blaster worm trust me i know...lol
well hope it works for yah

about ur last questions

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how do i restore? what about the data?

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well i would recommend Ontrack Easyrecovery Datarecovery Pro It restored alot of my files when my HDD crashed ( altho it failed with picture files, mostly jpeg)... it's not free but did a good job with my HDD and my friends'

Check it out here :

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http://www.ontrack.com/easyrecoverydatarecovery/

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Something slightly different that could also work for some folks would be Deepfreeze. It makes an image of the hd and restores it to that point at restart. So one can install whatever then just reboot to undo it all. You can turn it off to make changes you want to keep. I like it because I can set up a box how I want it and then "freeze" it.

Maby a resotre point could hewrlp you to but taking an image is a good way to resotore to if you can copy it and image it right My friend here just said you can ghost it if that helps.