I Would Like To Make A Disk Image Of My Computer

[okey kokey]

Ok so ive got my new computer, ( 2G Ram – 250 HDD- Windows XP ) , ive just got Acronis True Image 10

Now all I need is an external HDD to make a Disk Image of my computer

As knowing my luck, it will crash one day.

So not being very technically minded ( I can use a computer , but don’t know how it works !! )

When I go to the IT Mall soon, what do I ask for ..? , I am not too sure if I should go for a ready to plug

In USB HDD, or get some one at the Local Thai IT Mall shops to make me some thing up..?

Ive heard some where that the HDD enclosure is important, like having a cooling fan and power supply built in ..?

Alos the type of HDD ( some thing I thinks called SATA- I & SATA- II , Buffer Size ..? and formatting .? , also what actual

Size to get if I have a 250 HDD installed on my computer, and any idea of what to pay)

Can some one please point me in the right direction of what’s the best set up , and what to ask for

And what to expect the shop to do ..?

I have done a search, but no luck …

Many Thanks …

[Wash]

Just use Backup if you are running XP and it will create a complete system image or what ever porton

you specify in the selections you make.

Start-Program Files-Accesories- Backup

[nikster]

I used Norton Ghost for this - I am sure your software works equally well, however the one thing you need to make sure of is that you get a startup CD.

Short answer:

- Get the Western Digital MyBook 250GB USB external drive. HD + nice enclosure ready to use. No fuss.

- Connect everything

- Get Arconis True Image to make a startup CD for you. This is very important. If your internal HD is hosed, you need to be able to start up the computer from CD so you can restore the drive.

- If you can't get a startup CD, get Norton Ghost + startup CD. I have used that before, it works fine. A backup program without startup CD is useless. It's like an airbag that works except in an accident. MS backup included in Win XP falls into this category.

- Change your computers Bios settings to start up from CD first, then try the startup CD. You want to try that before your HD is hosed. Make sure it works - it should start up and present you with the option of restoring the drive. Once you are sure it works, restart into Windows again.

- Then, do your backup Most programs allow you to set up a schedule to do it every night or so, I would recommend that. Set it up in a way so it doesn't require you to remember to do backups.

Optional Info:

HD size: You should have as much room on the backup drive as is on the original drive. You _need_ as much room as the data you are using on the internal drive takes up. So if you only use 80GB on your hard disk, the backup image will weigh in at something smaller than 80GB. The backup program uses compression so it will be able to compress some files. Compression does not work on already-compressed files though, such as movies, images, and music. These also tend to be the largest files on your system so compression doesn't actually help all that much.

External enclosures: You can buy the external enclosure and the HD separately. It might be a wee bit cheaper even. However, you then need to make sure to get compatible drive/enclosure, both SATA or both IDE. You also run the risk of getting an enclosure that doesn't work all that well - there are many cheap enclosure manufacturers and some are really crappy. All in all, I don't think it's worth it when there are nice pre-assembled options like the MyBook drive. I have a MyBook, a Maxtor and some no name enclosures and the MyBook is IMHO the best because it has the best ventilation. Power bricks are always on the outside, that is normal. There are some enclosures with fans but I don't think it's necessary - passive cooling is good enough, you will not be using the backup drive much and you don't want it to sit there and make noise.

Edited July 31, 2007 by nikster

[PattayaDavid]

I used Norton Ghost for this - I am sure your software works equally well, however the one thing you need to make sure of is that you get a startup CD.

Short answer:

- Get the Western Digital MyBook 250GB USB external drive. HD + nice enclosure ready to use. No fuss.

- Connect everything

- Get Arconis True Image to make a startup CD for you. This is very important. If your internal HD is hosed, you need to be able to start up the computer from CD so you can restore the drive.

- If you can't get a startup CD, get Norton Ghost + startup CD. I have used that before, it works fine. A backup program without startup CD is useless. It's like an airbag that works except in an accident. MS backup included in Win XP falls into this category.

- Change your computers Bios settings to start up from CD first, then try the startup CD. You want to try that before your HD is hosed. Make sure it works - it should start up and present you with the option of restoring the drive. Once you are sure it works, restart into Windows again.

- Then, do your backup Most programs allow you to set up a schedule to do it every night or so, I would recommend that. Set it up in a way so it doesn't require you to remember to do backups.

Optional Info:

HD size: You should have as much room on the backup drive as is on the original drive. You _need_ as much room as the data you are using on the internal drive takes up. So if you only use 80GB on your hard disk, the backup image will weigh in at something smaller than 80GB. The backup program uses compression so it will be able to compress some files. Compression does not work on already-compressed files though, such as movies, images, and music. These also tend to be the largest files on your system so compression doesn't actually help all that much.

External enclosures: You can buy the external enclosure and the HD separately. It might be a wee bit cheaper even. However, you then need to make sure to get compatible drive/enclosure, both SATA or both IDE. You also run the risk of getting an enclosure that doesn't work all that well - there are many cheap enclosure manufacturers and some are really crappy. All in all, I don't think it's worth it when there are nice pre-assembled options like the MyBook drive. I have a MyBook, a Maxtor and some no name enclosures and the MyBook is IMHO the best because it has the best ventilation. Power bricks are always on the outside, that is normal. There are some enclosures with fans but I don't think it's necessary - passive cooling is good enough, you will not be using the backup drive much and you don't want it to sit there and make noise.

Below is a sample of WD Mybook's and prices from one of the shops (Busitek) in PANTIP PLAZA:

http://www.busitek.com/forms/pricelist.html

Harddisk External

                                 Item Description                                               Price       Warranty

WESTERN DIGITAL

                                 WD Mybook 3.5" 250GB , 7200 RPM   USB 2.0      3,890      3 Years

                                 WD Mybook 3.5" 320GB , 7200 RPM   USB 2.0      4,390      3 Years

                                 WD Mybook 3.5" 500GB , 7200 RPM   USB 2.0      5,690      3 Years

                                 WD Passport 2.5" 80GB , 5400 RPM   USB 2.0      3,490      3 Years

                                 WD Passport 2.5" 120GB , 5400 RPM USB 2.0      4,390      3 Years

                                 WD Passport 2.5" 160GB , 5400 RPM USB 2.0      4,990      3 Years

I see that only USB 2.0 connection is listed.  Do you know if it also has an eSATA connection or is available with ESATA connection?

Pattaya Dave

[trd]

You made a wise decision to purchase Acronis Disk Image. I can vouch for the fact that it restores drive images perfectly. I do a backup of my hard drive every week onto an external USB drive. You can also burn to CD's. It can do this even though it is running within the Windows environment. The backup utilty in Windows XP cannot produce a bootable version as it cannot copy system files that are in use like Acronis can.

Acronis will ask you if you want to make a CD recovery disk when you install it. You will need to run from the CD in the event of a restore. Worth pointing out though that it is not a disaster if you don't have this disk if your hard drive fails. Let's say you have a complete image backup on a USB drive. Then your computer HD irrecoverably fails and you haven't got the recovery CD. No problem. You put in the new HD and either get a basic system installed which will allow you to re-install Acronis and make a recovery CD or you could make a recovery CD on another machine.

All you have to do then is make sure BIOS is set to start up from CD first and Acronis will boot from it allowing you to restore from the USB drive.

Important: If the USB drive doesn't show up in the file directory within Acronis you will need to disable USB legacy support in BIOS.

[Douggie Style]

DriveImage XML is free and fast, thoroughly recommend it.

[OpenSky]

I use Norton Ghost. It can clone the hard disk or make an image of it.

Both, ACRONIS and NORTON are verry good Progs, but i made the experiance, that in some cases, NORTON is working and ACRONIS failes - and vice versa. It's verry important to test it out. ACRONIS enables to download a Trial Version, thats fine, test this out first.

DriveImage XML looks also good, i will test it out.

Peter

Edited August 1, 2007 by OpenSky

[Guest Reimar]

I using for "cloning" HDDClone Pro which can clone to USB and vice versa. For to produce Recovery CD/DVD I use NTI Drive Backup or Acronis Disk Image. Both are excelent. Norton Ghost I stopped using after getting problems with file systems and different HDD size.

[Naam]

after years of experimenting i use Ghost since about one year. never had a problem with half a dozen drives of different sizes. worthwhile to mention is that i clone my harddrive daily.

[nikster]

I see that only USB 2.0 connection is listed. Do you know if it also has an eSATA connection or is available with ESATA connection?

Well I didn't know that before but I am pretty handy with Google, so there...

According to the WD website, the MyBook Premium ES Edition has eSata. It's the only MyBook with eSata. Costs $200 for 500GB in the U.S....

Edited August 1, 2007 by nikster

[nikster]

BTW the whole cloning thing gets considerably more complex when you have multiple partitions on one drive. Or when there are hidden partitions on your drive.

Does Ghost or Arconis have an option to just clone all hard disks/partitions in a machine?

I am asking because last time I did that with Ghost, I cloned the C: and D: drives separately. I didn't see an option to just clone it all.

The problem that developed because of that was that there was a hidden partition on the original HD which I didn't clone. No problem, except that when I recovered my HD from the backup, the partition order got mixed up, as the old partition 0 was gone. The effect was half a day lost to a non-starting windows machine, a Windows Vista bootloader trying to load Windows XP (fun!), and some desperate recovery with the Vista install disk and manual editing of the binary boot loader database. It worked in the end but it sure wasted a lot of time.

[LostInBKK]

I see that only USB 2.0 connection is listed. Do you know if it also has an eSATA connection or is available with ESATA connection?

Well I didn't know that before but I am pretty handy with Google, so there...

According to the WD website, the MyBook Premium ES Edition has eSata. It's the only MyBook with eSata. Costs $200 for 500GB in the U.S....

I had an emergency and purchased a brand new Western Digital MyBook ES 500GB (ESATA + USB) from Hardware House Intl' in Pantip Plaza for THB 6,700 about 2 weeks ago.

[trd]

BTW the whole cloning thing gets considerably more complex when you have multiple partitions on one drive. Or when there are hidden partitions on your drive.

Does Ghost or Arconis have an option to just clone all hard disks/partitions in a machine?

I am asking because last time I did that with Ghost, I cloned the C: and D: drives separately. I didn't see an option to just clone it all.

The problem that developed because of that was that there was a hidden partition on the original HD which I didn't clone. No problem, except that when I recovered my HD from the backup, the partition order got mixed up, as the old partition 0 was gone. The effect was half a day lost to a non-starting windows machine, a Windows Vista bootloader trying to load Windows XP (fun!), and some desperate recovery with the Vista install disk and manual editing of the binary boot loader database. It worked in the end but it sure wasted a lot of time.

Not a problem. In fact I always make 2 partitions on my drive. The C: drive just for the OS and programs and another partition only for data files. In Acronis you can select which parttions you want to back up. If you restore C: it is bootable. Of course if you were restoring to a new drive and you wanted 2 partitions again you would first restore C: and then make another partition for your data. I use Acronis Disk Director. It easier to manage with 2 partiions I find and as I am concerned with security should I have my laptop ripped off, I encrypt my data partition, secure in the knowledge that my privacy is not compomised. I would advise all mobile users to consider this. I use TrueCrypt which is free.

[Guest Reimar]

In HDD Clone you can clone the whole HDD at once! In Acronis or Ghost you can't!

[trd]

In HDD Clone you can clone the whole HDD at once! In Acronis or Ghost you can't!

Not correct. Acronis will copy all partitions if you choose the clone option.