using a Ghost?

[Lukas]

Hi,

I have some questions about using a image of your HD to backup data.

I never worked with HD Images before so bare with me... 🙂

I have Norton Ghost 2002. I understand I can take a image of my harddrive and when my HD is formated, I can put the image back, just the way it was...

What exactly are the disadvanteges?

What abaout when I resize the primary partition? Will the image still 'fit'? Can I just install all programs I need and take an image so I always will be able to restore to a fully working system? If so, why isn't everybody working with images? And how big is an image of a 5 GB partition? Will it fit on a cd-r? (4 gig used, 1 free)...


Thnx in advance

Lukas

 

[HSChronic]

Ghost Images are great. The only disadvantage of it is that if you put it on CD-R then you can't edit the image, so make sure you have your system how you really want it before you image.


As for why people don't always want to work with images?? For me, i change up my install options a decent amount when i reinstall so having an image sometimes isnt in my best interests because i could have stopped using a certain program that was in my image, so then i have to uninstall it once i get my image back on. All in all if you stick with the same sys configuration then restoring by image is a great idea.


The restore process itself is different with ghost than the program i use, which is PowerQuest Deploy Center. In ghost i believe you can restore by formating the drive or the partion on the drive. You need to make sure you have a large enough drive/partion so that all the data will dump onto the drive. It usually takes around 60 minutes depending on where you are copying from and where you are copying to.


If you are backing up to CD-R, then it will usually take around 4-5 CDs if not more depending on the size. I think the program will tell you about how many it will take before you start the process.

 

[Lukas]

thnx a lot!