Backup Windows XP OS

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

http://ghost.radified.com/ghost_1.htm

Ray wrote:
> I would like to backup the OS of my notebook computer for future use and
> have leant that Ghost is
> commonly used for this purpose. Can some experience users advise how to
> accomplish it and any minimum hardware and software in need.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ray
>
>
>

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

Ray wrote:

> I would like to backup the OS of my notebook computer for future use and
> have leant that Ghost is
> commonly used for this purpose. Can some experience users advise how to
> accomplish it and any minimum hardware and software in need.

Well, basically you go to the computer, office supply, or electronics store,
find a yellow box that says "Ghost" on it, take it to the counter, give the
clerk the amount of money he asks for, take it home, open it, and RTFM.

In addition to Ghost you'll also need an accessible additional storage
device (external drive, network share, etc) with at least as much free
space as the amount of space you have used on your laptop drive or a DVD or
CD burner supported by Ghost and a big enough stack of DVDs or CDs to hold
that same amount of data.


>
> Thanks,
>
> Ray

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

Ray <NoSpam-lizhiqiang1@gmail.com> wrote:
: I would like to backup the OS of my notebook computer for future use and
: have leant that Ghost is
: commonly used for this purpose. Can some experience users advise how to
: accomplish it and any minimum hardware and software in need.

What is your goal? In the event that your hard drive crashes, what do
you expect to do with your backup? This is something you need to
consider.

One method to get you up and running quickly would be to buy another
laptop hard drive and put it in an external USB hard drive enclosure.
Then use a Ghost-like program to make an image of it. If/when your
hard drive crashes, you simply swap in the spare ghosted drive and in
theory you should be able to boot in a few minutes and keep working.
Note that many hard drive manufacturers ship new hard drives with free
"ghost-like" software. I used Maxtor's Maxblast software recently to
clone a desktop hard drive to swap in for an old drive, and it worked
easily and perfectly, without Ghost. Not sure what software options
there are for an external USB drive, though, because Maxtor's software
runs outside Windows.

You don't necessarily need to backup Windows XP itself if you have the
laptop recover disks. In that case, you'd install a blank hard drive,
boot from one of the CDs, and re-install Windows XP and software that
came with your laptop. It might take a bit of extra time, plus you'd
need to re-install all the software you put on your laptop and do all
the Windows updates again, etc.

In addition to backing up Windows and your software, you also need to
worry about backing up your data and files. Of course, you can just
do the Ghost thing on your whole hard drive but you need to do it
often. It might be easier to burn "My Documents" to a CD or DVD often
instead.

Andrew
--
----> Portland, Oregon, USA <----
*******************************************************************
----> http://www.bizave.com <---- Photo Albums and Portland Info
----> To Email me remove "MYSHOES" from email address
*******************************************************************

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

I'd recommend "Drive Image" over "Ghost". Both are now owned by
Symantec (Norton), and the latest version of "Ghost" has been updated
with the "guts" of "Drive Image", but I like the user interface of Drive
Image better, and it's overall architecture is a bit less invasive.


Ray wrote:

> I would like to backup the OS of my notebook computer for future use and
> have leant that Ghost is
> commonly used for this purpose. Can some experience users advise how to
> accomplish it and any minimum hardware and software in need.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ray
>
>
>

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

"J. Clarke" <jclarke@nospam.invalid> wrote in message
news:crrpmt11goc@news3.newsguy.com...
> Ray wrote:
>
> > I would like to backup the OS of my notebook computer for future use and
> > have leant that Ghost is
> > commonly used for this purpose. Can some experience users advise how to
> > accomplish it and any minimum hardware and software in need.
>
> Well, basically you go to the computer, office supply, or electronics
store,
> find a yellow box that says "Ghost" on it, take it to the counter, give
the
> clerk the amount of money he asks for, take it home, open it, and RTFM.
>
> In addition to Ghost you'll also need an accessible additional storage
> device (external drive, network share, etc) with at least as much free
> space as the amount of space you have used on your laptop drive or a DVD
or
> CD burner supported by Ghost and a big enough stack of DVDs or CDs to hold
> that same amount of data.
>
>
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Ray
>
> --

Be careful with Ghost. It is an old software and it may not perfectly image
the protected portion of the factory image. I had this happen to me on a
laptop. I used Ghost 2003 to backup the entire disk. When I re-ghosted it,
the OS was fine, but the factory image software said that the image file did
not exist. Sometimes the manufactures put "copy protection" on the small
partition which will hold the factory image. I have some suggestions for
you:

1) Make backups of the partitions seperately. Dont do a full disk image
2) Better still use Acronis TrueImage. Its a far superior software
3) If you dont have the OS disks - push your laptop vendor to send them 2 u.

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

Musty wrote:

>
> "J. Clarke" <jclarke@nospam.invalid> wrote in message
> news:crrpmt11goc@news3.newsguy.com...
>> Ray wrote:
>>
>> > I would like to backup the OS of my notebook computer for future use
>> > and have leant that Ghost is
>> > commonly used for this purpose. Can some experience users advise how
>> > to accomplish it and any minimum hardware and software in need.
>>
>> Well, basically you go to the computer, office supply, or electronics
> store,
>> find a yellow box that says "Ghost" on it, take it to the counter, give
> the
>> clerk the amount of money he asks for, take it home, open it, and RTFM.
>>
>> In addition to Ghost you'll also need an accessible additional storage
>> device (external drive, network share, etc) with at least as much free
>> space as the amount of space you have used on your laptop drive or a DVD
> or
>> CD burner supported by Ghost and a big enough stack of DVDs or CDs to
>> hold that same amount of data.
>>
>>
>> >
>> > Thanks,
>> >
>> > Ray
>>
>> --
>
> Be careful with Ghost. It is an old software

For certain values of "old". The latest version of it was released last
year and was a major redesign.

> and it may not perfectly
> image the protected portion of the factory image. I had this happen to me
> on a laptop. I used Ghost 2003 to backup the entire disk. When I
> re-ghosted it, the OS was fine, but the factory image software said that
> the image file did not exist. Sometimes the manufactures put "copy
> protection" on the small partition which will hold the factory image. I
> have some suggestions for you:
>
> 1) Make backups of the partitions seperately. Dont do a full disk image
> 2) Better still use Acronis TrueImage. Its a far superior software
> 3) If you dont have the OS disks - push your laptop vendor to send them 2
> u.

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

Airman,

Thanks for your pointer where provides useful information.

Ray

"Airman Thunderbird" <airman.basic@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:fq2dnQcQBZ12wXzcRVn-iA@netdoor.com...
>
> http://ghost.radified.com/ghost_1.htm
>
> Ray wrote:
>> I would like to backup the OS of my notebook computer for future use and
>> have leant that Ghost is
>> commonly used for this purpose. Can some experience users advise how to
>> accomplish it and any minimum hardware and software in need.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Ray
>>
>>

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

Andrew,

Very good questions!

Our goad includes two parts. One is to restore the data in case the
computers get lost for what even reasons. The second part is to resume
operation (OS + application software) asap.

Your suggested method sounds effective and perfect to do the backup of OS +
Application software but I am a bit concern about the cost involved. Can we
use a large (300 GB) external harddisk (usb 2.0) to store an image of C
drives where have OS and application software. I have heard it for long but
unsure if it is really workable in reality. Appreciate guidance from
experienced users.

Regarding data backup, should we use network device to back them up to NAS
and tape using Backup Exec software that now provides backup of clients.
Currently, individual backup in CD-ROM using Windows XP built-in feature is
in use.

Ray

"Andrew" <usenetMYSHOES@bizaveMYSHOES.com> wrote in message
news:zcasdhjaxcula95002401811@bizaveMYSHOES.com...
> Ray <NoSpam-lizhiqiang1@gmail.com> wrote:
> : I would like to backup the OS of my notebook computer for future use and
> : have leant that Ghost is
> : commonly used for this purpose. Can some experience users advise how to
> : accomplish it and any minimum hardware and software in need.
>
> What is your goal? In the event that your hard drive crashes, what do
> you expect to do with your backup? This is something you need to
> consider.
>
> One method to get you up and running quickly would be to buy another
> laptop hard drive and put it in an external USB hard drive enclosure.
> Then use a Ghost-like program to make an image of it. If/when your
> hard drive crashes, you simply swap in the spare ghosted drive and in
> theory you should be able to boot in a few minutes and keep working.
> Note that many hard drive manufacturers ship new hard drives with free
> "ghost-like" software. I used Maxtor's Maxblast software recently to
> clone a desktop hard drive to swap in for an old drive, and it worked
> easily and perfectly, without Ghost. Not sure what software options
> there are for an external USB drive, though, because Maxtor's software
> runs outside Windows.
>
> You don't necessarily need to backup Windows XP itself if you have the
> laptop recover disks. In that case, you'd install a blank hard drive,
> boot from one of the CDs, and re-install Windows XP and software that
> came with your laptop. It might take a bit of extra time, plus you'd
> need to re-install all the software you put on your laptop and do all
> the Windows updates again, etc.
>
> In addition to backing up Windows and your software, you also need to
> worry about backing up your data and files. Of course, you can just
> do the Ghost thing on your whole hard drive but you need to do it
> often. It might be easier to burn "My Documents" to a CD or DVD often
> instead.
>
> Andrew
> --
> ----> Portland, Oregon, USA <----
> *******************************************************************
> ----> http://www.bizave.com <---- Photo Albums and Portland Info
> ----> To Email me remove "MYSHOES" from email address
> *******************************************************************
>

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

Ray <NoSpam-lizhiqiang1@gmail.com> wrote:
: Our goad includes two parts. One is to restore the data in case the
: computers get lost for what even reasons. The second part is to resume
: operation (OS + application software) asap.

: Your suggested method sounds effective and perfect to do the backup of OS +
: Application software but I am a bit concern about the cost involved. Can we
: use a large (300 GB) external harddisk (usb 2.0) to store an image of C
: drives where have OS and application software. I have heard it for long but
: unsure if it is really workable in reality. Appreciate guidance from
: experienced users.

: Regarding data backup, should we use network device to back them up to NAS
: and tape using Backup Exec software that now provides backup of clients.
: Currently, individual backup in CD-ROM using Windows XP built-in feature is
: in use.

Your first post seemed to indicate that you wanted to back up only one
machine, but if you are talking about backing up a bunch of machines
on a network, you are talking about a whole different ballgame. In
that case, I would think you would try to create one standard restore
image for all the machines and then just backup the application data,
which could be done over the network. No need to backup Windows XP
for everyone. Then when one hard drive dies, you just restore the
image, then restore the application files from the backup.

I really don't know anything about backing up over a network
effectively, but if you search the archives of this group on Google
you might find some suggestions.

Andrew
--
----> Portland, Oregon, USA <----
*******************************************************************
----> http://www.bizave.com <---- Photo Albums and Portland Info
----> To Email me remove "MYSHOES" from email address
*******************************************************************