Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (
More info?)
"Rob graham" <rttgrahamwow@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:datb9s$2kj$1@nwrdmz02.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com...
> I've used Second copy very successfully over the years to back up my data
> to an external hard drive, but I'm thinking that it might be better to use
> something like Norton Ghost to image the whole hard drive.
>
> I haven't got my brain around why imaging is not done by everybody who
> wants to be able to recover files quickly from a disaster. Just backing up
> data (as I do) rather than the whole HDD seems to only sort part of the
> problem. So I'm thinking of switching to imaging. Is there a downside to
> this?
>
> Rob Graham
Rob:
Hopefully, all the responses you've rec'd will give you sufficient info to
make a sensible choice for your particular situation. Anyway, let me give
you my thoughts as well...
I've been working with disk imaging programs for better than five years
now -- primarily Norton Ghost and more recently Acronis True Image. During
that time I would estimate I've personally or participated in the
disk-to-disk cloning of thousands of hard drives.
It has been a continual source of wonder to me why relatively few personal
computer users do not use a disk imaging program to clone the contents of
their day-to-day working hard drive to another drive in order to achieve a
near fail-safe backup system. In my view you will be well-served by
employing a disk imaging program such as the programs I've mentioned to
"clone" the contents of your working HD to another internal HD or preferably
(because of the added security) a removable HD or a USB/Firewire external
HD. In doing so you will be creating (for all practical purposes) an exact
duplicate of your working HD, in effect backing up your XP operating system,
registry and configuration settings, your programs and data files. In short,
*everything* that's on your working drive will be on your destination drive.
What better backup system can one have? So when the time comes that you have
to restore your working drive because of one problem or another with that
drive, you can re:clone the contents of your "cloned" drive back to the
internal drive. (You cannot boot from a USB EHD; however, if the recipient
of your clone was another internal HD, you could boot from that drive).
I've worked with various versions of the Ghost program over the years and
have found it to be a most reliable and effective program. The disk-to-disk
cloning process is simple, relatively quick, and most important of all --
effective.
In my own case I prefer to work with the Ghost 2003 program (now bundled
with the Ghost 9 program) because of my long experience with that program in
the XP OS environment. I've found the program easy to use and quite
effective in carrying out the disk-to-disk cloning operation. In working
with the Ghost 2003 program I usually use a Ghost bootable floppy and
sometimes a Ghost bootable CD to perform the cloning operation rather than
Ghost's Windows GUI. I find its simplicity and effectiveness and portability
aspects quite attractive for my purposes. The bootable floppy and/or
bootable CD are very simple to create in the Ghost program. My *exclusive*
interest is in creating disk-to-disk clones as previously mentioned. I've no
interest in creating "disk images" on CD/DVD media, nor do I have any
interest in making "incremental backups". To my mind the speed, simplicity,
and effectiveness of creating disk-to-disk clones obviates the need for
incremental backups. That, of course, is an individual choice.
I've recently started working with the Acronis True Image program because of
all the favorable reviews I've come across. I've been quite impressed with
the program because of its cloning speed. It's much faster than Ghost in my
experience, at least with respect to the Ghost 2003 program. Based on my
experience using ATI with medium-powered processors and modern drives,
cloning speed will be about 1.5+ GB/min (cloning to an internal drive), and
about 800+ MB/min (cloning to a USB EHD). Ghost's cloning speed is
considerably slower. One negative to the Acronis program (insofar as I'm
concerned) is that you cannot use that program with a single bootable floppy
disk as you can with Ghost. But you can use the program with a bootable CD
easily created in the Acronis program and that's what I usually use when I'm
employing that program.
Anna
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