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How do you do backups in XP?


jeffw_00

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James M. Fisher
Well, I decided to order Ghost 9.0 from the bookstore here at work. Good price, $86 CDN for the Educational pricing. Given past history this would be around $104 at a place like Futureshop or Staples.And, here's a review from PC Magazine: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,16444...2129TX1K0000530 :thumbsup:
You'll have to let us know what you think when you get the chance. ^_^BTW, it looks as if Ghost 9 has replaced DI7:http://forums.scotsnewsletter.com/index.php?showtopic=8758 Edited by James M. Fisher
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James M. Fisher

Agree with Ed; why that step at all? The image restoration will overwrite anything exising on the destination partition.I do this type of image creation/restore all the time; although I never have used a network restore. All my images are either on CD or another partition.

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The image restoration will overwrite anything exising on the destination partition.
In other words Jeffw_00, you can connect the new drive to any pc, run the image restore, then move the drive to the pc it's intended for.Make sure you update the MVP that gave you the other advice. I don't think he fully understood what you are trying to do. Then again, maybe we don't either. :lol:
If you're happy, I'm happy, Ed! B)
Thank you James. :)
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I have no issue with it.  You can use that approach if you want.  I wouldn't but you can.  It will take you longer than needed but if you have the time it doesn't matter.  B)
Ed - step one has to do with formatting the drive. The MVP suggested NOT doing this while it is connected to another machine because:"While the hard drive is in the 2nd PC it will be hard drive 1 (second hard drive) and this will be recorded during the disk prep. Move it to PC#1, it now becomes hard drive 0. XP's hardware check will see that change and you could run into trouble because of it."However, you have a point - it's 'recorded' in the partition record, (right?) and if you restore the disk image you should get the correct setting back, I believe. No harm in restoring the drive image with a direct connection rather than a network one, just might require a little more moving around of the drive.Like Perl, there's more than one way to do it 8-}Thanks for your feedback Edp - i'm learning a lot!/j
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James M. Fisher
In other words Jeffw_00, you can connect the new drive to any pc, run the image restore, then move the drive to the pc it's intended for.
Just don't attempt to boot the restored image on a PC the image is not from originally! B)
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Just don't attempt to boot the restored image on a PC the image is not from originally! :wacko:
Actually, if the hardware is not too dissimilar, you can use a tool called sysprep, found on the XP CD in the support/tools folder. Before you image a hard drive, extract the contents of the file, deploy.cab into c:\sysprep. From a command line run
sysprep -mini -reseal -reboot

and when the system next reboots (i.e., after being restored to another hard drive, XP will do a mini hardware detect when it starts up. That's what we do to push out a Ghost image to multiple PC, since as you know, each XP machine needs a unique SID number to function properly on a network. The SID issue isn't a problem if you only have one machine.

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I know one MVP that swears by it and it's companion, BootIt NG.I guess for the price they can't be beat.
I tried to install the TerraBytes BootIt NG program and make use of it. I got into the DOS part (unsure if there really is a Windows part) and found it a bit difficult to use with a number of deficiencies.1. For installation, "you must ensure than an EMBR exists on HD0 as well as the drive chosen for installation". (And the install partition MUST be FAT32). I use all NTFS partitions so this required some extra steps to repartition a FAT32 segment.2. The HELP file is fairly useless. For instance there are references to "EMBR" (Extended MBR?) and "ERMBR Partitions" (Emergency Recovery Partition?) but there is no explanation for what these are. Similarly for the function "SLIDE" (which appears to move partitions around). There may be more examples but I didn't bother looking anything else up.3. I created a new partition but there doesn't seem to be a LABEL function to change the Volume description., TB created a label named "NEW MBR ENT-1". I created another partition and it named it "NEW MBR ENT".4. Tried to merge an existing NTFS partition w/Free space. I completed the dialog to do this but nothing happened. I repeated it 3 times with no results.5. I get the feeling that they don't have a lot of experience with NTFS partitions.6. The interface I was working with for these operations was ugly old DOS and they didn't support my Cirque touchpad mouse at all (it looks like a PS2 mouse w/o the driver installed). So I had to use the keyboard to tab around though the functionality. If you don't know DOS, you might be a bit perplexed as to what keys to use.
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I've been using Paragon's disk imaging and partitioning product called Hard Disk Manager 5.5. They had a nice integrated package of a number of tools (imaging, boot chooser, wipe disk, partitioning, encrypted disk and a couple more). But with V6, they got rid of some of the programs and seem to be "supporting" only the partitioning and imaging products as separate programs ($50 each). They've also eliminated email support, replacing help with a FAQ. Sheese. But as we all learn working with computers, the real test of a product is when you need to use the product.I ran into a a number of serious problems trying to use Paragon's products in my recent build of my new system. Some images I took were not readable and would not restore. And you need a working Windows system to do the restore. They say there is a DOS component, but I could never get it to work and anyway, it can't handle NTFS from DOS. I tried to delete a partition on one of my disks and move the free space around so I could merge the space into an existing partition. This operation crashed the system I was building and trashed the MFT section of the boot hard drive, necessitating a complete format and repartition of that disk (resulting in the loss of 4 partitions). I wasn't even doing the space move on the boot drive! Also, discovered that the Partition Explorer component of Paragon HDM, which is supposed to be able to read an image and extract individual files, wouldn't even work at all.I've recommended Paragon's software to others in the past but cannot do so any longer.With products like this, you really should try to exercise all the functions before you needed them (live and learn...), preferably on a test system. If you do any sort of backups, you really should try and restore them somewhere and verify that everything you THINK is supposed to be getting backed up, really is and that you can actually use these backups in an emergency situation. Many people often find to their dismay that files that were open weren't backed up.

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you should Email your issues with the Terabytes program to them. I believe it's the developer himself who responds to the support Email, typically within 24 hours/j

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If you do any sort of backups, you really should try and restore them somewhere and verify that everything you THINK is supposed to be getting backed up, really is and that you can actually use these backups in an emergency situation. Many people often find to their dismay that files that were open weren't backed up.
I totally agree ibe98765.
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You'll have to let us know what you think when you get the chance.  ^_^BTW, it looks as if Ghost 9 has replaced DI7:http://forums.scotsnewsletter.com/index.php?showtopic=8758
Well, Ghost 9.0 landed in my hands this afternoon and $3 less than quoted!. Let me start off by saying upfront that it is not just DriveImage 7 rebranded. There are indeed some differences that need to be highlighted.The Wizard interface in XP is better designed than the one in DriveImage 7. The technology, as mentionned in prior posts, is certainly from PowerQuest. This is the first Ghost product that can make images from within Windows XP directly by either writing the image file to a local hard drive, network share, or directly to CD-RW/DVD+R/-R/+RW. Restoring can also take place in XP except when restoring to the system partition, i.e., which is logical since you don't want to be restoring your c: drive while you're using it. In that case you are prompted to restart and boot off the Ghost 9.0 CD or the Symantec Recovery CD (from Symantec Systemworks Premium). This CD boots into a customised Win PE recovery system. The recovery environment provides advanced restore features like copying the MBR, restoring drive signatures, setting drive letters, editing the boot.ini file, etc. One caveat if you have any non-Intel SATA controller or RAID controllers that required an F6 type of installation. In order to see drives attached to these controllers you need to press F6 when prompted to boot from the Ghost 9.0 CD so you can load the drivers. Otherwise you won't see the drive(s) attached to those controllers. Read the Troubleshooting section of the User's Guide!It can do incremental backup images, has a scheduler, and looks slick.But, there are a few issues. It seems a little sluggish in the interface with XP even with 1GB RAM and a 3.11GHz processor. The recovery environment is even more of a pig. It requires that your computer have at least 256MB RAM, yet it still felt quite sluggish in the recovery environment. However, the actual backup and restore speeds are impressive. With the High compression setting it took me only an hour to image 30GB of data to a local hard drive within XP and only 30 minutes to restore it using the recovery environment with image verification turned on. Image files are not split by default, but you can set your own file sizes: I created a 16GB file!I'd give it a 4/5 for features and ease of use, but 3.5/5 for implementation. Ghost 2003 still wins in terms of ease of use, and is faster to get going despite its use of the DOS environment for the backup and restore modes. And funnily enough, a copy of Ghost 2003 on a second CD is also included! Two pieces of software for the price of one!
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Well, I'm having to use my Ghost Recovery CD in a big way. See, yesterday, one of my drives in my main system was dying. Fortunately it wasn't the system partition but my programs partition of non-essential apps. I bought a replacement drive today and proceeded to clone at least the readable partitions of the old disk to the new disk. Everything worked fine booting into the new drive. I began copying over files from the other partitions to the new drive. At some point I decided to delete the system partition from the old drive, which normally should not make a difference. However, disaster struck. It seemed to be tied to the new system for some reason (I had hidden the source partition with Norton gdisk, but the XP on the new drive unhid it. I used Disk Management to try and delete it. Big mistake. After rebooting I couldn't login to the new drive.) So, I'm restoring an image of my system from exactly 4 months ago. The only difference is an older Firefox, SP2 and perhaps some files I left on the c:\. I may be able to read back some of the files as I undeleted the deleted partition using a partition table editor. I'm not going to attempt to boot the undeleted partition. Hopefully after Ghosting I will be able to read it. :)

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Okay, I'm back to the state I was in before the troubles. It seems that after cloning the drive and leaving the old source drive in the system was only part of the problem. I overcame that for now by removing the replacement drive. I will re-clone it later and remove the source drive before I turn the system back on. As for the undeleted deleted partition, the Ghost 9.0 Recovery CD saved me. The Recovery CD incorporates PowerQuest's ptedit, partinfo, and a number of useful utilitiles including Ghost32 8.0 and Norton Disk Doctor! Using the partition editing app to verify my MBR I then decided to run Disk Doctor as a last resort because I just couldn't boot into XP even though the partition was readable. Well, after Disk Doctor went at it I rebooted and am back in business. Methinks the timing of my purchase was very fortuitous. B) But the bad drive is definitely bad and will need another diagnostic run before I ship it back. It's a Western Digital WD800JB Special Edition drive.

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Peachy, with all your Ghost 9 use in the last day, you're the forum expert on the ins and outs!I'm still using Ghost 2003. I did make an image of my desktop AFTER the new power supply was put in. I should have done it before but it actually forced me to do a clean install, something I was avoiding. In the process I got MSVM back and my camera software works again, LOL.

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