Image Files??????

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jess Fertudei
  • Start date Start date
J

Jess Fertudei

I have a 40G Maxtor with 4 partitions... One Win98SE, One XP Home, One large
data, One small data.


It has become painfully obvious to me that I need to find one of those free
or low cost utilities and make an image file before I lose the whole
ball'o'wax like I almost did last week.

Ideally, I would get another 40G or larger and just make a copy, I realize,
however I'm short on cash but long on 1.5G, 2G and 5G drives.

Can I get a good quality image on a small drive? I need to worry about
dependability first, though... and I would want to write a new image every
week or three. If I must plunk the change down, then I will, but I need a
new board and printer too and would have to give up on one of those to do
it.

Am I best to make one image of the whole thing, or four separate ones and
keep updating the two that change constantly (the two largest ones)?

Since I am going to replace this (these) frequently, I would think that I
need a utility that works under Windows when writing the file and can do so
in a short time frame... but I'm pulling that thought outta my arse and
don't know if it's true or not.


Major loss if this went down, so I would appreciate any thoughts I can get!
 
I would install one of your "spare" HDD, the bigger the better and
image/backup to that. However, whether a 5GB drive is big enough to
store the image obviously depends upon how much data you have.

You don't "need" to image/backup programs for which you have the disks
as you can always reload them if you have a disaster. What you do
need to image/backup is all the stuff you could not restore in the
event of a loss. If you have the space then image the lot for
convenience.

Having said that there are several good imaging/backup programs
around. True Image allows incremental images as do all backup
programs. Everyone has their favorites and will assure they are the
"best" but really there is nothing significant to choose between any
in my opinion. It is probable that True Image and Drive Image are the
most popular imaging programs.

Having said that, have you looked at tghe backup program that is
included with WINXP? It is free. I have not used it but many do and
I believe it will suit your purpose.

Remember you need to save the image/backup to a separate drive or
partition. You can't backup or image to the same partition.
 
Edward W. Thompson said:
I would install one of your "spare" HDD, the bigger the better and
image/backup to that. However, whether a 5GB drive is big enough to
store the image obviously depends upon how much data you have.

You don't "need" to image/backup programs for which you have the disks
as you can always reload them if you have a disaster. What you do
need to image/backup is all the stuff you could not restore in the
event of a loss. If you have the space then image the lot for
convenience.

Having said that there are several good imaging/backup programs
around. True Image allows incremental images as do all backup
programs. Everyone has their favorites and will assure they are the
"best" but really there is nothing significant to choose between any
in my opinion. It is probable that True Image and Drive Image are the
most popular imaging programs.

Having said that, have you looked at tghe backup program that is
included with WINXP? It is free. I have not used it but many do and
I believe it will suit your purpose.

Remember you need to save the image/backup to a separate drive or
partition. You can't backup or image to the same partition.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the reply.

I need to make copies that can give me quick bootable restores. Disks or
not, there is sooooo much stuff installed on this machine now, it would take
days and days of free time to load it all. I use graphics programs and have
a gazillion plug-ins alone.

My 98 partition is using about 4G, my XP partition is using about 12G, the
photo storage on this drive is using about 10G (growing fast, but I'll pull
some of those to another drive from time to time), and the fourth partition
uses only 1G.

What I need most is to make a complete bootable restoration from the
image... and the ability to update that image regularly. I would think it
easiest to do this as one large image??? Would four separate be better
(would have to have an OS to run Partition Magic from or use FDISK, so this
would not seem desirable, unless it's got some other advantage)?

Can I make an image of this type (bootable) from XP Home?


Thanks again.
 
Jess said:
I have a 40G Maxtor with 4 partitions... One Win98SE, One XP Home, One large
data, One small data.


It has become painfully obvious to me that I need to find one of those free
or low cost utilities and make an image file before I lose the whole
ball'o'wax like I almost did last week.

Ideally, I would get another 40G or larger and just make a copy, I realize,
however I'm short on cash but long on 1.5G, 2G and 5G drives.

Can I get a good quality image on a small drive? I need to worry about
dependability first, though... and I would want to write a new image every
week or three. If I must plunk the change down, then I will, but I need a
new board and printer too and would have to give up on one of those to do
it.

Am I best to make one image of the whole thing, or four separate ones and
keep updating the two that change constantly (the two largest ones)?

Since I am going to replace this (these) frequently, I would think that I
need a utility that works under Windows when writing the file and can do so
in a short time frame... but I'm pulling that thought outta my arse and
don't know if it's true or not.


Major loss if this went down, so I would appreciate any thoughts I can get!
Click to expand...
With your lack of funds to buy a HD large enough to clone your current
drive to being duly noted: It only takes one such occurrence to make
you wish you had cloned the drive after having a crash. This is
particularly true of XP. Good luck.
 
With your lack of funds to buy a HD large enough to clone your current
drive to being duly noted: It only takes one such occurrence to make
you wish you had cloned the drive after having a crash. This is
particularly true of XP. Good luck.
Click to expand...
$.50 a GB these days...geez.
 
Jess Fertudei said:
I have a 40G Maxtor with 4 partitions... One Win98SE, One XP Home, One large
data, One small data.


It has become painfully obvious to me that I need to find one of those free
or low cost utilities and make an image file before I lose the whole
ball'o'wax like I almost did last week.

Ideally, I would get another 40G or larger and just make a copy, I realize,
however I'm short on cash but long on 1.5G, 2G and 5G drives.

Can I get a good quality image on a small drive? I need to worry about
dependability first, though... and I would want to write a new image every
week or three. If I must plunk the change down, then I will, but I need a
new board and printer too and would have to give up on one of those to do
Click to expand...

From all your posts it seems that you really need to get another hard drive
and put it in a removable tray. Then use the backup utility that the drive
maker has for free such as Maxtor's Maxiblast (free from their web site) .
Then backup your data files to a cd-rom disc.
YOu may want to look at a free utility called XXCOPY. Notice the two Xs in
the name.
 
Jess Fertudei said:
I have a 40G Maxtor with 4 partitions... One Win98SE, One XP Home, One large
data, One small data.


It has become painfully obvious to me that I need to find one of those free
or low cost utilities and make an image file before I lose the whole
ball'o'wax like I almost did last week.

Ideally, I would get another 40G or larger and just make a copy, I realize,
however I'm short on cash but long on 1.5G, 2G and 5G drives.

Can I get a good quality image on a small drive? I need to worry about
dependability first, though... and I would want to write a new image every
week or three. If I must plunk the change down, then I will, but I need a
new board and printer too and would have to give up on one of those to do
it.

Am I best to make one image of the whole thing, or four separate ones and
keep updating the two that change constantly (the two largest ones)?

Since I am going to replace this (these) frequently, I would think that I
need a utility that works under Windows when writing the file and can do so
in a short time frame... but I'm pulling that thought outta my arse and
don't know if it's true or not.


Major loss if this went down, so I would appreciate any thoughts I can get!
Click to expand...
Backing up is better than not backing up. The problem I have with only
having one back up on another hard drive is, what happens if you have a
power failure or other problem while your backing up. You could lose both
drives.

Many years ago when I bought my first scanner I also bought a "screaming" 4X
cd-r drive. No way I was going to lose the images and all the time it took
to scan them. I still have the original backup cd and all the generations
since. Just yesterday I finished copying them to a DVD-r disk. When I get 2
or 3 geneations of DVDs I may toss the CDs. Of course now I'm also backing
up digital camera pictures and video from the All in Wonder and a Mini DV
camera.

4x DVD drives are amazingly cheap now and disks are under a $1.

I've done sytem backups too but usually when its time use them its time to
clean house and change things anyway. YMMV.

Something to think about anyway.
 
From all your posts it seems that you really need to get another hard drive
and put it in a removable tray. Then use the backup utility that the drive
maker has for free such as Maxtor's Maxiblast (free from their web site) .
Then backup your data files to a cd-rom disc.
YOu may want to look at a free utility called XXCOPY. Notice the two Xs in
the name.
Click to expand...
Xxcopy has warnings that it won't create a bootable 2k/XP clone drive.
What util would you suggest for making a bootable clone of 2K pro?
I also shy away from Maxiblast as it claims to be specific to IDE drives
which I don't run.
~~~~~~
Bait for spammers:
root@localhost
postmaster@localhost
admin@localhost
abuse@localhost
postmaster@[127.0.0.1]
(e-mail address removed)
~~~~~~
Remove "spamless" to email me.
 
Backing up is better than not backing up. The problem I have with only
having one back up on another hard drive is, what happens if you have a
power failure or other problem while your backing up. You could lose both
drives.

Many years ago when I bought my first scanner I also bought a "screaming" 4X
cd-r drive. No way I was going to lose the images and all the time it took
to scan them. I still have the original backup cd and all the generations
since. Just yesterday I finished copying them to a DVD-r disk. When I get 2
or 3 geneations of DVDs I may toss the CDs. Of course now I'm also backing
up digital camera pictures and video from the All in Wonder and a Mini DV
camera.
Click to expand...


You are right on with this advice. I have a hard drive in a removable tray
that I copy to about once a month. Mainly just to keep up with all the
updates to windows and a few programs I may add. This will get me up and
going right away if I really need it. If I can wait tuil I can install a new
hard drive, it will take an hour or so to do a backup.

All the data I have is copied to a set of CD-roms. With the free after
rebate deals they cost almost nothing. As soon as I download some pix off
the digital cam or have any large ammount of time or data invested in new
files they will go on a cd-rom also. Even some files I download off the
internet will go on the cd-rom. Hard to locate them when needed. Usually
that gives me a bunch of backups for the data over a years period of time.

I was taught a lesson by another about 25 years ago about the computers.
They will crash and you will loose your data. Fellow was telling about
trying to get his boss to spend some money on backups. When the data
crashed it took several people hired part time about 2 weeks to key that
data back in.. He spent about $ 2000 because he wanted to save about $
20. This was not counting the down time and other problems.
 
Ralph Mowery said:
snip>

I was taught a lesson by another about 25 years ago about the computers.
They will crash and you will loose your data. Fellow was telling about
trying to get his boss to spend some money on backups. When the data
crashed it took several people hired part time about 2 weeks to key that
data back in.. He spent about $ 2000 because he wanted to save about $
20. This was not counting the down time and other problems.
Click to expand...
Like the saying goes, a god education is expensive. :^)
 
Back
Top