Recovery CD

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sarah Tanembaum
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Sarah Tanembaum

Hi, how do one create a recovery cd? I have a set of recovery cds from Sony,
but then I installed some software. Now, how do I take a snapshot of my boot
disk on drive C: into a set of CDs.
Does Microsoft has that utilities? Thanks and much appreciated.
 
Sarah said:
Hi, how do one create a recovery cd? I have a set of recovery cds from Sony,
but then I installed some software. Now, how do I take a snapshot of my boot
disk on drive C: into a set of CDs.
Does Microsoft has that utilities? Thanks and much appreciated.
Click to expand...

You can't really create a recovery CD like that. It has special
software routines to do the work. But you can do something very
similar. Use a drive imaging program which makes a compressed image of
your drives. This can be stored on a secondary drive (not so good idea
in case something zaps the whole computer), burned to DVD, or stored on
an external hard drive. Some program choices are Symantec's Drive
Image, Norton Ghost, BootIt NG, and Acronis True Image.
 
Rock said:
Sarah Tanembaum wrote:

...This can be stored on a secondary drive (not so good idea
in case something zaps the whole computer)...
Click to expand...

Safer if you use an external hard drive connected to a USB port (preferably
USB 2) or one of those drive bay adaptors that allow you to swap hard
drives. Then you can detach the backup to keep it out of harms way. Make
sure you boot off a CD if you suspect any problems similar to a virus or
trojan.
 
It is not really possible to create an image of a modern PC on one CD,
because a CD is simply too small, and XP+prgrams are too big. What you
probably have is a bootable CD that works in conjunction with an image of
the original C:\ partition that is "hidden" on your hard drive. I found one
of these images on a Dell the other day, and undersand that they are fairly
common. Any software that can access a disk at a lower level than windows
can probably see the hidden partition. This would include Norton GHOST ruin
form a floppy, Acronis TrueImage run from a bootable CD, Partition Magic run
in windows, etc.

As for making an image, that is a very good idea. I have done this for
years and these images have saved me from several disasters, mostly bad
installs, of which about half were Microsoft Windows Updates. I use both
GHOST and TrueImage. GHOST is ultimately more powerful, but TrueImage is
easier to use and has better support for external USB and firewire disks.
My typical disk image is 2.5 Gig, and that is using compression. Both
programs allow the user to specify that the image be broken into pieces,
such as 650 Meg, for ventual writing to set of CDs. I avoid direct CD
writing, since it is much slower than disk-to-disk writing, and less
reliable. Sometimes, after I make a set of disk images, I do copy them to
CD, one by one, and I always verify that the CD file matches the disk file.
(Easy CD Creator does this automatically.) More recently I have been
copying images to DVD, sinc ethat is faster, and one DVD can hold the whole
image. However, not all backup programs can restore directly from a DVD.
 
Sarah said:
You can't really create a recovery CD like that. It has special
software routines to do the work. But you can do something very
similar. Use a drive imaging program which makes a compressed image of
your drives. This can be stored on a secondary drive (not so good idea
in case something zaps the whole computer), burned to DVD, or stored on
an external hard drive. Some program choices are Symantec's Drive
Image, Norton Ghost, BootIt NG, and Acronis True Image.
Click to expand...

Here's the URL for BootItNG http://www.bootitng.com/

I bought/use their Dos program... fits on one boot disk and writes an
image of my hard drive to DVD-R... I create an image once a month

John Thomas Smith
http://www.direct2usales.com
http://www.pacifier.com/~jtsmith
 
Hi,
Just to let you know there can be problems with system
imaging software.
I have a copy of Drive Image 2002. I also have 2 hard
drives and want to store an image of drive 1 onto drive 2
so that if drive 1 fails, it is possible to boot from
drive 2. This is ok in principle except you may need to
have a multi-boot facility to do this (e.g. partition
Magic). The problem is testing such a system. You need to
enable different partitions to boot. If drive 1 fails you
may need to boot from the XP cd.
Question: If you want to test booting from an XP cd, will
it overwrite parts of your healthy boot configuration on
your drive?

2nd query to John Thomas Smith
Any more info on your BootIt NG. How many cds/dvds does it
need in your case?

Thanks
Fraser Michaelson
 
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