C
Chief Suspect
Recently, in a.c.f we have been apprised of the new freeware
offering by D. Guibouret who maintains a site at
www.partition-saving.com.
For the interest of regular a.c.f. participants, I provide
herewith my own first-hand evaluation of this new program.
Having an advanced XP computer with lottsa stuff installed
on it, I was just about ready to make a Ghost image anyway.
BUT ... along came SAVEPART, a freeware entry into the arena
where Ghost, TerraByte, Drive Image, and others seemed in
control. I decided to make a dramatic, stringent test of
this new program, soooo .. after having made the set of images
needed, I then balded my C: drive right down to the slick,
mirrow surface using RM /SHRY *.*. (RM is industrial strength
delete ... CAUTION ... know what you are doing!!!)
My report is as follows:
1. It is DOS only. You will need a boot disk with SavePart on it.
But, it employs a text GUI that is nearly fool-proof. At least,
it worked the very first time for me. My C: drive was FAT-32
using Win XP-sp1, and it fitted on a 4 Meg partition of my
hard drive (4,12,12,and 12 Meg parts).
2. I used the GUI default to find and choose which partition
I wished to image, and also the destination partition where I
would store the image(s), and further.. to choose the size I
wished for each of the image parts. You see, 4 gigs will not
compress to just one CD, so I chose 650MB segments .. ending
up with 4 image parts, each easily burned onto a CD-R. There
are command line parameters to use in case the user wished to
do things entirely automatically .. but, for this test I
preferred to use the GUI. As a result, I had to name each
of the four image parts by hand; I chose .IMG, .001, .002, and
..003 for extensions. All this could have been done automatically
by use of command line parameters, but I still wanted to 'watch'
the process.
3. It takes longer than Ghost or TerraByte or Drive Image.
In fact, it took about 30 minutes of actual image-making time
for the size of my C: drive. This did not include the time
required to type in the name and extension needed for each
segment as it was called for. So far, so good.
4. After gaining the images, I decided to go "Whole Hog"
with my evaluation by actually balding my hard drive, not
merely overwriting with replacement of the image. I had chosen
maximum compression, too; the author specified GZ algorithms
were used.
5. The repainting of the image(s) back onto the hard drive
partition were a sort of reverse process; the program calling
for each of the image segments as needed. Just a matter of
highlighting the next image, and hitting ENTER. Caution:
make notes of where you are, because there is no on-screen
record of which segment was just completed, and which is next
due. There is the highlight cursor bar, of course, which
normally would be sufficient hint ... but, then someone like
me might forget .. was the highlighted segment just completed?
Or, is that the next one due? I just made a pencil/pad
notations to be absolutely certain.
6. Repainting the image(s) took the same amount of time.
BUT ... upon reboot, and with my fingers crossed, the
computer booted up as normally as could be. A complete
success!!
7. At this point, I am now TOTALLY operating on freeware.
(except for WinXP). Ghost is no longer used.
offering by D. Guibouret who maintains a site at
www.partition-saving.com.
For the interest of regular a.c.f. participants, I provide
herewith my own first-hand evaluation of this new program.
Having an advanced XP computer with lottsa stuff installed
on it, I was just about ready to make a Ghost image anyway.
BUT ... along came SAVEPART, a freeware entry into the arena
where Ghost, TerraByte, Drive Image, and others seemed in
control. I decided to make a dramatic, stringent test of
this new program, soooo .. after having made the set of images
needed, I then balded my C: drive right down to the slick,
mirrow surface using RM /SHRY *.*. (RM is industrial strength
delete ... CAUTION ... know what you are doing!!!)
My report is as follows:
1. It is DOS only. You will need a boot disk with SavePart on it.
But, it employs a text GUI that is nearly fool-proof. At least,
it worked the very first time for me. My C: drive was FAT-32
using Win XP-sp1, and it fitted on a 4 Meg partition of my
hard drive (4,12,12,and 12 Meg parts).
2. I used the GUI default to find and choose which partition
I wished to image, and also the destination partition where I
would store the image(s), and further.. to choose the size I
wished for each of the image parts. You see, 4 gigs will not
compress to just one CD, so I chose 650MB segments .. ending
up with 4 image parts, each easily burned onto a CD-R. There
are command line parameters to use in case the user wished to
do things entirely automatically .. but, for this test I
preferred to use the GUI. As a result, I had to name each
of the four image parts by hand; I chose .IMG, .001, .002, and
..003 for extensions. All this could have been done automatically
by use of command line parameters, but I still wanted to 'watch'
the process.
3. It takes longer than Ghost or TerraByte or Drive Image.
In fact, it took about 30 minutes of actual image-making time
for the size of my C: drive. This did not include the time
required to type in the name and extension needed for each
segment as it was called for. So far, so good.
4. After gaining the images, I decided to go "Whole Hog"
with my evaluation by actually balding my hard drive, not
merely overwriting with replacement of the image. I had chosen
maximum compression, too; the author specified GZ algorithms
were used.
5. The repainting of the image(s) back onto the hard drive
partition were a sort of reverse process; the program calling
for each of the image segments as needed. Just a matter of
highlighting the next image, and hitting ENTER. Caution:
make notes of where you are, because there is no on-screen
record of which segment was just completed, and which is next
due. There is the highlight cursor bar, of course, which
normally would be sufficient hint ... but, then someone like
me might forget .. was the highlighted segment just completed?
Or, is that the next one due? I just made a pencil/pad
notations to be absolutely certain.
6. Repainting the image(s) took the same amount of time.
BUT ... upon reboot, and with my fingers crossed, the
computer booted up as normally as could be. A complete
success!!
7. At this point, I am now TOTALLY operating on freeware.
(except for WinXP). Ghost is no longer used.
. See website for his