Image for Home

[EduTech]

Evening,

 

Bit of a noob question, but i dont know how to go about it for home.

 

In a working enviroment where you can pay for a system/software to create images for machines no problem

 

but where do i stand at home?

 

Is there anyway i can make an Image/Recovery CD for my home machines, i use allot of software on my machine at home and when i have to format it it takes hours to get it back to how it should be.

 

Is there any opensource/free software that will allow me to create an image that i can put onto a dvd or 2 or 3 so i dont have to start from scratch everytime?

 

I do have a server, so would RIS be an option?

 

Cheers,

 

James.

[Edu-IT]

You can pick up Norton Ghost for a reasonable price on eBay.

[Dos_Box]

I use Acronis True Imgage Home. Works a treat too and from an external USB HD.

 

Acronis True Image 2009 Home

 

Well worth the money, easy to use and comes with pretty good secure disk wiping software on the boot disk

[somabc]

DriveImage XML Backup Software

 

Clonezilla

 

Main Page - Partimage

[tech_guy]

i use driveimage xml and bart pe.

[NeoPlosive]

I use Acronis True Imgage Home. Works a treat too and from an external USB HD.

 

Acronis True Image 2009 Home

 

Well worth the money, easy to use and comes with pretty good secure disk wiping software on the boot disk

 

Looks good!

 

Think I'm going to take a look at this one.

[EduTech]

Cheers guys,

 

I had looked at Acronis, if the god says its worth the money then i might invest in it

[dhicks]

Is there any opensource/free software that will allow me to create an image that i can put onto a dvd or 2 or 3 so i dont have to start from scratch everytime?

 

I use the free and open source SystemRescueCD (which I use at work, too). If I'm setting up a laptop or PC for someone these days I now partition their harddrive up so they have a main Windows partition and a partition with SystemRescueCD on, which allows you to script partimage or DD to do drive images. I've set up a small menu system to let people just choose quick options to save/restore images. If they have a decent sized harddrive it's generally a good idea to give them a backup partition large enough to take several disk images so they have several restore options. Partimage will generally squish up a standard Windows XP install with no software installed into under 4GB of disk space, so one image should easily fit on to a single DVD.

 

--

David Hicks

[dalsoth]

Clonezilla, open source, ugly, but effective. Used many versions of ghost and acronis with issues on one thing or another. Clonezilla just works.

 

Tutorial on clonezilla here but to be honest it looks confusing but is pretty straight forward. Just accept all the defaults, choose what you want to backup or restore and then point where from or to. Thats it.

[Crispin]

probably no help to you, but I got an eval version of server 08 put it on a box and use WDS.

 

Good thing is you can rearm server 08 a few times and extend the evaluation period.

 

My NM said Ramesys do good deals on licensing for server 08, he said around £60 if I remember correctly. Not bad!

 

Everyone should have a home server imo. I have IIS for web files, FTP, remote access, printer sharing, raided network drives, imaging, its great.

 

Not a cheap option though of course.

 

As others have said I use Acronis, but the enterprise edition. I don't use it for imaging although it does a good job at that. I use it primarily for remote backups which it does really well in a server/client environment. Completely silent aswell. Backs up my home folders on my gaming machine, my downstairs media PC etc. Well worth it.

 

I use Acronis True Imgage Home.

 

They were giving away this software at BETT, perhaps someone has a spare?

Edited January 31, 2009 by Crispin

[muppet]

Another vote here for Drive Image XML and Bart PE. I also use the Swiss Army Knife plug in for Bart PE to format and partition the drive as required.

All very simple to use and very effective. I know that there is other stuff out there that is also very good, the best advice I can give is to try each one and decide which you prefer - horses for courses and all that.

[john]

I use Acronis True Imgage Home. Works a treat too and from an external USB HD.

 

Acronis True Image 2009 Home

 

Well worth the money, easy to use and comes with pretty good secure disk wiping software on the boot disk

A vote for this as well, next time i re-do my home PC I will be using my copy I got free from the Acronis stand at BETT One of my best BETT Freebies from this year

[kmount]

I got a free copy of Acronis on computer active some time ago and it's useful for this kind of thing as others have said.