Best way to image active system partitions

Al Dykes wrote:

In article ,
Bill Todd wrote:
_R wrote:

...

I'm particularly interested in how you clone the C drive to
another drive letter (calll it J). Then remove the C drive
make J the new C so it can be booted. This sounds
easy but it's not.

While I can't answer the questions that you asked, I'll observe that
everything you described is a snap if you use, say, Partition Magic.

- bill


Many tools can make an image of your running system. I use Acronis
TrueImage.

ntbackup.exe (which is part of XP) can do a complete valid backup but
it's not an image and is a bit of a PITA if you need to do a full
system recovery.

BartPE is a big help here. Boot up the CD, start Windows backup

If you are running an application that's updating files while you are
backup up you have a problem. Outlook/OE is a common example. You
should exit your mail application during th ebackup.

While I agree that it's a good idea to close applications that keep files
open, with 2K3 and I believe XP as well Microsoft has recognized this and
included a shadow-copy feature in the OS which with a backup application
that supports the capability allows even open files to be backed
up--Windows backup supports this, so do DriveImage 7, Ghost 9, v2i, and
LiveState Recovery. Acronis does _not_ seem to support it--the feature in
Windows is called "Shadow copy" and a search of the Acronis site on keyword
"shadow" does not get any hits--if they supported this capability I would
expect them to at least mention it.



--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

In article ,
neon ** wrote:
(Al Dykes) wrote:

In article ,
Bill Todd wrote:
_R wrote:

...

I'm particularly interested in how you clone the C drive to
another drive letter (calll it J). Then remove the C drive
make J the new C so it can be booted. This sounds
easy but it's not.

While I can't answer the questions that you asked, I'll observe that
everything you described is a snap if you use, say, Partition Magic.

- bill


Many tools can make an image of your running system. I use Acronis
TrueImage.

hi al
are u acronis literate? cause i sure need help. see my post above
pleading for help so that i can patch an acronis burp. and now it
can't even see the drive !!!
no - not the dreaded "start from scratch" when i was trying to prevent
an outage!
as the poster says - not easy


I don't do cloning.

I've never done what you are trying.

If you've got the use of a PC with lots of disk space and an ethernet
connection running windows and NTFS file system you can use it
as backup device with TI.

You need to get your machine and the backup machine working on you LAN.

Then boot the TI CD, image the C drive to the server, swap
disks and image back. That's how I'd do it.

You need to describe your hookup. Are you cloning
disks on IDE channels in the box?


--
a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m

Don't blame me. I voted for Gore.

Using older Outlook 2K. This has an update for autosaving the pst to your
location choice upon exiting from Outlook. Imagine the new versions do
also.
"Al Dykes" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Bill Todd wrote:
_R wrote:

...

I'm particularly interested in how you clone the C drive to
another drive letter (calll it J). Then remove the C drive
make J the new C so it can be booted. This sounds
easy but it's not.

While I can't answer the questions that you asked, I'll observe that
everything you described is a snap if you use, say, Partition Magic.

- bill


Many tools can make an image of your running system. I use Acronis
TrueImage.

ntbackup.exe (which is part of XP) can do a complete valid backup but
it's not an image and is a bit of a PITA if you need to do a full
system recovery.

If you are running an application that's updating files while you are
backup up you have a problem. Outlook/OE is a common example. You
should exit your mail application during th ebackup.


--
a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m

Don't blame me. I voted for Gore.

Lo m8,
See now one seems to have helped u yet .
Not sure that i can , but , try this.
Get a copy of laplink 3. If u cant email me and ill send u a copy.
Its an old dos version . And to do wat u want t do its the only way.
You then have to start ur comp in Dos. WITHOUT WINDOWS RUNNING.
Then usin ll3 tag all files on system drive and copy all onto ur
other.E,J, watever.
I cant promise it will work If ur runnin XP as iv not tried it YET.
Wish u luck.
Rgrds Steve ( turk2045 )