Best way to image active system partitions

To my knowldege, there are still 3 major players in drive imaging:
Drive Image, Ghost and Acronis. Since the first two seem to be
in a state of flux, I thought Acronis would be the best bet.
Their simple, directl layouts general present things in a
way that can be understood in the context of the operation.

As a software engineer, you'd think I'd be able to understand
the logic and choices in all three of the programs but that is
not correct.

Sometimes confusion arises in clonig a smaller partition to a larger
one. (Decisions: Fill out the partitiion w 0's? Shorten the
partititon?).

My problem is the often the less practical path is taken, probably
by one of the engineers who knows his own program to well.

What's the general difference between Acronis' Imager,
Drive Image, and Ghost these days?

-------

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.

_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

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.

To my knowldege, there are still 3 major players in drive imaging:
Drive Image, Ghost and Acronis. Since the first two seem to be
in a state of flux, I thought Acronis would be the best bet.

No more PowerQuest. PowerQuest was acquired by Symantec, and now PQ's v2i
Protector is rebranded as Norton Ghost 9.

Look at their driver filenames and version info stamps on them.

--
Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation

http://www.storagecraft.com

In article ,
Maxim S. Shatskih wrote:
To my knowldege, there are still 3 major players in drive imaging:
Drive Image, Ghost and Acronis. Since the first two seem to be
in a state of flux, I thought Acronis would be the best bet.

No more PowerQuest. PowerQuest was acquired by Symantec, and now PQ's v2i
Protector is rebranded as Norton Ghost 9.

Look at their driver filenames and version info stamps on them.

--
Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation

http://www.storagecraft.com




BootitNG (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/) is well reguarded.

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

Don't blame me. I voted for Gore.

_R wrote in message
...

To my knowldege, there are still 3 major players
in drive imaging: Drive Image, Ghost and Acronis.

Nope, DI has been renamed as the latest Ghost 9.

Since the first two seem to be in a state of
flux, I thought Acronis would be the best bet.

They do have some advantages, but they arent perfect,
largely because its a linux based system for the rescue CD
and that has some real downsides with bleeding edge hardware.

Their simple, directl layouts general present things in a
way that can be understood in the context of the operation.

Yeah, tho like with lots of things, they still have some way to go.

One example with TI 8 is the 2 choices you get with a new hard drive
being added to an existing system. The difference between adding
a new hard drive and cloning a hard drive is obvious once you know
what they mean, but the text isnt good enough if you dont IMO.

And it doesnt make it clear enough that its not desirable
to clone the system drive at the XP level and that that
should be done from the booted CD either.

As a software engineer, you'd think I'd be able to understand the
logic and choices in all three of the programs but that is not correct.

True. Still got some way to go even with TI which
in my opinion is currently the best in that regard.

Sometimes confusion arises in clonig a smaller partition to a larger
one. (Decisions: Fill out the partitiion w 0's? Shorten the partititon?).

That is reasonably well covered in the
manual, and not too bad on the screen either.

My problem is the often the less practical path is taken, probably
by one of the engineers who knows his own program to well.

Yeah, not enough effort put into watching users use the software
and see what causes confusion for them in my opinion.

What's the general difference between Acronis'
Imager, Drive Image, and Ghost these days?

DI is gone now except that its still buyable.

Ghost 9 has some real problems, particularly for cloning system
drives. You cant do that from the booted CD and thats the only
really viable way to do that particular task. You cant even image
a system from the booted CD, you have to install Ghost before
you can image anything. That stinks if you want to make a
safety image of a system before doing any work on it.

TI isnt perfect, Acronis has a hell of a capacity for fixing
a problem that a user reports and then breaking that again
in the next release. Thats evidence that they havent got their
act into gear on the software side with that sort of thing.

And there is a worrying level of flakeyness with TI too.

Not that Ghost is much better there, it failed to
clone my system drive properly and TI did that fine.

To my knowldege, there are still 3 major players
in drive imaging: Drive Image, Ghost and Acronis.

Nope, DI has been renamed as the latest Ghost 9.

But currently there is also Ghost 8.2.


Since the first two seem to be in a state of
flux, I thought Acronis would be the best bet.

They do have some advantages, but they arent perfect,
largely because its a linux based system for the rescue CD
and that has some real downsides with bleeding edge hardware.

Their simple, directl layouts general present things in a
way that can be understood in the context of the operation.

Yeah, tho like with lots of things, they still have some way to go.

One example with TI 8 is the 2 choices you get with a new hard drive
being added to an existing system. The difference between adding
a new hard drive and cloning a hard drive is obvious once you know
what they mean, but the text isnt good enough if you dont IMO.

And it doesnt make it clear enough that its not desirable
to clone the system drive at the XP level and that that
should be done from the booted CD either.

As a software engineer, you'd think I'd be able to understand the
logic and choices in all three of the programs but that is not correct.

True. Still got some way to go even with TI which
in my opinion is currently the best in that regard.

Sometimes confusion arises in clonig a smaller partition to a larger
one. (Decisions: Fill out the partitiion w 0's? Shorten the
partititon?).

That is reasonably well covered in the
manual, and not too bad on the screen either.

My problem is the often the less practical path is taken, probably
by one of the engineers who knows his own program to well.

Yeah, not enough effort put into watching users use the software
and see what causes confusion for them in my opinion.

What's the general difference between Acronis'
Imager, Drive Image, and Ghost these days?

DI is gone now except that its still buyable.

Ghost 9 has some real problems, particularly for cloning system
drives. You cant do that from the booted CD and thats the only
really viable way to do that particular task. You cant even image
a system from the booted CD, you have to install Ghost before
you can image anything. That stinks if you want to make a
safety image of a system before doing any work on it.

It works fine with Ghost 8.2.


TI isnt perfect, Acronis has a hell of a capacity for fixing
a problem that a user reports and then breaking that again
in the next release. Thats evidence that they havent got their
act into gear on the software side with that sort of thing.

And there is a worrying level of flakeyness with TI too.

Not that Ghost is much better there, it failed to
clone my system drive properly and TI did that fine.

On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 03:19:37 -0400, _R wrote:

What's the general difference between Acronis' Imager,
Drive Image, and Ghost these days?

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.

I have tried all of them and I tried Acronis last. Of all three of them Ghost
was the most convoluted to install and to configure. I am sure there are a lot
of people who love Ghost but as I was doing my research, I liked it the least.
What really turned me off where the confusing options for creating a boot cd. I
still scratch my head as I think of it.

Vi Protector and Acronis were about the same in my humble opinion as far
functionality and ease of use. One negative I found between the two which
caused me to pick Acronis was that Vi Protector needed .NET installed on my
server or it wouldn't install. That really torked me plus the security guys
were asking me.......... "What!!.. you wanna install .NET on all our 500
production servers!!" As you can imagine, that went over like a lead balloon.

I love Acronis. I have recovered multiple servers and laptops. One particular
thing to note is that our note book HDs at work are encrypted with PointSec.
One of the guys laptop HDs was going bad and I was able to do an image of it
before we replaced the drive. When I did the image, I used the bit-by-bit image
of the HD due to the encryption. We were very surprise that the image restore
worked prefectly. I mean everything. All the word docs, registery settings,
the works, even the screen saver!

Anyway, that's my story and experience and I'm stickin to it!!

Maxim S. Shatskih wrote:

To my knowldege, there are still 3 major players in drive imaging:
Drive Image, Ghost and Acronis. Since the first two seem to be
in a state of flux, I thought Acronis would be the best bet.

No more PowerQuest. PowerQuest was acquired by Symantec, and now PQ's v2i
Protector is rebranded as Norton Ghost 9.

Actually, that's Drive Image 7. v2i Protector is now "Livestate Recovery.

Look at their driver filenames and version info stamps on them.

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

Peter wrote in message
...

To my knowldege, there are still 3 major players
in drive imaging: Drive Image, Ghost and Acronis.

Nope, DI has been renamed as the latest Ghost 9.

But currently there is also Ghost 8.2.

Yeah, but it isnt the home user app and has a price to match.

Since the first two seem to be in a state of
flux, I thought Acronis would be the best bet.

They do have some advantages, but they arent perfect,
largely because its a linux based system for the rescue CD
and that has some real downsides with bleeding edge hardware.

Their simple, directl layouts general present things in a
way that can be understood in the context of the operation.

Yeah, tho like with lots of things, they still have some way to go.

One example with TI 8 is the 2 choices you get with a new hard drive
being added to an existing system. The difference between adding
a new hard drive and cloning a hard drive is obvious once you know
what they mean, but the text isnt good enough if you dont IMO.

And it doesnt make it clear enough that its not desirable
to clone the system drive at the XP level and that that
should be done from the booted CD either.

As a software engineer, you'd think I'd be able to understand the
logic and choices in all three of the programs but that is not correct.

True. Still got some way to go even with TI which
in my opinion is currently the best in that regard.

Sometimes confusion arises in clonig a smaller partition to a larger
one. (Decisions: Fill out the partitiion w 0's? Shorten the partititon?).

That is reasonably well covered in the
manual, and not too bad on the screen either.

My problem is the often the less practical path is taken, probably
by one of the engineers who knows his own program to well.

Yeah, not enough effort put into watching users use the software
and see what causes confusion for them in my opinion.

What's the general difference between Acronis'
Imager, Drive Image, and Ghost these days?

DI is gone now except that its still buyable.

Ghost 9 has some real problems, particularly for cloning system
drives. You cant do that from the booted CD and thats the only
really viable way to do that particular task. You cant even image
a system from the booted CD, you have to install Ghost before
you can image anything. That stinks if you want to make a
safety image of a system before doing any work on it.

It works fine with Ghost 8.2.

Yeah, but see above on price. And symantec has
a mindless ripoff on the use on multiple systems too.

TI isnt perfect, Acronis has a hell of a capacity for fixing
a problem that a user reports and then breaking that again
in the next release. Thats evidence that they havent got their
act into gear on the software side with that sort of thing.

And there is a worrying level of flakeyness with TI too.

Not that Ghost is much better there, it failed to
clone my system drive properly and TI did that fine.