Ghosting your Hard Disc

Community Forums/General Help/Ghosting your Hard Disc

Ross C(Posted 2009) [#1]
I have had a thought after running into some trouble with windows and having to reinstall on another machine. Basically, create a clean install, patch up windows, install all your programs you need. Then ghost your Hard Disc. Then whenever you need to reinstall, just copy across the ghost copy, restoring everything, saving you the hassle of reinstalling all your programs (the ones you use all the time at least)

Would this work?


GfK(Posted 2009) [#2]
Yes. Acronis Trueimage is probably best.

I'd suggest Ghost, too, but Norton software is invariably crap.

I'm not aware of any free solutions.


RifRaf(Posted 2009) [#3]
yes, thats what I do, free solution outlined below.

I have a few ghost images of my PCs with all my installs compelted, windows favorites in place ect. I dont bother with Norton though I use the following ( only works for windows XP though )


This website has everything you need
http://www.runtime.org/peb.htm

You download the Windows BART PE, wich will take your windows xp cd or xp install media and then create a cut down version of XP that can boot and run from CD without installing XP to any writable media. (uses ram for all operations)

Before you have BART PE create the CD download all the plugins available for it and add them to the CD application list. (instructions on the site)
Most important plugin is the DriveImage plug, but you will need them all , as some let you browse USB drives, ect.

Now, you can use another program they have to make the ghost image and store it on usb media or external hd. The ghost program is called DRIVEIMAGE XLM , its a stand alone program for ghosting.

So, restore is simple. You boot with the CD you made, run the driveimage plugin and browse to your image file that you have on usb or external hard drive, and it will restore the HD pretty fast.. My 80gig drive restores in about 10 minutes.

Norton is cool too, but this software is free.
Heres a youtube video instruction as well. Again this only works for XP, not Vista.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0reKK2ASEaU
the video tutorial places the ghost image on a seperate partition of the same drive, I prefer a seperate media all together, such as usb stick or external drive. I also back up my images on CDs for archiving.


TaskMaster(Posted 2009) [#4]
Yep, that is a good solution. Many people do it. I do it at work. Not at home though, the software I use changes so often, that it really doesn't save me any time.


GfK(Posted 2009) [#5]
the video tutorial places the ghost image on a seperate partition of the same drive
Why would anybody waste their time doing a backup to the same drive? Isn't the whole point (or a major point) of doing this so that you avoid data loss through hardware failure?


gman(Posted 2009) [#6]
DriveImage XML is free and works well:

http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm


xlsior(Posted 2009) [#7]
I've used PING successfully (PartImage Is Not Ghost) -- free to use.

One catch with your original statement "reinstall on another machine".

This is something that has a real chance of giving you problems: Windows has a bunch of architecture-specific portions which do not transfer across different architectures. e.g. a ghosted image made on a pentium 4 will not work properly when restored to a core 2 duo PC, and AMD <-> Intel will also be problematic. On top of that Windows may deactivate itself if several hardware components change on it.

If you are looking at moving your images cross different computers with different architectures / hardware components, you'll probably need something like Acronis True Image which has the ability to do a platform neutral restore where the backup is generalized and has the ability to restore onto completely different hardware.
A straight bit-by-bit copy like most imaging software uses will often fail to restore a working copy of windows when you do the restore to non-identical hardware.


ragtag(Posted 2009) [#8]
Pretty much any linux live cd comes with the dd command. This command lets you copy a whole drive to a file and back. Boot from the live cd and run it to copy your drive. Combine it with netcat and you can even do it over your LAN. :) Just open the command line and type "man dd", then read the instructions for how to use it (note, it is possible to wipe your whole drive with it too...so you want to actually read the manual for this one).

Puppy Linux is a very nice live distro that once booted runs entirely from RAM.


Shambler(Posted 2009) [#9]
I used to work at an airport and we restored all of the touchscreens on the check-in desks from a norton ghost image...anything else would have been madness! ;)

Every time I build a new PC I think about doing this but never get around to it ^^

It is a good idea and will save you hours of messing around, so norton or acronis is the way to go.


Perturbatio(Posted 2009) [#10]
I've used PING to mirror drives for PC's at my work, and so far it's done it's job well, just read the instructions fully before using it!


Adam Novagen(Posted 2009) [#11]
Norton software is invariably crap.

Correction, to be fair: Norton software is excellent, but crap when it comes to resource sharing. XD


xlsior(Posted 2009) [#12]
Norton software is invariably crap.


Ghost was originally created by another company, and acquired by Symantec/Norton... The crappification process has been going full steam ahead in recent years, though.


Ross C(Posted 2009) [#13]
WHat i meant by reinstalling a different machine was, it got me thinking back to when i had to reinstall my own and install all the programs again. I usually always forget to note down my serial codes for application i buy via downloading.

Thanks for the options guys :o) Much appreciated.


xlsior(Posted 2009) [#14]
I usually always forget to note down my serial codes for application i buy via downloading.


Well... You'd still need to do that regardless, or you'd never be able to move from one computer to another one since there's a high likelyhood that your restore won't work on different hardware... Plus you'd need to do a fresh application install anyway if you want to switch operating systems in the process, or go from 32 to 64 bit.

One problem with images, is that in reality you won't create them very often -- you're bound to lose months of changes, if not more. What I've taken to doing:

1) I made an image after I installed the OS, downloaded all current patches, and installed my usual slew of applications.
2) burned the image to DVD, just in case
3) I keep a 'master' folder with installers of every single program that I run on my PC, including their serial numbers
4) Periodically I burn that master folder to DVD(s)

With that, I can do a fairly quick major disaster recovery (the initial HD image for my computer), and install the missing applications easily. Having a single resource for all the apps I use also beats trying to dig up who knows how many CD's if you do need to do a complete reinstall - it's all right there.

As with any system, the trick is to make sure you stay on top of it, though.


RifRaf(Posted 2009) [#15]
One problem with images, is that in reality you won't create them very often -- you're bound to lose months of changes, if not more



Yes, but the largest benefit, is not reinstalling windows and the other microsoft products, such as office ect, as well not having re uninstal things again that come with alot of out of box recovery CDs. Such as bloated virus and malware protection wich can hit your PC performance, rediculous add ons and so forth.

Before I ever ghost a drive I make sure to clean it first of all the unwanted bloatware ect, without a proper ghost, restoring from say a recovery cd, or windows XP CD. Then removing the unwanted, and instlaling the essentials can take hours, especially if you want to remove certain virus demo software that is noodled through the OS, but with a proper ghost image its done in 15 minutes tops.


Ross C(Posted 2009) [#16]
Hmm, i'm not really thinking of installing onto another machine :o) Just for restoring the orginal windows installation and programs when windows starts to bog down a bit. I am unsure about what you mean by serial numbers not working? Are some tied into your hardware (Hard disc, gfx card etc etc?)


Then removing the unwanted, and instlaling the essentials can take hours, especially if you want to remove certain virus demo software that is noodled through the OS, but with a proper ghost image its done in 15 minutes tops.



Thats exactly what i'm after. I don't really change my system too much. Maybe a new GFX card once every 2 years.


D4NM4N(Posted 2009) [#17]
With windows an image-restore only seems to work if the machine you are installing to has the same core hardware. (i think its to prevent piracy, but is a pain either way).
I think when windows is setting up it configures the install for what it needs and then dumps the rest. (I have a feeling this is one reason why XP is faster to boot than predecessors (like a steamroller is 'faster' than the asphalt laying machine :) -before this windows could be ghosted and then restored on any machine with a shed-load of "new hardware founds")

I dont know if there is some clever hacky way of getting it to reconfigure itself to the new stuff or not. (I have never tried this)


TaskMaster(Posted 2009) [#18]
It isn't to prevent piracy. The low level drivers for the drive controller and whatnot are loaded at bootup. if you do not have the hardware that those dirvers are for, you will get a blue screen crash.


D4NM4N(Posted 2009) [#19]
Ah, yes (kinda what i just said) but all previous versions of windows would adapt, if you put it in an entirely new machine you yould get "found new hardware" messages for about 20 minutes for everything from the system timer to the pci bridge. This was dropped with XP (not sure about 2K). I can think of only one reason myself (except speed, but then there's always safe mode which could do it as before, re-detecting everything if they wanted it to)


xlsior(Posted 2009) [#20]
If you intend to move from one PC to another one, the proper way of doing it is to run sysprep -- it restores windows to a hardware-neutral form which will re-detect the various hardware component instead of just assuming everything is OK.

(Note that sysprep is not included with windows, but can be downloaded from the MS website)


D4NM4N(Posted 2009) [#21]
I wonder why its not included :/


xlsior(Posted 2009) [#22]
I wonder why its not included :/


Most likely because they rather have that people just buy another copy of Windows -- but they can't do without altogether, since large corporations pretty much demand the ability to clone workstations in order to simplify a large roll-out.


D4NM4N(Posted 2009) [#23]
We have always used images, although the corps i have worked we always make an image for each machine type (of which they buy 100s at a time)

Handy to know that exists though. :) I shall add it to my 'bigbadboottoolscd'