Drive Image by Powerquest

Hello,
I would really like to learn the best ways to use Drive Image. I keep hearing of others recovering from major corruption by "Ghosting" the drive. I assume that these people might be also talking about Symantec Ghost software as well. Are Drive Image and Ghost the same type of apps?

I have a version that will work with my Windows XP Pro. But I would like some suggestions from other users on the best way to use it. I am tired of having to do complete reinstalls.

Grant

I've used both and driveimage in my opinion wins out. Once it's installed you can run it from your desktop to choose a partition or disk to image and then choose a partition or set of cd's to store it on. Click a button to make image and here's what happens:
1)computer logs you off and shuts down
2)boots into driveimage program and copies image (if on cd's you'll be prompted to keep puttin em in till it's complete)
3)checks the image for errors
4)auto reboots back to XP login screen

That's how you make an image. It's all pretty much automated. To restore after a bad corruption or something:
1) boot computer with floppy 1 in place
2) insert floppy2 and it will continue booting to the DriveImage interface with mouse support.
3) select your backup image from its location
4) select destination partition to overwrite and that's it

DriveImage will overwrite the partition with the backup (usually takes mine two minutes) and you reboot when it's done.

The interface for ghost is not nearly as simple (at least with the last version I used about a year ago). Also I remember that I had to add special drivers to the boot disk in order for Ghost to recognize my ide card and drives that were hooked up to it.

Well thank you very much for that break down it makes it seem much simpler than I thought.

I had a major corruption yesterday while booting. I could not use any of the repair features in XP because I guess it was an essential file of sorts. I had to do a complete reinstall.

(i intstalled BIO 7D on my th7ii-raid, and the HPT seemed very slow afterwards, not sure if that was partly to blame). Im back on the regular IDE with my single drive now and it is much better. BIOS 38 ran pretty good on the HPT IDE, but Im affraid to use the HPT with 7D now. 7D has the newer HPT BIOS 2.31 and I installed the 2.31 driver off the HPT site. Maybe I should go back to 38?

I really should have had Drive Image up and going before this last crash. It just seems that the built in help is not so user friendly. But I've heard it is a great program.

When I get to reinstalling, I'll try this time to put it work and not let it intimidate me ;-) Sounds like Drive Image would have saved me alot of pain.

Do you put your image on CDRW disk or HHD? I guess if you put it to CDRW you can update it regularly? I've got enough room to also put it to drive as well. But yesterdays crash would have required CD's because I could not access C: at all.

Is DriveImage able to burn to CDRW? Or to you have to put the image on the drive and then use your CDRW softare to burn it?

Thanks, Grant

It would not have mattered if you could not access C. The whole point is to isolate your operating system. You cannot store an image and restore an image all on the same partition. When you restore an image it overwrites the entire partition. Make a D partition to store your images on and then you can restore C successfully by accessing the backup image from D. Also the compression at which the partition is made is very good, about 50% the actual size of the original.
Another plus is if you get a crash, go through the restore process but first make an image of your newly screwed up c drive onto d. Then overwrite c with the backup image like normal. When you get back into your now workin XP, there is an interface you can access by double clicking you newly created image. This interface allows you to access the file system on the image and restore individual files such as my docs, favs, mail and such (the usual stuff that you wish you didn't just loose by going to your backup). Once you update what you need just delete that image.

I've always been a big practitioner of partitions.

I used to use fdisk for years but have been using Partition Magic for the last few years. So putting the image on another partition is not a problem.

So your saying that DriveImage has a feature that can save a corrupted OS as an image and later you can access that image through DriveImage?

That would have been great. I lost some email and other stuff that I really wish I had right now in this last crash.

I really gotta get DriveImage wired. It sounds like just what I needed to recover this time.

Let me get it installed and try to save an image to a seperate partition. You have been very imformative, hope you don't mind later if I have any questions?

What about CDRW disks?

Grant

I have not tried CDRW's. I'll keep an eye out for your post.

Drive Image 5.0 w/ Windows XP ???

Gone_Fishin or Anyone,
Do you know if 5.0 is compatible with Windows XP? That is what I have, but I now notice that they have version 2002 out.
Grant

The greatest thing about v. 2002 is the ability to image in Windows. No more stinkin DOS reboots.....I wasn't crazy about that at all. Now with the option to back up in Windows, and to a CD-RW....great program.

Setting up Drive Image 2002

I now have Drive Image 2002 installed.

I have a question as to if I need to install any of the various driver options it ask you about during creating Rescue Diskettes.

There are four driver options that it asks you about:
1. Iomega Drivers; I don't have an Iomega drive, so no to this one.

2. Fujitsu ATAPI MO Drivers; I don't have a Fujitsu drive either, so no.

3. Fujitsu SCSI MO Drivers; no to this one too. Also, I don't think that my Sony Floppy drive would need either of these Fujitsu drivers.

4. SCSI Drivers: Well I have a new Plextor 40/12/40 CDRW. Do I need this driver? Would it overwrite my existing Plextor driver? I "think" that my PlexWriter would be considered a SCSI device yes?

I am just one that likes to know where new drivers are installed on my OS. Clicking any of these driver options just seems a little vague as to what/where these new drivers are doing and being placed.

Thanks, Grant

If you don't have a SCSI card or a ZIP drive, then you won't need any of those.

Do you know if 5.0 is compatible with Windows XP? That is what I have, but I now notice that they have version 2002 out.

Click to expand...

I have drive image 4.0 (came with my soltek board) but it doesnt work with windows xp (or doesnt work with ntfs file system, i forget which but I use both so either way I can't use it) the new version is supposed to be supported by XP.

I thought I had heard the 5 did work with XP. But I did not want to take any chances so I got version 6 (2002).

I really hope it lets me recover from a major crash like I hope

Ok, I made the rescue floppys without selecting any of the driver options. Let's hope if , god forbid, I ever need to use Drive Image for a major crash, that I don't need any of those drivers.

But anyway I have another question. Lets say I install new software or just want to update the image becuse I've got alot of files, email, ect that I don't want to lose. I am assuming that Drive Image will save my email and files , yes?

I've currently saved my C: on a different partition(G: ). When I update do I just overwrite that image automatically?

Also, I've got my HHD into 6 partitions using PM7. I put only my Windows XP Pro on C: and nothing else there, Office XP on D:, Programs1 on E:, Programs2 F:, Storage1 G:, Storage2 H:.

Now I am assuming that I would need to Image every partition to be safe, yes?

To update, just make a new image. To be safe I would only image the c, d, e, f. I found it simpler to have XP and all my installed programs on the same partition. Use other partitions for storing data. To be completely safe from hard drive failure you should archive all your data to cd's also but it is not necessary to recover from a system failure. If you did not install any new programs since your last imaging than you would only need to restore c prtition in case of failure, the way you have it set up now. Also defrag before making the image, it puts all the data at the beginning of the partition so that it images at the highest speed possible.

I have Ghost 2002, it kicks ***. DriveImage is good too but it screwed up my windows partition several times so i switched to ghost.

Cooler666,
Would you like to elaborate on what happened with Drive Image? What version of it and Windows were you using?
Thanks,
Grant

I'm wondering if you can save and work with the image on a Firewire HHD? Can you recover from a crash if you are saving the image to a Firewire HHD? Maybe if you were saving the image to a Firewire HHD, and you had a major crash, could you then copy the image to a CD and work it that way?

Grant

PS. Again, Cooler. Do you care to elaborate. I had heard so many good things about Drive Image. Your the first to say anything bad about it. It has been recommended over and over in MaximumPC magazine. And PowerQuest's Partition Magic works great, I've been using that for about 3yrs now and never had a problem. Just wondering what went wrong?