Looking for Drive Imaging Software

[greywood]

I have a situation where I need drive-imaging software that will work with
several different computers & backup devices. Hope someone can help out.

The mix of computers includes:
1. An HP Celeron-600 box with 64 MB RAM and Win98SE.
2. A Gateway P-III 500 box with 160 MB RAM and Win-Xp Pro (Sp2).
3. A Dell P4 (2.xx Ghz) with 512 MB RAM (I think) & Win-Xp Pro (Sp2).
4. The comp in my Sig below, running Win-Xp Pro (Sp1).
5. A slightly older AMD box with 256 MB RAM and Win-Xp Pro (Sp2).

Both of the AMD comps have a 2nd internal IDE hard-drive to store images;
I've been using PowerQuest Drive Image 2002 on them (works just fine).

I'm overhauling the first 3 boxes for a friend. He wants to use an external
USB 2.0 hard-drive (LaCie 80 Gb) to store images from all 3 comps. I have
USB driver software for the HP box that came with the LaCie drive; so, the
HP should be able to use it from Win98. Win-Xp, of course, has built-in USB
support.

Problem is that Drive Image 2002 re-boots to DOS to do its work - and it
doesn't have USB support in DOS. The Dell box (may) have BIOS-level USB
support (haven't got hands on it yet). The HP and Gateway boxes certainly
don't have.

Alternatives I've considered so far include: Norton Ghost 9 (reject - read too
many horror stories about invalid/corrupt images that can't be restored);
PowerQuest Drive Image 7.x (reject - it doesn't support Win98 and requires
.NET Framework bloatware).

Two possibles might be: True Image 8.x - don't know if it supports Win98 or
USB drives. PowerQuest Drive Image 5.0 - from what I've found so far, it
supports Win98, but I don't know about USB drives.

Does anyone have first-hand experience with either True Image 8 or Drive
Image 5.0, who could tell me about their OS and USB support? Any other
suggestions for GOOD drive imaging software would be appreciated, too.
But, my friend runs his business on the Dell box, so any solution has to be
rock-solid reliable (and he's not especially a computer junkie).

 

[Aktunka]

Well, if you are definitely against Norton's ghost I can't change your mind, but I can tell you my findings with it.

We use ghost at our company every day on everything from little pentium 233 POS units up through Dell servers with raid configurations. We have never had an image get corrupted on us due to ghost. All of the images we have taken or restored, whether using local ghost or multi-casting over a network, have gone without a hitch, and we have been using ghost for at least 5 years now. The only issue we have had, and this was more of a Win NT issue with the ghost version we were using back then, was something that would come up when trying to make an image that would tell you some sort of NT error. This was just due to the version at that time not recognizing something in an NT log file, and the program could be started with a switch to ignore that log file, and then it went through fine.

Anyhow, if you have heard "horror" stories, so be it. But I hope that they are stories from people that know what they are talking about. Too many times I have heard "horror" stories from folks about some product only to find out that the product that "sucks" was just misconfigured by the person telling me that it sucked, and after I set it up right it worked just fine. Best of luck to you whichever way you go.

 

[greywood]

Hi Aktunka; thanks for the feedback on Norgon Ghost. It may well be that the posters
I was reading were not near as knowledgeable as they sounded. All their negativity just "put me off". But also, from what I was reading (on some other forum) Ghost 9's support for Win98 is based on including Ghost 2003 on the CD. I haven't tried Ghost 2003, especially with a USB drive, so I don't know if it supports that. Do you know?

 

[FTC]

Hi, you can use Drive Snapshot for the NT/2K/XP boxes. It will work right away and not force you to reboot... you can even keep on working while imaging!. For the Win 98 machine I recommend a BartPE XP boot CD Pe Builder with Drive Snapshot inside... (you can also use Drive image 2K2 under Pe Builder).

 

[greywood]

Thanks, FTP. I'm using Drive Image 2002 right now for the 2 AMD machines, and that works fine for them. Re-booting to backup / restore isn't a hassle, so I'll likely stick ith it for them, unless I wind up with a solution that works across the board.

But, my friend needs something that will work with an external USB hard-drive, under both Win98SE and Xp-Pro. He has an old DOS app he needs for his business, that can't run under Xp. Otherwise, I'd urge him to upgrade the 98SE machine to Xp-Pro, so all his comps would have the same OS.

Anyone have any idea what I can do with this mess?

 

[FTC]

Greywood, I am not sure you got my point for the DOS/98 machine. If you build a PE bootable XP cd with Drive image or Drive Snapshot (as you prefer) you use that CD ONLY to boot from it to make backup of your win 98 (or DOS) partitions with full access to any USB drive you may have. This is exactly what I do with my machines.

To put it another way, a PE bootable CD contains win XP completely in the CD and does not make any use of your hard disks (which can happily be DOS, 95, 98,...) to operate, but allows accessing all of them (including USB/firewire/network), and thus backing up and/or restoring partitions to/from them.

Regards FTC

 

[greywood]

Alright! I think I get it now - and this sounds very much what I need. If I follow rightly, after building the "BartePE" CD, then I use it to boot from. Then, I'm booting from Win-Xp, no matter what's installed on the hard-drive.

And, from what I've read on Bart's site, I could even put more than one backup solution on the CD. And put other stuff like virus-scanners & anti-spyware plugins on, so it could be used to recover from "infestations" or even complete HD wipe-outs.

I will definitely spend some time this weekend on building a CD.

Thanks very much FTC!

 

[FTC]

Greywood, that's it. You got it right this time. Building the BartPe thing will take some time of yours, since you need first of all to build an installable slipstreamed SP1 XP CD. After that it's incredibly easy. BartPE already includes Drive Snapshot. For drive image you will have to find a Plugin and install it. A plug in is a 'BartPE' script that tells it how to use a given piece of software. There are at least 2 or 3 different ones.

Good luck.

 

[greywood]

Thanks - I think I've got everything I need to build it. I'm gonna start with a base of Win-Xp Pro (Sp2). BTW, do you know if this would also work with Xp-Lite?

 

[urbancontra]

I've been using acronis true image server for months and it's been great. It also boots from usb drives, restores from network drives, saves on networks, and has boot up restore options. Best restore prog I've used.

 

[greywood]

Found what I was looking for all along. Here's the solution (at least for me) if it can
help anyone else. I tried building a BartPE CD with Drive-Image 2002 plug-in, but that
didn't work. I'm sure that was MY problem, cose I just barely understood what I was
doing (doh!).

At urbancontra's suggestion, I checked out Acronis True Image 8.0. I liked what I
found about it and got a copy. I'm very glad I did, 'cause it already saved by butt
once. The Install CD is also a bootable Rescue CD (and I had to use it that way).
It also works with ANY version of Windows (and no .NET) and with external USB or
Firewire drives. Based on my very limited experience - highly recommended.

Thanks to everyone for your feedback and suggestions.

 

[zizux]

We use ghost 7 at work, just don't make the images directly to a cd

 

[urbancontra]

Glad to help out!