Hard disk Backup Not so Easy Search

[Beachcoffee]

Im trying to get setup to backup my hard disk, specifically the OS, programs, and data partition which is drive C:. Im kind of stuck because what I want to do is not what the market decrees I should do. What I want to do is to write an "image" of drive C: to DVD-R such that later if I put the first DVD-R in my computer and boot, it will run a program that would let me restore everything . This would use several DVD-Rs for my system.

Alternatively I want to add a hard drive and copy drive C: to this new drive. Currently I have a 40 GB spare hard drive and so the imaging operation would have to work from a larger partition to a smaller drive.

Currently my drive C: has 13 GB consisting of the OS (Windows XP Home)< programs, and data with 145 GB total supported by the partition. It seems straightforward that this would be easily backed up in the manner that I want. But I can't find a program that will do it right. Perhaps this is due to the fact that todays hard drives are large and DVD-Rs are small and there isn't market demand for this kind of thing.

By "image" I do not mean a byte by byte replication of the entire partition. This would presumably include the large empty space consisting of the 132 GB in the partition that I have not used. Rather by image I mean the data which represents all the files, partition info, boot sectors, and whatever but NOT an image of a large empty area. By only imaging the information that I want it would save a large number of DVDs.

I haven't found a free or low cost program that can do this hard disk to DVD-R copy. The other big problem in this is that my computer does not have a floppy drive. Even Norton ghost 10 requires the use of a floppy drive to make a bootable CD by copying DOS boot files from a floppy. At least that is what I read on this site:
http://ghost.radified.com/bootable_cd_dvd.htm
The program "Disk Copy" (by EASUS) purports to copy hard disk to DVD but also requires a floppy. The program X-backup doesn't even copy partitions to DVD-R. I have searched google for other programs such as Acronis true-image but I cannot find out all the info about them or if they will meet my needs. I have several flash card ports and could use a USB flash device.

The only useful program I found is XXCLone which copies a partition to another hard disk only (does not copy to DVDs). It does this by copying the files and not by a byte to byte image. Therefore it can clone from a larger drive to a smaller drive.

Qyestion: is there a way to substitute a USB flash drive for a floppy disk?

So does anyone know of a backup program that would do what I want?:confused:

[Beachcoffee]

This one caught my eye.
http://www.runtime.org/dixml.htm
Its solution is to back up a drive to XML files whuch can be then burned to CD or DVD. Then you use a WinPE CD to boot the computer and restore these files to the drive. WinPE is not available from microsoft for consumers. So Runtime Software advocated the use of a "BartPE" bootable CD with a reduced functionality windows XP OS on it. I am not sure of the license for this software but it installed and backed up my hard disk. Wonder if the "gotcha" is when you want to restore your hard disk?

So first I downloaded and installed the BartPE builder.
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
There also is a web forum for BartPE.
http://www.911cd.net/forums/
Then I ran PEBuilder and created an ISO of a bootable CD. Next I ran Driveimage and followed the Backup wizard for my C: drive. This took about 45 minutes. When it was done I looked on the C: drive where I had chosed to put the output. (when I started I didn't think about putting driveimage's output on the same drive being imaged but it worked apparently without error). There were 25 files each about 672,000 K including a DAT and XML files. This is approx 16 GB data.

At this point I don't know what to do with it. Shall I place 4 files each on 4 DVD-Rs? From the size of the files it would seem they are meant for CDs but I don't want to burn 25 CDs just yet. It would be nice to hook up my other hard drive by iteself and see if I can run BartPE and "recover" using this data. But has anyone else done this?

[Paul Komski]

ImageForDOS or BiNG (in my sig) (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/) should both be able to image directly to CDs/DVDs. They are virtually fully functional trialware and extremely competitive cost-wise with any comparable software should you decide to purchase.

The images are compressed images of all the data and it is wise (particularly with optical media) to verify the burn - though IMHO a byte-for-byte verification is unnecessary.

The utils can be run from boot CDs (seeing you have no floppy drive).

Your 13gig of data should compress down to about 6.5gig or two normal DVDs. BiNG and IforDOS also support USB2 external drives (HDDs or DVDs) and large drives into the bargain.

DriveImage XML is a grand freebie but a bit elaborate particularly when it comes to restore time. No good making images if you cant restore from them. The terabyteunlimited utils have an assoc freebie called TBIview which enables you to access the image files as if they were folders in My Computer.

[Beachcoffee]

well today I tried more stuff. I downloaded and ran Acronis True Image version 8 trial. During install it asked to create a emergency boot disk. I put in a blank CD-r and let it proceed. The DVD writer light flashed several times then it said "error writing media". sigh. Made a coaster. Acronis looks good but it sells for $50 out of my budget.

[Paul Komski]

It would be nice to hook up my other hard drive by iteself and see if I can run BartPE and "recover" using this data. But has anyone else done this?Missed this, but I have recovered using DI-XML - though not from a BartPE. I suppose TinyHexer might be able to write the image file back to a hard drive since Mirkes.de do supply a BartPE plugin. The .dat file is virtually a raw image with (if memory serves) just one sector of headers at the start of it - and which you would obviously ignore. I have used WinHex from within windows and DD from Knoppix to restore these files - but it's a bit long-winded and messy particularly when you have so many individual files to restore. The simplest and most effective util to do your job, as mentioned, would be ImageForDOS or one of its "cousins".

One other warning to do with Acronis is that I have had it break RAID arrays. It gets itself started and installed without really showing you what it's up to but this includes writing to the MBR. I think that what happens is that because it runs from a Linux footprint that didn't (in my case) have the RAID drivers, it sees both drives in the array and then of course only accesses one of them. ImageForDOS and BiNG only see the array in the same way that fdisk from DOS would only see the array - believing, (unlike Linux or the NT OSes), what the BIOS tells them. BiNG if installed to the HDD's MBR/EMBR doesn't break the array because it writes to the array and not to the individual drives.

PS Should have added that both DD and DDforWindows could make raw ImageFiles for you. These would be uncompressed files which you would need to gzip or zip respectively if you wanted them to be made smaller. Choosing the right size of file to suit you and the relevant file system would be up to you and you would have to create multiple DVD/CD-sized files individually if you wanted to burn them to optical media. Should also add that there are imaging utils with a GUI that run from many more recent Linux distros - though I'm not up to speed at all with Linux just now.

[Sylvander]

A while back "ComputerActive" magazine were offering a free full copy of "Acronis True Image v7.0.0.638".
I got a copy [have the bootable CD here] and posted the link here and some others got it too, but then the magazine restricted access to their readers.

My favourite image backup program is "Image for DOS", and that's what I use almost all of the time, even though I also have "Image for Windows" and "BootIT NG" and Acronis and "HP Simple Backup".

Acronis has a fancy GUI, looks good and it's explicit in operation, made the bootable CD without any trouble.
IforD doesn't have a fancy GUI, rather simple, and some of its steps are not well explained, but once you learn a couple of simple tricks, it is REALLY nice to use, and seems to me to do everything you could wish to do with an image backup program.
If you want to do lots of other stuff, then "BiNG is the thing".

I use "SyncBack" FREE edition to synchronise my data partitions.
D: [500 MB used of 1 GB] to 1 GB USB2 "Flash Drive" H: [Personal data files]
E: & F: to external USB2 HDD partition N: [Music, images, video etc]

[Beachcoffee]

Im trying to get admitted to the BartPE forum but it doesn't seem to be happening. The moderator there has a really nasty statement about being emailed. BartPE is complicated enough that I will need to get my questions answered about it.

[deddard]

I'd go with Sylvander's suggestion here - there are often some excellent software packages for free on magazines.
I can't remember offhand what's on this months crop, but I know there is at least one with partition manager software amongst others - look around and you're bound to find something.
Acronis True image is now at version 10, so you should be able to pick up one of the older ones cheaper. I got version 9 when it was still the current version for around £15 - check out places like amazon, as they often have resellers who churn this stuff out cheaply.
I haven't got round to using TrueImage yet, as I've been using Norton Ghost for a number of years, but the sort of thing you want to do is pretty common, as well as common-sense! Anyone who doesn't do what you want to do is asking for trouble.

[Paul Komski]

It seems like you haven't tried out downloading anything from terabyteunlimited (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/) - even though their apps should do what you asked for. That's fine - but it would be interesting to know if you had any problems with them or if you have an intrinsic reluctance to try them for another reason.

By all means try a BartPE to restore the DI-XML images and if you can't get help from the Bart forums there a quite a few round here, who might be able to help with a specific problem. If you were looking to restore the DI-XML images which app were you intending to use on the BartPE?

[Beachcoffee]

Well I got admitted to the BartPE forum! Basically BartPE is a bootable CD that you can use to restore an image on CD/DVD. Im waiting to see how the combination of driveimage XML - BartPE plays out before I consider spending the money for terabyteunlimited. Guess I will have to burn the BartPE ISO to see what apps are on it. I'd like to get this backup strategy realized before I put my programming work on this computer.

[Paul Komski]

I'd like to get this backup strategy realized before I put my programming work on this computer.
Try IforDOS - The trial is free and functional - Revert to whatever you like when you have time and your data is safe. What always struck me about DI-XML was that it was easy to create an image but not so easy to restore it unless one had even a minimalist version of windows running. I would think that DD from Knoppix would be an easier way or restoring the files than a Bart PE because you are still going to need to setup a plugin for a disk editor; the BartPE, as you have no doubt found out, has a considerable learning curve if you want to get it the way you want it.

You could of course also use DD to create your image files from Knoppix or other Linux distro. As with DI-XML they will be raw uncompressed images but unlike DI-XML will have no header information; they will be exact byte for byte clones.

[Beachcoffee]

I acquired Ghost 9 and made a backup onto DVDs. I found a good forum on Ghost. http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl

Ghosting took about 2 hours to DVDs and resulted in 4 DVDs for about 19 GB data. I find I like Ghost 9.

They advised me to run a defragmenter that would defragment and place all the files towards the front of the drive space. So I got Perfectdisk which sort of did this. There were some kind of files called Metafiles which PD could not move and which are somewhere in the middle of the partition. One of the constraints is that I want to repartition the hard drive and make a smaller partition for windows. Since I do not know exactly where in the existing partition (142 MB) the metafiles are located I don't know how small I can make the windows partiton.

Im looking at GParted (Linux) for repartitioning. I want to try repartitioning without erasing the hard drive and simply resize the 142 gig to something smaller like 60 gig. Has anyone had any experience with Gparted?

If I repartition the existing HDD then it is likely that my Compaq recovery disks (if ever used) would erase any partitions that I make later. So I want to purchase another hard disk and eventually have two similar hard disks in the computer with the second hard disk being mainly used as backup. I really don't trust hard disks with my data.

[Paul Komski]

GParted. Has always done any non-destructive resizing just fine for me but ANY partitioning manoeuvres/utilities can screw up. BiNG and Partition Magic are two others that can do this. Recommend that if you use PM that you do it not from within Windows but from its DOS version on floppies.

Disk-checking and Defragging. A good idea (particularly the former) prior to any re-partitioning/imaging.

Metafiles. The main one on NTFS volumes is generally in the middle of the drive but it too can become fragmented and no parts of it are designed to be moved.

Defragging NTFS Volumes. Is not generally that important for performance reasons and it isn't impressive if an imaging/resizing application needs this to be done as a pre-requisite to performing its functions as it implies that it uses very simple algorithms; so simple that it just "lops off" any unused portion towards the end of the drive.

Norton Ghost. This app varies widely from version to version and Ghost 9 was not particularly liked by the Radified Authors (http://ghost.radified.com/) because it was de facto "Drive Image plus Hot Imaging". The earlier versions were "true" imagers but being DOS based were problematic when imaging via USB. Later versions get progressively elaborate and there are IMHO better and cheaper alternatives.

Compaq Recovery. Generally speaking such recovery will just be to the System (Active) Partition. So as long as there is still a recovery partition and a big enough System partition such restores shouldn't normally affect any other partitions. No guarantees of course - only an experiment would tell you for sure. Compaqs used to use their own customised Power Quest Drive Image .pqi files but I'm not sure what more recent systems used. The PQ DI (taken over by Norton) could resize an image file (as long as there was adequate space) as part and parcel of its image restore process. Other apps can only restore to the same size as the original.

I don't know how small I can make the windows partiton. This isnt something you would normally do manually and any utilities worth their salt will tell the the min and max possible sizes.

[Paul Komski]

I note that you still appear to never have tried out the trial of ImageForDOS despite it having the potential to cover all the bases you originally mentioned. It you want a completely free alternative then there is a way to back-up using dd (http://www.iol.ie/~krakowangus/knoppiximaging.htm) from a Knoppix Live CD. It might be a bit "geekish" but it is actually an extremely versatile way to approach this whole area and (with recent distros) obtain USB support into the bargain.