DVD backup of image

Hi,

I want to have an image of my drive in case of a failure, re formating and installing XP and then re-registering all the core programs I use is much too time consuming.

I don't want to use Norton Ghost as Norton has been nothing but problems and a great slow down to my system over the last 3 years so I am looking for something else.


I have no removable drives except for my DVD/CD burner. I want to take a snapshot of a virgin installation & reuse it again if I need to and then restore the data in those folders.

In addition, for this to be useful to me I need to be able restore this to a drive that has been corrupted so I will need to restore to a drive I cannot boot from.

For DVD burning software I have Nero Ultra edition V 6.6.0.16 (Latest V6 build)

When I tried to backup my D drive (NEC DVD/CD burner) TI9 rejected the DVD+R media

Two questions:

1. Will TI9 indeed back up directly to a DVD using my software and create a backup source that will restore the image of the OS, bootability and NTFS?

2. My drive is 250 gigs my total drive space used is 7.5 gigs. Will TI9 only back up the 7.5 gigs using one or two DVDs or will it require me to back up all 250 gigs?

As much as I dislike Norton, Ghost was a bit more intuitive than I have found this to be.

Advice?

Thanks!

 

bumpity bump bump

 

megalomando

I'll try to shed some light on what it appears you are up against.

First TI9 will not burn a DVD-R and will only burn a DVD-RW if there is a utility like INCD installed to format/erase the media as needed.

Second from your post it would seem you only have one HD installed. this fact makes your current options quite limited.

The strategy I employ is with two (2) HDs The second (drive1) holds a partition strictly for backup purposes. I Backup the drive0 image to this partition and if I wish to keep it on DVDs, I split the image files into 1430MB size and burn them to DVD 3 at a time. This provides me the added benefit of creating a MD5 checksum for the 3 files and burning it as well. On the images I chose not to burn I create them full length.

It is important to note for a complete restore to take place you must image the entire drive with all partitions included. This ensures the MBR is in the image.

With on sale 160GB - 200Gb HDs selling for 29.95 with rebate it is cost effective to make the plunge.

Hope this helps in some way. I am no expert, but I faced the same dilemma just a month ago and that is how I addressed it.

 

Hello megalomando,

Thank you for your interest in Acronis Disk Backup Software.

In this case Acronis True Image 9.0 will definitely suit your needs, since using this software you will be able to create an image of your entire hard drive or any individual partitions saving it to any type of the supported media (CD, DVD, external drive, network drive, ect.). If your system fails you will just need to boot from the special Bootable Rescue CD and restore the system from the beforehand created image.

Please be aware that the current version of Acronis True Image doesn’t write to DVD directly, instead it utilizes third party UDF packet DVD writing software. You can find more information on how to burn your images to DVD in this FAQ article.

Please also note that the ability to write images to DVD directly will be implemented in the future builds\versions of a particular software, but exact time frame for this is not decided yet.

Please let me know if you still will not be able to burn your images to DVD. I'll certainly try to help you.

If the file system is supported by Acronis True Image 9.0 then only the actual data is included into the image archive. In case of the unsupported or corrupted file system, Acronis True Image 9.0 creates a sector-by-sector image which includes "free space" as well. Moreover, Acronis True Image 9.0 allows you to select several levels of compression for your image archive.

Please also be aware that Acronis True Image 9.0 excludes large and unnecessary paging and hibernation files from the backup reducing the size of the resulting image.

You can find more information on how to use Acronis True Image 9.0 in the respective User's Guide.

If you have any further questions please feel free to ask.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov

 

megalomando,

A workaround is to image your C: drive to the C: drive. Yes, it can be done. Choose 2 GB splits. Use highest compression. When finished burn the image to DVD with Nero. It should fit on one DVD. Then delete the image from your C: drive.

 

Interesting. I've done over 100 restores on various computers and have never done this. I just image the C: drive and use data backup software for the other partitions. Some of these image/restores were done with TI. Most were done with other imaging apps.