35 replies to this topic

[DarthMorlock]

Is there an equivalent method under Win XP?

[rebell]

Is there an equivalent method under Win XP?

If you're talking about the method in this tutorial, I don't believe so. However, while the tutorial presented here was extremely well done and easy to follow, it is far from the best method to use for imaging your hard drive. While this is the only method that will work with the Windows repair disk, like so much that is Microsoft, it is slow, cumbersome and not really well suited to the task. I was going to give the method in the tutorial a try, but it appears that you have no control over exactly what you back up, but with Paragon B&R you can back up the first hard disk track and the master boot record and the C:\ partition or just the C:\ partition. However, the former gives you a virtual clone, whereas the Windows method just gives you the backup of the C:\ partition and may not make the disk bootable.

With the Paragon Backup and Recovery 10.1 you are able to make a recovery CD (or USB device). B&R has it's own operating system and so doesn't need to rely on being able to boot into Windows, so it will work with any version of Windows. The backup is much faster than in Windows and it is better compressed to take much less space. My C:\ drive is 220.74 GB, with windows disk image my backup is 174.47 GB (< 21% compression), with B&R the backup image is 139.5 GB (< 37% compression [normal compression, there is an option to compress more] and includes the first track and the master boot record). I have not tried to add files to the backup image, so I don't know if you can, but with B&R you can pull out individual files to restore as well as a complete hard disk restore. As I said, I use it often to clone hard drives when upgrading people's machines. Also, unlike some other freeware, B&R is not a work-in-process, it is essentially Paragon's retail version, so there are few, if any bugs to worry about.

[Master of Disaster]

JAMAL !! this is eXtremely well written and thought of and done tutorial.. fantastic work..very rare to see as good and as complete and perfect as this one on the net. love it

[muddymike]

JAMAL.....Well done,very Impressive.
There are so many options for this scenerio that one forgets the obvious that Is there for the sake of users.I would like to add that this makes some of 7's total Pkg and It makes sense to use this option,It Is what It Is....
Personally I tink around with all the other listed 3 party software and like to keep my 7 system free from that much reliability on messing with pros and cons of what might work for them not me.Your tutorial Is a well written ext.for the 90%-No excuses,to be a 10%. For all the Xp user there Is my favorite xxclone Thank you for your work and thoughts!
muddymike

[TheZeDD]

@Rebel or others interested...

sorry i don't mean to hi-jack you thread Jamal, just a couple tidbits for Non Win7 users or a possible alternative to Win7's backup just in case !?

XP (or anything with either CD-Rom, Optical drive or even a bootable USB, UFD (USB Flash Drive) or similar will appreciate this fine piece of work:

Check out "PING" !

Its a 30mb piece of software thats pure imaging power and can do it over a network!

It allows imaging a partition to another partition of the s-a-m-e drive!

I wish I had a good tutirial on PING but I have not found one yet. If you take a short time to play with it you may find it worth more then it may seem for all of a 30mb ISO.

DONT USE THE SOFTWARE COMPRESSION with PING. Just image the used data bytes and skip the sector-by-sector dump.

That's the ticket for this one unless you have the time and don't mind waiting both at imaging and restoring time.

If you choose to use this there are two ways of doing compression using PING:

The first one i recommend against it which literally compresses your disk data as you would a ZIP file.

The second, will just image your data and not the entire drive, e.g. a 120gb drive with one partition that equals 120gb and has 50gb of data will finish as a 50gb image!

Your other option is a sector-by-sector "dump" which will image every last piece of readable data whether you want it or not, you can see it or not. e.g. a 120gb drive will require you another equal or larger drive as it will finish as a 120gb image, without using any compression

If you use the software compression... it could take SOME TIME and you could have issues later.. but thats software regardless. Last check Ping was up to 3.01

EFFITEK:

http://ping.windowsdream.com/

http://ping.windowsd...bin/download.pl

If you want to try out the USB/UFD option ...drop the raw PING.version.ISO on a ready made bootable flashdrive thats been prepped with Unetbootin or MultibootISO and then add this line to your "menu.lst" file on the USB and edit the ping.iso appropriately either here or of the ISO file name:

# PING - Partition Image Not Ghost
title PING 3.00 Partition Image Not Ghost
find --set-root /ping-3.00.iso
map /ping-3.00.iso (hd32)
map --hook
root (hd32)
chainloader (hd32)

I always recommend a partitioned drive and no more then 20-30gb for the boot drive. But that's for the experienced user or someone more understanding. I recommend to save all your excess data on the 2nd partition of your main drive or another drive which significantly simplifies many issues now, and later.

Clonemaxx, which has some very big names behind it, is German based, fits on a floppy but only does sector-by-sector dumps. Meaning it will image every last little tid-bit of your entire drive without any other option and does not support Vista (info from a few months ago)

http://www.pcinspect...po=1&language=1


UFD lines:

# Working - Menu's accessible
title CloneMaxx -No Vista Support -Says Never will
find --set-root /clonemax.img
map --unsafe-boot /clonemax.img (fd0)
map --hook
chainloader --force (fd0)+1
rootnoverify (fd0)

- Z

[Swordsman]

Thanks,but wait in the 2end method,without the cd burner while follow the g- Now I want you to do exactly the steps you see in D-/study case # 1 / 1st method ( steps from a to n included),it seems some mistakes,isn't it?

[Fedrico Garcia]

This is one of the most amazing and complete tutorials of windows 7 I've ever read anywhere. Great job

[Shashi007]

it's pretty good tutorial.
Thanks!!

[Jamal H. Naji]

Thank you all for all your inputs and info, best regards.

[saddlejib]

Excellent tutorial:

Definitive and free.

[Uvais]

nice and what about to make ghost image and burn to DVD