Drive imaging software

[ddrueding]

Acronis has finally jumped the dolphin. The new version of their software not only has massive bloat, but hasn't worked properly for me yet, and has the "normal" tasks hidden.

I'm looking for a simple app that can copy a drive or RAID array to a file or another disk/array. If it can do it while still in the OS without needing special driver disks, so much the better. It only needs to do Windows, but everything from 98 to 7 is a must. OSS would be great, but not at a loss to anything else.

Any tips?

 

[Tannin]

The open source stuff used to be hopeless, like really bad, but it's been getting better quite rapidly. Last time I checked, one of them was very nearly usable in the workshop. Can't remember which one, sorry. But it's worth checking again already - the pace of improvement has been dramatic.

 

[MaxBurn]

I'm still using the old Ghost 2003 boot floppy. In vista and win7 there is something that doesn't go right and you have to use the OS repair feature which says something about boot sector and then those OS's work fine after a restore. Not ideal anymore so I am sort of looking too, just not enthusiastically.

 

[mubs]

Terabyte's Image for Win and Image for Dos is what I have. I have only used the latter, but it fits on a single floppy and will burn a CD or DVD, even if it is on a USB port or on FW. I can't comment on the Win part of it, but compared to Ghost, DriveImage, etc., this one's light years ahead.

 

[sechs]

I'm still using the old Ghost 2003 boot floppy. In vista and win7 there is something that doesn't go right and you have to use the OS repair feature which says something about boot sector and then those OS's work fine after a restore. Not ideal anymore so I am sort of looking too, just not enthusiastically.

I've been using Ghost 11 for some time, but haven't need to do much more than a complete disk image of any Vista volumes.

What options are you using?

 

[blakerwry]

Might try the clonezilla live CD - I use it with 2k/XP/Vista to make/deploy images to a network share ghost style. It's linux based, so supports a range of hardware and destinations (sshfs, SMB, etc).

 

[Mercutio]

Acronis version 11 does indeed suck. Version 10 works great, though.

I have yet to make a Sysprepped Image of Vista work with anything other than ImageX, though.

LifeHacker had an article on Image-based backup tools a while back.

 

[Will Rickards]

I hope acronis 10 will support windows 7.

 

[LunarMist]

Acronis 11 (2009) is needed to support some chipsets and add-in controllers, even from 2008 systems like mine. I do prefer 10, which is less tedious and buggy than 2009. For example, restoring a TIB from the 1.5 and 2TB EADS drives to anything produces errors.

Does the OS matter much if the filesystem is the same, or is Windows 7 different?

 

[Stereodude]

I hope acronis 10 will support windows 7.

If it doesn't work with it now, what makes you think it will in the future?

 

[Will Rickards]

I haven't tried it on windows 7. Have you?

 

[Mercutio]

10 works on Win7

 

[ddrueding]

11 doesn't. Just crashes at boot.

 

[MaxBurn]

I've been using Ghost 11 for some time, but haven't need to do much more than a complete disk image of any Vista volumes.

What options are you using?

Just using the boot floppy GUI and selecting drive to image or drive from image.

In my case I am just putting the image on another NTFS drive in the system.

I can't remember how the boot partition was created in the first place but it is likely I just used partition magic to create it. Next opportunity (pretty much when I get my official win 7 DVD) I will just blank the drive and point windows to that and let it create everything.