Quake3World

I woke up this morning with my Work Computer Completely borked, so I thought well I will do a System Restore,,,, hahaha,, well that was borked as well. Actually it was gone. I click on the link but when the window would pop up there was no information.

So I'm thinking "Well hell this is great!!! Now I have to do a re-format!! grrrr.... :icon33:

Then I remembered that I have a drive Image that I created last month.

Took 20 minutes to redo the Image and now my Computer works perfectly again.

And Thanks to "Second Copy" I still had all of my Drawing files, programming Files, Billing, Websites and so forth.

Well Symantec, you saved my butt this time.

Yeps. I prefer acronis true image tho.

I guess any Drive Image software that actually works is a great thing to have.

I could have spent all day trying to get my computer back to normal.

TIP: Store ALL your user data on a secondary hard disk drive or partition. Should your OS die or become unoperable, you can simply reinstall your OS and remap your programs to the appropriate folders (e.g. D:\data)

Disk images are alright for restoring in a pinch, but are a poor solution to rebuilding a flaky OS. Nine times out of ten, the OS is due for a reinstall anway (should be done annually anyway), and restoring while it works, also just brings back existing headaches.

Having your data files segregated from your OS will offer you peace of mind beyond belief. Also, it's FAR, FAR easier to backup ALL your data if it's stored in one place/directory.

Well, the way I did it is I installed XP and a good amount of the software I use, configured tweaked everything nicely (which took a while ) then made an image of it. I store user stuff on a different drive, but for installed programs I just go back to the image and I'm good to go in a matter of minutes. Sure a lot of them will have to be updated since the last image, but that is a lot less hassle-free then doing a full reinstall of everything.

dzjepp wrote:Well, the way I did it is I installed XP and a good amount of the software I use, configured tweaked everything nicely (which took a while ) then made an image of it. I store user stuff on a different drive, but for installed programs I just go back to the image and I'm good to go in a matter of minutes. Sure a lot of them will have to be updated since the last image, but that is a lot less hassle-free then doing a full reinstall of everything.

Same here I use Drive Image 5.0

Have you used drive image and just like acronis true image better, or are you just assuming it's better? Curious if it's worth a look since DI5 works flawlessly.

All sweet Ideas, When I do get around to doing a reformat I will do the same.

Giraffe }{unter wrote:

dzjepp wrote:Well, the way I did it is I installed XP and a good amount of the software I use, configured tweaked everything nicely (which took a while ) then made an image of it. I store user stuff on a different drive, but for installed programs I just go back to the image and I'm good to go in a matter of minutes. Sure a lot of them will have to be updated since the last image, but that is a lot less hassle-free then doing a full reinstall of everything.

Same here I use Drive Image 5.0

Have you used drive image and just like acronis true image better, or are you just assuming it's better? Curious if it's worth a look since DI5 works flawlessly.

Well not necessarily anti told me about drive image which is nice, but imho true image is a little bit more user friendly and it looks nicer. That and it seems to have good reviews around the net. :icon31:

Any free/open source drive imaging applications available?

Always looking for OSS kit

Not that I know of these here don't seem to support full drive imaging

http://fileforum.betanews.com/browse/Fi ... tby=rating

Real shame. It's about the only area of computing in which I need an app, but can't find it.

My company is coming up to look at its Norton Ghost volume licensing soon, and I'd LOVE to present an alternative and be able to say 'it's free, and we can customise it all we want'.