hey psszzzt....You, yea you there with the laptop. I got a question for you.

[statetech]

Now that I have a Dell Inspiron 4100, I'm having difficulty trying to figure out how I would begin Ghosting the image for back up. I have a USB burner but Ghost and DriveImage is very well documented that they do not support USB burners because you burn the image in DOS.

Well, my alternative is to get an additional hard drive since I believe all if not most Dell laptops allow for a second hard drive in the bays where the battery and/or CDRom resides. Checking the Dell Forums, this very nice gentleman has in his sig the entire parts as well as the part numbers that you would need, which I've listed below.

A. Media Bay
I8K-8.1K-8.2K, I4K-4.1K Media Bay parts: 4169D = carrier; 4 x 53965 = screws | For 12.5mm drives
I8K-8.1K-8.2K, I4K-4.1K Media Bay parts: 29MFN = carrier; 4 x 53965 = screws | For 9.5mm drives
I7.5 Media Bay parts: 4124T = carrier, 11 x 3771U = screws
This Media Bay carrier holds 9.5 and 12mm 2.5" drives but not 19mm.

B. Harddrive Carrier/Caddy

8x00 Single Carrier: 48CVX
Screws [Only Need One, But Package Includes Four]: M3x5: 6350E
HDD Pin Adapter: 8267R
Screws to attach the drive to the carrier: M3x2.5: 97580

Now, those of whom have gone this route, can you actually create an image to this secondary hard drive sitting in one of the bays? If so, what program did you use?
I'm asking so that I won't have to waste all that money getting the parts, hard drive, etc only to realize it isn't possible.

 

[Adul]

what was done at work was they had a boot disk. this boot disk would connect to a network and mount a few drives. you can then ghost the image down or up to any drive. I know there is a way to netowrk with in dos.

 

[statetech]

Originally posted by: Adul
what was done at work was they had a boot disk. this boot disk would connect to a network and mount a few drives. you can then ghost the image down or up to any drive. I know there is a way to netowrk with in dos.

This is indeed possible and I've done this on a network before. But the only computer I have is my laptop
Trying to eliminate as much clutter as possible and live simply, but of course I can't live without computers!

 

[Adul]

umm then try running ghost with in windows 98 We did that without to much issues.

 

[statetech]

Originally posted by: Adul
umm then try running ghost with in windows 98 We did that without to much issues.

Let me see if I'm understanding this correctly. Boot up Windows 98 regularly and then launch Ghost within Win98 environment?

BTW, I apologize if I didn't make myself clear. I do not have access to a network where I can upload an image
I'm running XP as well.

 

[hans007]

the new ghost 2002 can image over a network. you should try that and then just burn CDs fromthat image on another computer once you send the image over the network

 

[Adul]

just thought of another wya you can solve your little issue. use partition magic to split the HD in half. Gost the 1st partion with everything on it to an image file on the second partition. You can span the image over several files uif you need to. So if you wanted the file size to be no larger then 700 mb you can specify that. ONce that is done, boot into Windows XP and burn the images to cd , might has well make them bootable CDs has weill with ghost on there.

 

[AnMig]

"just thought of another wya you can solve your little issue. use partition magic to split the HD in half. Gost the 1st partion with everything on it to an image file on the second partition. You can span the image over several files uif you need to. So if you wanted the file size to be no larger then 700 mb you can specify that. ONce that is done, boot into Windows XP and burn the images to cd , might has well make them bootable CDs has weill with ghost on there. "


This is what I did with my compaq lap top re-partitoned my 6 gig hard drive into 4gig and 2 gig. then store the image into a cdr.
If you can keep your xp partition within 1.7gb you can fit it in a 650 mb cd. I never learned how to span images. When imaging decrease your swap file to decrease the size of the image.

There is a free program out there that lets you repartition your hardrive without loosing data. Sorry I forgot what it was works slow but it works. PM me if you want it and I will dig it up once I get home.

Peace

 

[statetech]

This is an interesting idea indeed, which I first tried because I thought it was achievable. Maybe I was doing it correctly but I'll retry. I've actually partitioned my hard drive into two partitions, a 6gig (OS resides on this) and 4gig where I put all my files.

Are you guys using Ghost 2002 to image to the second partition? If I recollect, I tried it with the enterprise edition of an older version, but it was still pretty recent.

 

[corkyg]

My current laptop has a modular floppy/LS-120/ZIP drive, and that will also accept a 2nd HDD module. So, here's how I clone my drive every time I change something major:

1. Pop out the floppy.
2. Pop in HDD #2
3. Boot with a Bootable CD and run DriveCopy 4.0 (I put it on the CD.)
4. Copy Drive 1 to Drive 2 - takes about 15 minutes - all done - no image - the real thing.

I then power down, remove HDD#2's module, and physically swap it with #1. That give #1 a vacation and lets me boot and verify that #2 is the exact duplicate. The regular HDD#1 is right above the removable module, and the swap involves but two small screws. I always have a spare HDD ready to go at any time, complete with everything. No need to mess with Ghosts or images or restorations or burning CDs, etc. It's simpler, faster, and cheaper.

 

[statetech]

It's simpler, faster, and cheaper.

Cheaper? hmmm....you've got 2 hard drives and one on the side. I would like not to buy another hard drive if I can prevent it. Possibly faster and simplier though. Thanks for the idea...something to consider since I like the idea of swapping hard drives to give one a break.