Whats the easiest method of Imaging a HD?

[flambus]

Its been a while since i've posted in this forum. I have a question.

Whats the easiest methos for imaging a HD for backup and restore? I want to image (or ghost) my main partion on one hd as a backup. For reasons that may occur to the main partion, I also want to be able to restore this image.

What i am saying is that i am wasting too much time reinstalling the os and all the applications that i want on my machine when i want a clean install.

Can anyone offer suggestions?

Are there any freeware programs that have this functionality and do it well or should I fork out the money for some ghosting software?

Thanks and its nice to be back

 

[tornadobox]

I use Symantec/Norton Ghost 2002 for this, I haven't heard of any freeware progs that will do this for you.

 

[Om]

Don't know of freeware that does it. You can get a shareware version of Drive Image from Powerquest and try it out. Iv'e used Ghost and Drive Image, both do the same thing. I'd shell out the $$$ for either (Ghost would be cheaper because you can find it bundled with SystemWorks from Noton and that's on sale all the time) because a backup is something you want to be able to count on 100% of the time. Personally I'd feel uneasy trusting a freeware product I found somewhere on the net with all my data.

 

[Motero]

I've heard of people getting Norton Ghost off of Bearshare for free. Bearshare is another napster except you can get with just about any files you want.

 

[4824guy]

You can also purchase Norton's Ghost on the For Sale forum page, I saw it there for around $30 for a sealed package.

 

[RPB]

without spending any cash maxtors maxblast works very well.

 

[CZroe]

Motero: That was really lame :|
Not only are we publicly condoning piracy, but Napster was the sloppiest piece of crap software ever made and BearShare is almost as bad! Spyware AND Morpheus suck...
CuteMX (Which had spyware, but they went the way of Napster before they even did anyway) and Filetopia are the only acceptable ones, w/ eDonkey earning some position on some hard drives.
Also, no one has any trouble getting anything for free anywhere. That's the beauty of the Internet. BearShare isn't some saviour application that does something the others don't!

 

[TK]

I have had some trouble with a couple of my drives (Maxtor 20gb and WD 30gb). I couldn't copy either way with either the MaxBlast or the WD DataLifeguard. Wound up with an old (2000?) copy of Ghost that came with an Epox bd. from a couple of years ago, after talking with the Maxtor people who said "The simple program that comes with the new drives isn't all that good." The Ghost works without a hitch so far. Also, I saw Norton SystemWorks Pro at CompUSA a couple of days ago for around $90 with rebates knocking it down to $10 if you have a previous copy!

TK

 

[TK]

PS

The NSW Pro includes Ghost!

TK