Norton Ghost or?

ghost can backup to external devices and will make sure the right drivers are made for the rebuild later.

under 4gb , i would ghost image to second partition as a file , and then write that file to a dvd.
all you then need is a ghost boot floppy and dvd

Thanks for the help,
and advice will give it a try along with acronis true image,

Kind Regards as always.

Purchased Ghost, but when using it, alongside partition magic/drive image, had a conflict error, which is strange as they are both now from Norton, this happened halfway through partitioning drive, and lost 250Gb of Data,

However used partition magic with Acronis True Image, and worked fine,
When installing True Image, first part of install process was to offer a rescue disc set, either floppy or CD (Chose CD),

Recognised external drives, and within 10mins had made an image to a partition on the external drive,

Set my laptop in bios to boot first from CD/DVD Drive and tested restore disc, worked like a charm,

Kind Regards all.

Just as an update to the above,
I have just installed Acronis to my friends computer, whom also had Norton 'Go Back' installed,

To use Acronis you must 'Disable' Norton Go-Back first then use Acronis, then 'Re-enable' Go-Back if you choose to keep both installed, Acronis will NOT action changes and only gives error messages when it reboots, unless you disable Go-Back then action partition changes first.

Kind Regards

This interests me. Have just posted in bargains re bargain hard disk failures. Acronis True Image has been made available on magazine giveaways. It is called 'personal'. Do you have experience of this version at all? Ghost works only with XP I'm told and since my main PC is heavily used for research so I am reluctant to dismantle its OS from Win2KPro to use Norton.

Ghost works only with XP I'm told : all i can say is b*ll*cks

Ghost version 7 , and previous versions , works with all previous microsoft operating systems.
It can boot from cd or floppy , and rebuild a disk from an image on a network server.
To my knowledge it will also 'bit for bit' image other drivetypes.

Partition magic can also do the same.

Acronis true image has many testimonials on it's site :
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/comments.html

and is generally raved about by PCPro magazine.

Dear Michael 'No' sorry have not used 'this' version,
Many people have no problem with Ghost at all, and find it a great tool, however on my PC it caused a problem hence the desire to try something else, in my case Acronis worked fine for me and for a further machine i have installed it on and thoroughly recommend it on that basis,

Kind Regards

As a follow up at the Acronis web site V9 is now available,

Kind Regards

:)

PcPro magazine
Issue133 : November 2005

Acronis Migrate Easy 7

Free on Dvd Cover disc

i.e. £30.00 program for £4.99 with free magazine and other things thrown in ... :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

Well, my b**** remain intact but thanks for the assurances. What I asked earlier, and it was due to this pcPro giveaway, was whether Acronis Migrate Easy 7 does the same job effectively. The reason I ask is that I recently had sudden death disk failure during my absence when machines were switched off and it seemed that disk imaging with incremental update capabilities (Ghost 9) was a fairly good way of avoiding consequent death duties - i.e confiscation of research material.
Michael