backing up hard drive

[Dave W.]

Is there anyway to completely back up my hard drive using cdr or cdrw?

 

[tbomb]

the only way i can think of is to use a program called "ghost" which creates an image file of your hdd, then you can burn it i guess, but the problem is that if youre hdd is bigger than 800 megs, youre gonna have to break the file up. maybe a newer version of it has the capability to do that directly onto a cdr, dunno.

 

[wendoVT]

Sure, although I am not much of a windows person, its probably as easy as running the windows backup software (start --> programs --> accessories --> system tools), choosing the medium (cd burner) and then feeding it cd's. Your burning software probably has something built into it also. Not sure why you would want to do this though. If you want to reinstall windows, a quicker and easier solution would be to back up all the files you want to keep, then wipe the harddrive and do the reinstall. This will save you a lot of time, and a lot of cd's.

 

[tbomb]

Originally posted by wendoVT
If you want to reinstall windows, a quicker and easier solution would be to back up all the files you want to keep, then wipe the harddrive and do the reinstall. This will save you a lot of time, and a lot of cd's.

thats how i back mine up - just the important files and ill reinstall everything else if i have to (i dont wanna burn 10 gigs worth of cds everytime i backup.) though, the ghost image i was talking about is really easy to do. if you have to start with a fresh harddrive, you can have the computer totally backed up real fast and real easily, but im sure there are a million ways to do it.

 

[ChuckyD]

Windows XP has a built in backup utility... i just ran it tonight... i i selected all the files i wanted backed up then saved it to my second hard drive... it compresses it and makes it into one file... if i want to resore it i double click and choose restore and it goes back to normal...

But to answer your question... Tbomb is right if you only want to use one CD. Ghosting, although time consuming to make an image, takes virtually 2 minutes to restore the entire drive after the image is created... thats the best way to go... do a standard load set, run ghost make an image, and your set. I have done an image up to 3 gigs with no problem!

But if your only concerned about a few documents, the easiest way is to just put all your folders in one place and just burn that folder to a cd and your done... by the way... cd's can only hold up to 700 MB's

 

[tbomb]

Originally posted by ChuckyD
by the way... cd's can only hold up to 700 MB's

thats what i meant, typo

 

[taxx]

If you want to reinstall windows, a quicker and easier solution would be to back up all the files you want to keep, then wipe the harddrive and do the reinstall. This will save you a lot of time, and a lot of cd's.

I agree that is the easiest, but if you want to do it using CDs and get the whole thing:

The newest version of Norton Ghost has drivers for cd burners in DOS. It will creat an image over however many CDs you need. I think you can even make one bootable so you can do like a quick restore!

 

[Dave W.]

Thanks for all the info, ghost sounds good for my application!

 

[Campo]

Yes in the new version of ghost you can make a bootable cd (not advisable due to time) and span it over many CD's
the fastest way I've found, is to make the image's in 680mb chunk's on a harddrive then use directcd and drag-n-drop them, then close the cd. when you want to restore then use the ghost boot floppy and restore from image.. with 3-5 cd's it takes 3-6 min.. to totally restore a system.. gotta love that..

 

[tbomb]

anyone happen to have a copy of ghost 2000 laying around?

all this talk of backing up kinda makes me want to change my backup system

 

[Campo]

I want to clarify that only the new version of ghost 2002 will allow you to change the size of the image created, and from version 2K on will allow writing to a CD-R/W.

sorry for the confusion..

 

[Dave W.]

Well people, I went with NTI drivebackup, found it on the net as a 30 day trial software. seems to work real good for cdr or cdrw, you cant even make a bootable cd with it.
Think I will buy it.

 

[mmpc]

So has anyone used NTI's Backup NOW? I'm also looking for a good option to do a weekly backup of files, perhaps an image of the drive, etc. Trying to find out if it's a good program - seems like one of the best I've seen so far. Thanks...