GHOST to DRIVE IMAGE -- Disaster Recovery

[Lord Prism]

I have an 80GB HDD in three partitions
1. 15gb
2. 20gb
3. 40gb
I have a 20GB HDD I want to use for Disaster Recovery and/or BackUp.

I have JUST reformatted and reinstalled my OS and programs the way I like them and I'd like to have a fresh 'image' of this 80GB with the partitions the way they are - I'm only using up
1. 4.7GB of the 15GB
2. 6.3GB of the 20GB
3. 1.5GB of the 40GB (this third partition will mainly be for temporary hold of sound and media files until I burned them to cd).

I have Ghost and it DOES NOT like me trying to make a compressed image of an 80GB drive onto a 20GB drive.
(I suppose I could just image the first two partitions - but won't this stupid program restore a 4.7GB and a 6.3GB partition when I restore this image?!?!)

I just got DRIVE IMAGE and It DID allow me to make the image!


Here's my questions:
1. Will this image restore the 15-20-40 GB partitions the exact same way they are now?
2. How can I do an image integrity check?

Thanks for your help in advance,

[morriswindgate]

Yes to the first question. I do not know of any way that you can check the integeraty of the image after it is written. However I have never had an image fail on me with this program, unlike Ghost which I threw away after I tried to restore an image only to find it bad.

[dldz]

Ok Morris and others have you ever had any bad experiances using the ghost image normally ? Without all the extra partitions ? I just got it as a gift and was wondering. Thx Don

[not important]

I've used Ghost on a unit with a single partition and on the unit I have now, which has 4 partitions on a 40Gig HDD. Never had any problems with it.

[Lord Prism]

Originally posted by dldz Ok Morris and others have you ever had any bad experiances using the ghost image normally ? Without all the extra partitions ? I just got it as a gift and was wondering. Thx Don

Not so much interested in Ghost anymore - it has failed me too many times now.

Originally posted by not important I've used Ghost on a unit with a single partition and on the unit I have now, which has 4 partitions on a 40Gig HDD. Never had any problems with it.

Are you creating the image on a 10GB HDD (for example) on the same pc? That would make your experience similar to mine - if not, then not.

Do I have to buy another 80GB HDD to use Ghost? That program is killing me.

Thanks morriswindgate, I'll take your faith for now and pray that if I have to restore the image that it will restore the image exactly as I have it now (ie with the properly sized partitions).

[RayH]

I did have some problems with a saved image from Drive Image only under a specific condition. The condition was when I first cleaned up my hard drive with Evidence Eliminator and then completely defragged my hard drive.

The image file that was saved to the hard drive was OK. It would restore the necessary partition. But CDs that were burned from that saved file would fail.

But if before I created an image file (after using Evidence Eliminator and defragging) I logged onto the internet (and immediately log off), the saved imaged file would create a CD I could use to restore my hard drive.

It's as if the logging on "fluffed" the hard drive. The best I could see was that the combination of the internal drive image compression and Evidence Eliminator compression was too much for the CD.

[David_Jones]

For the record, you can get Ghost to perform an integrity check on a partition or drive image once created.

I would always suggest that you do that, just in case!

I have used Ghost for some time, and never had a problem. I ALWAYS use it from pure DOS though - don't trust something running under Windows to back up Windows iteself!

David.