System recovery

[human1987]

Hi PCMechers,

Usually, laptops are given recovery disc when purchased.
I'm wondering if I can create a similar disc for desktop computers?

It's like having the a recovery disc so that the disc will auto install the needed drivers etc and applications that I will need for the computer that I am recovering on. Is this possible for desktop PC?
If so, how? Do I need to purchase any software or there are any recommended freewares available?

I'm using WINXP there's this System Restore. However, this system restore does work only until certain dates.

[Statica]

Recovery disks are nothing but disk images that you can create on your own using software like Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost. Keep in mind, that restoring these images would bring your hard drive back to exactly the same setup as the time you created the images, any changes to your system after you made the image will be lost.

[human1987]

oh..
So everything will be copied? Even the registry values?

Are there any freewares that you recommend?
Are they user friendly? Because I'm quite bad at this "System recovery" stuff

[Statica]

Yes the entire system is copied - verbatim. When you restore the system back from an image, it would essentially boot up as if you were booting up normally. (provided no hardware changes have occured). To reiterate, any changes to your system AFTER you create an image will be lost (say you created a disk image on Monday, and updated the spreadsheet finance.xls on Tuesday. Then restored your system on Friday after a crash, the system would be boot up with the version of finance.xls from Monday.) I know, this seems really obvious, but it is important to understand the difference between imaging or between making scheduled, incremental backups. With incremental backups using software like NovaBACKUP you can ensure that your backups are current. Disk imaging tools are more like snapshots on your computer's state.
Also keep in mind, that system restore does not backup or restore files like documents or emails etc after a disaster. System restore is more like a snapshot of the nuts and bolts of the system function .. which means it will take a backup of key components of your operating system like drivers, registry values etc etc. Should you have a non-boot scenario, system restore can revert back some of these values.
For example, again say you make a system image on Monday, and XP makes a system restore on Monday as well. You work on finance.xls on Tuesday but find that the wiundows update crash on Thursday makes you consider options for Friday:
* system restore - would probably bring back your system to working condition, your finance.xls file is the version from Tues, but the offending windows update files would be reverted back
* disk image - would revert everything back to Monday's version.
That's the upside, the downside is that
a) most crashes or issues like a malware cannot be removed with a system restore
b) the system restore files are still on your hard drive (like leaving your spare keys in your car)

Regarding freeware imaging tools, I personally dont have any recommendations since I haven't used any freeware tools. You could get the same names from google as me, but I couldn't recommend a disaster recovery software without having used it first.

Norton Ghost & Acronis are fairly straightforward, usually if you understand what a disk is, and what a partition is you should get by just fine.