How to create an image of my hard drive for easy reinstall?

Zascar

I reinstall my PC every few months when it slows down or causes problems etc. Its a pain in the ass cause I have so many programs to install and settings to configure etc, so it takes many many hours to get it right. I've just just done a fresh install and was thinking of an easier way...

I was told there is a program that will take a snapshot image of my hard drive as it is now with a clean install and all the programs and setting the way I like them. So next time my pc goes slow, I can just do a quick refresh and it will be back to exactly it was when I took the snapshot.

Can anyone tell me how I can do this?
Thanks

quaidox

norton ghost software will sort you out with this. you will have to buy a second hard drive to store the image on, then all you will need to do is copy this image back onto the live drive that is slowing down on you.
the software is dead easy to use as well. hope this help ya.

Zascar

quaidox wrote:

norton ghost software will sort you out with this. you will have to buy a second hard drive to store the image on, then all you will need to do is copy this image back onto the live drive that is slowing down on you.
the software is dead easy to use as well. hope this help ya.

Thanks. I have my hard drive partitioned into 2, can I store the image on the other partition?

Dilbert75

Not sure but if you have a hardware failure on the drive, the whole lot's gone. I'd have an external drive, plug in when you need.

Zascar

Thanks for the tip, Norton Ghost looks pretty good. I actually have a second physical hard drive in there too – just for backup set so I put the image file on there for safety. My reinstall was just under 6gb, and with just standard compression is shrunk it down to about 3.5gb – perfect to fit on a DVD.

I have not yet explored the software’s capabilities yet, but does anyone know what you have to do to re-image the machine with the snapshot I just made?
I assume if you have it on a DVD it can make itself into a self booting app, which deletes the partition and lays the image in instead, is that right?

Hobbes

You can get Norton Backup+Restore as well. It has the ghost features but also will do incremental backups for you as well.

humaxf1

what I do is...

Use a mini PE BART CD (iso available on torrents). It has ghost built-in. So, boot from the disc along with an external hard drive plugged in (will recognise USB devices).

Run ghost and go through the menu etc, then save image to the external disc. Same procedure when you wish to restore the image.

Works a treat!

Blazer

Zascar wrote:

Thanks for the tip, Norton Ghost looks pretty good. I actually have a second physical hard drive in there too – just for backup set so I put the image file on there for safety. My reinstall was just under 6gb, and with just standard compression is shrunk it down to about 3.5gb – perfect to fit on a DVD.

I have not yet explored the software’s capabilities yet, but does anyone know what you have to do to re-image the machine with the snapshot I just made?
I assume if you have it on a DVD it can make itself into a self booting app, which deletes the partition and lays the image in instead, is that right?

you can store it on a second partition but a 2nd h/d is recommended.
With Ghost 10 you can boot from the norton cd..this basically boots into a minixp os much like bartPe. From here you have full access to all drives+partitions so you just point to the image you want to restore and bob's your uncle.
3.5GB image? hell once I finished installing all my apps image was 45gb..there must be some amount of crap in there but it does include all my regularly played games

Khannie

humaxf1 wrote:

what I do is...

Don't promote piracy here please. Ghost and Windows are both copyrighted software.

DonkeyStyle \o/

I've been looking into doing this as well for the same reasons... changing a million and one windows settings, installing all those drivers and apps, several needless reboots... eurgh... the work only starts when you've finished reinstalling the OS IMO.
Even though it'd save me hours of tedious fiddly crap, I'm still too cheap to buy Ghost.

Capt'n Midnight

norton ghost is good, but you need a license per machine that uses it

there are other alternatives
if you have XP PRO you can use the ASR option in NTBACKUP to create a boot disk and image - but rtfm in case it uses the entire drive in stead of just one partition

partimage is on many linux live CD's