Disk Imaging

Black Swan

I have a new laptop. Before taking it on the web for the first time, I would like to take a disk image of my 400 GB hard drive (including Windows 7 OS) after removing all the bloatware. Should my rig someday get corrupted by malware that's difficult to remove, or just accumulates fragments and junk overtime, I would like to have a programme that would wash my hard drive, then install my original disk image on my hard drive as if it was new (in minutes, not hours).

The restore disc that comes with the laptop not only has much of what I want, but also tons of bloatware which I would like to remove before taking a disk image.

I looked at Norton Ghost today, and it was claimed that it did disk imagining, was compatible with Windows 7, and that I could write my image to a CD. It further claimed that I could restore my original disk image from this CD in minutes rather than hours. Are these claims valid? Problems with Norton Ghost? The programme cost $80 USD (€55) at Micro Center.

Not sure I would be interested in a disk imagining programme that saved the image to a partition on my hard drive; rather, a removable CD would be preferred, especially if I have to replace my hard drive someday.

Would you use Norton Ghost, or some other disk imaging programme? Product? Link? Comments?

BaconZombie

CloneZilla FTW

Screaming Monkey

Ghost4Linux is quite groovy, have used it on a few servers http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l/

crashedmind

For new Windows PCs I think it's a good idea to create a new partition on the harddrive and clone the virgin Windows partition to it. (You can also create a copy on a separate disk if required).
So, if your original Windows install dies due to software corruption then you can at least boot up the backup Windows install to run a malware clear, data recovery or whatever and recover the corrupted system as opposed to going back to the original install and having the trouble of re-installing and configuring the system again.

This has worked successfully for me on several XP machines - I have not tried it on Windows7.

I used a Linux liveCD (Knoppix) to do this - using "Gparted" partition manager to create the new partitions and "dd" to do the partition clone.
But CloneZilla (live) as previously recommended would do the same.

Note: If you do go down this route of creating a new backup partition on the PC harddrive then you should first do a clone to an external drive first - to save you the irony of killing your PC when you were trying to safeguard it

Black Swan

crashedmind wrote: »

For new Windows PCs I think it's a good idea to create a new partition on the harddrive and clone the virgin Windows partition to it.

By adding a duplicate of your OS (Windows 7), utilities, and apps to a partitioned part of your harddrive, to what extent does this affect your capacity and speed of your laptop?

crashedmind

Blue_Lagoon wrote: »

By adding a duplicate of your OS (Windows 7), utilities, and apps to a partitioned part of your harddrive, to what extent does this affect your capacity and speed of your laptop?

For a basic setup, when you do this do you have a dual-boot system i.e. you boot one of the two Windows versions.

So the impact is:
1. You lose say 10GB for the backup partition - or whatever size you need to fit the backup OS plus say 1GB or 2GB spare to run it.
2. You get a prompt at boot up that delays for say 2 seconds to allow you to select the original or backup OS. This is configurable (boot.ini) such that the delay is less or non-existent.

The run time speed and performance in general is not affected by the backup. It just looks like a separate 10GB drive to the running OS.

Gavin

Alternative option is to keep a barebones host os with a browser and then run anything else in a VM. Get quick bootup times and access to the web and have control of snapshots of the VM.

Useful for work related machines, keep the entire vm encrypted. Not so great for games.

crashedmind

Gavin wrote: »

Alternative option is to keep a barebones host os with a browser and then run anything else in a VM. Get quick bootup times and access to the web and have control of snapshots of the VM.

Useful for work related machines, keep the entire vm encrypted. Not so great for games.

'agreed on using a VM.
Though if the VM is Windows you will likely need a separate Windows license for it - and possibly other apps that are already installed on the host.

I played with this option in the past - but basically using the VM as my internet sandbox only i.e. assuming that my main threat was from the internet so using the VM sandbox for surfing and the host OS for everything else - apps, games, whatever. Suitable configuration of the router sent all but the required internet traffic to the VM.

Blue_Lagoon, I guess the best solution for you depends on your requirements i.e. are you a primarily a gamer, a surfer, an MS Office user, a programmer, a CAD/animation/video editor,...
If you need to squeeze every bit of performance from your rig / play games then you should not run the apps on a VM but you could use the VM for surfing only - and to avoid paying a separate Windows license for surfing only you could try a free user-friendly Linux OS like Ubuntu.

And of course, you can still do a backup of your Windows7 system even if you use a VM.

Note: A VM is a Virtual Machine - a programme like Vmware, Virtualbox, (which are free) ... runs on your Windows7 system and emulates a separate PC allowing you to install another/different OS in that virtual PC. It appears as a separate programme window on your Windows7 system.

Black Swan

crashedmind wrote: »

'agreed on using a VM.
I played with this option in the past - but basically using the VM as my internet sandbox only i.e. assuming that my main threat was from the internet so using the VM sandbox for surfing and the host OS for everything else - apps, games, whatever. Suitable configuration of the router sent all but the required internet traffic to the VM.

Perhaps I could use the sandbox app that comes with KIS2010 (Kaspersky) to provide enhanced security when surfing? (Just installed a few days ago and learning KIS2010)

Have briefly looked at VMware, but not sure I could afford the license at this stage (starving university student). It seemed so handy to just delete the corrupted VM file and start anew.

Had taken a Security+ class awhile back, and remembered that the instructor used a Norton Ghost disk image programme on his new rig, then just washed and reinstalled when corrupted.

crashedmind

I'm not familiar with KIS2010 but it sounds like a convenient form of sandboxing for your needs.

Note that VMWare server/player is free - just need to register. And so is VirtualBox.
Also, you can download pre-built VMs (VM Appliances from vmware.com) - a convenient way to learn and evaluate lots of technologies...

Safe surfing!

CaSCaDe711

Recently acquired a copy of Windows 7 which I'm going to try out on a Vista laptop. Have backed up the entire drive (C, D, hidden partition) using Clonezilla, then intend to do a clean install. Before doing so, is there any way of checking if the Vista backup to the external USB drive is error free..? or, should I just not worry and trust Clonezilla..? :rolleyes:

crashedmind

Disclaimer: I don't have any experience with Clonezilla.
But to answer your Q directly... and then indirectly later:

AFAIK, there are ways to verify your Clonezilla backup image.
But Clonezilla can backup at the file level where only files are copied or at the partition level where all disk bytes are copied.
So it depends on what kind of backup you have.
Also, you'd like to know if your image on backup disk is not bad due to disk corruption.
The low-tech way of verifying the backup image would be to do the backup twice.
The more technical way of verifying it would be to look at the backup files and e.g. if they are gzipped then see if you can ungzip them (though the zip may be split across multiple files).

A less invasive way of evaluating Windows 7 is to leave your Vista as-is on the PC and install Windows 7 to a VM on that PC with VMWare / Virtualbox and playing with it until the 30 day activation period expires.

Then decide if you want to commit to installing Win7 for real.
At which point you can wipe your Vista completely - with or without backing it up, or just install windows7 alongside Vista so you can dual boot either short term. The latter is advantageous when importing settings from your vista setup to win7 setup - something you will probably want to do.

CaSCaDe711

Thanks for the reply. Eventually did 2 backups of the entire laptop drive, and after a clean install of Win7, messing with that for a while, restored the 1st backup, with no issues. Also, each of those backups are under 30GB, so I'll leave them on the drive. Plan to install and configure what I need on Vista, back that up, then do the same for 7.

CaSCaDe711