Best Ghost program for Windows

[worzelGummidge]

Acronis is a good product. It has got me out of a pickle a few times.
You can use it to image a hard disk onto external (USB disk, DVD (if small enough) or internal media (2nd disk).
You can also create a bootable CD which you can use to boot up your PC and copy your disk onto another new disk if you have a hard disk failure.
You can also create a small image onto your boot disk for but of course if you loose your boot disk then you loose the bootable image.

It could deal with being a little simpler by not having so many other things that you can do.

I have used Ghost but could not get on with it very easily.
Anyway Acronis works for me and it has worked in my hour of need (hard disk failure on laptop & main PC).
You do tend to find though that if you do use this product then you also have to purchase at least one additional USB disk but I guess it all comes down to time and money.

Do you spend a a little time and money prior to loosing your disk or lots of time and money after your main disk has failed.

People only tend to loos a hard disk once without a proper backup and then they get organised after the event. It's best to get organised BEFORE the event if possible.

[Clippy]

Bookmarked from a recent article regarding this topic:

Macrium Reflect

[Ardesco]

I would suggest trying:

http://www.partimage.org

Does the job as well as ghost

[MPwannadecentincome]

Thanks for the prompt suggestions guys.

Acronis looks a bit bells and whistley for my taste. Always seems to happen - A good new product is released, and over time the manufacturers feel the need to pile on more and more features until its original function is almost buried in the middle of them all and actually quite hard to find!

I suspect if I installed Acronis it would be badgering me incessantly to set up backup times and policies, and wanting to run scans at all hours of the day and night, whereas all I want is a simple utility that copies my C: partition on demand, and restores the copy on demand, wallop, wallop, no mess no fuss.

(Not even remotely interested in other partitions, as I can easily copy these in Explorer.)

Runtime Software's DriveImage XML looks just the ticket though.

Glad to see you have got yourself sorted out!

[OwlHoot]

Thanks for the prompt suggestions guys.

Acronis looks a bit bells and whistley for my taste. Always seems to happen - A good new product is released, and over time the manufacturers feel the need to pile on more and more features until its original function is almost buried in the middle of them all and actually quite hard to find!

I suspect if I installed Acronis it would be badgering me incessantly to set up backup times and policies, and wanting to run scans at all hours of the day and night, whereas all I want is a simple utility that copies my C: partition on demand, and restores the copy on demand, wallop, wallop, no mess no fuss.

(Not even remotely interested in other partitions, as I can easily copy these in Explorer.)

Runtime Software's DriveImage XML looks just the ticket though.

[suityou01]

I backup my XP machines by taking partition images using the free Runtime Software's DriveImage XML. Link.

(For mucking about with partition sizes and locations I use GPartEd running off bootable Linux CD.)

Oooooh look at you. All Linuxy.

Shouldn't you all be running Linux anyway.

[DimPrawn]

Acronis? Never had any problems there.......

WHS. Makes Ghost look positively ancient.

[MPwannadecentincome]

Norton Ghost. You don't have to use floppies, you can use a CD, netboot etc.

WHS - I used Ghost in the past and it never asked me for a floppy - I did my backup onto DVD. Hmmm that was a long time ago I think I had better do another one, and the laptop too.

But Norton Ghost is for backups, not partitioning.

[Amiga500]

Norton Ghost. You don't have to use floppies, you can use a CD, netboot etc.

[VectraMan]

Yes Acronis seems to work pretty well from that point of view (though I'm still having problems with it for regular data backups.).

You can boot off a recovery CD and restore the contents from a NAS, or USB external drive. And it can run without shutting down the system.

[stingman123]

Acronis? Never had any problems there.......

[RichardCranium]

I backup my XP machines by taking partition images using the free Runtime Software's DriveImage XML. Link.

(For mucking about with partition sizes and locations I use GPartEd running off bootable Linux CD.)

[OwlHoot]

I'm looking for a program to ghost partitions under Windows.

A couple of years ago I bought Symantec Ghost, but was amazed and disgusted to find it relied on floppy disks! As my PC doesn't even have a floppy drive, and floppy disks are increasingly hard to find, that's Symantec out.

Any other suggestions? I did hear there was another ghost program with a good reputation.