If your computer failed right now do you have a
backup of your data? If you do
great, if you don't how much will it cost you to recover that data?
I am not saying to do an image of your computer at the end of each business day.
The usefulness of a image of you hard drive is in case of a catastrophic
hardware failure, your power supply goes south and takes your hard drive with
it. Or your hard drive fails. With an image of the partition(s) that have your
data stored on them you can recover faster with less work or heartache. To go
along with the image you have to have a comprehensive data back up plan and schedule.
How it works:
Along with your comprehensive data backup program you create an image of your
operating system and data partition(s).
Example number one, a personal system:
Lets say you have a brand new computer (works
with an old one too!), it either comes with the OS installed or
your install it. Then you install your programs (with all those nagging key
codes, activation codes, anti theft programs, etc....) and you customize your
desktop to your liking. Now you have invested at least four hours if not more
into just getting the darn thing where you can actually do some work! Ok how
much did that cost you? I mean how much is four hours of your business day
worth?
With the imaging program you can create a complete image of the hard drive. You
can either create an image of the hard drive itself or of each of the partitions
on the hard drive (partition image is recommended because you would have to have
the same drive from the same manufacture with the same specifications as the
original to recover with a hard drive image).
So your hard drive has failed, you get the new one, it is installed now what?
Well if you had a image of the original hard drive partitions you could put the
images on your new hard drive and be back up and running in less than an hour.
Once you have the image on the hard drive, you go to your latest backup and
restore your data.
Done, looks just like the old one, eh? And as a bonus you
don't have to find those key codes, call or contact the program publisher to
unlock the activation again, it is all ready installed!
Example number two a business with
multiple systems:
Before I get into the why and how this only works on computers made by the same
company and have the same model number, differences between companies and models of
computers will cause the image to fail on startup!
Lest say you have a business, you are going to expand or buy new equipment. The
local computer store or shop wants $XXX per hour to setup and install all your
systems with the OS and all the software you have for each computer.
You will
need to check with the program's publisher about licensing your software, if you
have a corporate or enterprise license you will not have any problems installing
all your software on one computer and creating an image to deploy to all the
other computers.
So to save your self a lot of $$$ you decide to buy Norton Ghost, create an image
on one of the new computers. To do this you or the tech will setup one system,
load all the software,
Optimize the OS!
Then using ghost create the image. Ok where will you put
the image once you decide to do this? The fastest way is to create a separate
partition on the image computer and not format it. You will have to either boot
the system from dos or use a program like ERD Commander (see my review of this
fine program!) or Bart's
PE and then format the partition and create your image there. Once
created you can then copy it to a CD or a DVD. This makes the image portable and
tamper proof.
Before you begin:
You will need two things before you can create your image:
So now you have it started and are ready to create the image, where are you
going to store it? You can't use any of the boot devices they are to small, your
image(s) may be over 1 gig, the OS partition will be that or more by itself.
You could use the hard drive in the computer if there is enough space to
create another partition of say five gig or a little more. You could use an
external USB drive, or if you have a second drive in the system use that.
Another place could be the second partition if you have two partitions on the
hard drive, this will only work for the OS partition.
Note: if you are using the hard drive in the computer you should move the OS
image off the second partition before you image it, leaving it on the partition
then creating an image will increase the size of the image by the amount of
space the OS image occupies, say it is 1.3 gig, then the image you are creating
will be the data on the partition plus the OS image of 1.3 gig.
Now you have your images what next? Well you need to store them in a safe
place. Look at the size of the images, will they fit on CD's? or maybe a DVD? If
you used a external hard drive is it reliable? Do you carry it with you when you
travel? Hard drives are extremely reliable but they are vulnerable to shock,
electro magnetic discharge, and voltage spikes. They will fail. Put the images
on a CD or DVD as soon as possible.
Tutorials for creating and restoring a ghost image:
This site contains a lot of information. As
with any publication not all information is available due to space, time, or
subject constraints.
If you have a question that you did not find the answer
on this web site you a can
ask your question here and we will endeavor to get you the most up to date
answer possible!
