At 07:44 AM 02/08/2001 Frank R.Brown wrote:
>
>I'd like a little more advice on whole machine backup...



Frank:

Ghost is what I use. You can use Ghost to do an entire physical disk or a
partition transfer (a disk to another disk or a partition to another
partition or a disk). Or, you can Ghost a disk or partition into an image
file (with no compression or with high or fast compression); I often burn
this to a CDR with a copy of Ghost executable (we have a site license at
work).

The entire disk, partition or image file can be Ghost-ed to another disk
via internal connection (IDE, SCSI), or via laplink cable and network (our
Network Services will ghost a new workstation installation across the
network; they only need the boot floppy with NIC driver support and a
working network jack). Restoration can be accomplished the same way. I use
Version 5.2 so the newer versions may have other options (and possibly
limitations).

Windows has hidden system files and other structures which must be retained
in order for the "cloned" drive to work. Ghost preserves this, as well as
other drive utilities from other companies.

Plain Jane XCOPY32 does it, too, within a system. You must open a DOS
window within Windows (not full screen or DOS mode). Then execute the
following DOS command:

  XCOPY  C:\*.*   X:\   /r/i/c/h/k/e/y

where C: is the source and X: is the destination drive. Xcopy usually will
not copy a file in use, particularly the swap file (but no matter: Windows
will recreate it - so you might want to set the swap file as a temporary
file on the C: drive; also, empty your recycle bin).  So, as a precaution,
make sure you don't have any other programs running.

HTH.

Regards,

John Chin

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