Disk image vs external hard drive

[thefridge]

Greetings all, Given that the price of a 500G external hard drive is now about $99, is it any use to buy image/ghosting software eg true image? My rig runs nice (q6600/P5K) but I havent done any "imaging" to save the set up-yet. I plan to buy a few plugs, so now is the time to save, but where? internal, external hard drive, or does the imaging route offer some advantage?
Many thanks!!!

[albee1952]

This is one opinion. I absolutely swear by Acronis True Image(but I use version 9). I know version 10 had an issue with restoring from an image. I actually use it for cloning and I don't use the image feature(after getting stung with version 10). I have 3 system hard drives that are all 80-120GB that I rotate as system drives. 1 drive is the last solid working setup(XP with LE7.4), 1 drive is the newest latest setup(running XP and PT8) and the 3rd drive is loaded with Vista and PT7.4. I have decided for now that XP is my choice but I keep the Vista drive around just in case I get the urge to mess with it(maybe it will get Win 7). No matter what happens to any system drive, I can install one of the cloned backup drives and be up and running in 5 minutes(plenty long enough if you have a client looking over your shoulder). Since I built a duplicate computer, I cloned my system drive and installed that clone in the spare computer which now boots and runs exactly the same as my main computer with everything loaded and authorized(yes, I like to have a backup plan and a backup backup plan). There are other drive cloning software choices that likely work as good. If you are a commercial studio, I would absolutely have a cloned spare system drive. If you are a home/private user, then restoring from an image is fine (it just takes longer).

[TOM@METRO]

Probably rather pedestrian, But I simply run a Ghost clone at the end of every week onto alternating backup drives. It has proven to be a worthy habit.

[bblue]

Originally Posted by TOM@METRO

Probably rather pedestrian, But I simply run a Ghost clone at the end of every week onto alternating backup drives. It has proven to be a worthy habit.

I've never seen anyone mention it here, but I use Windows Home Server OS for daily backups. I first got involved with it as a BETA tester, and though it's also intended as a general purpose a/v/software server it does incremental backups very well, and can support up to 10 machines on the local net. That's pretty much all I use it for.

Need a file from a backup yesterday or several months back, or an image from any particular date, it's instantly available over the local net. To install an image on to a new drive (from any machine that use its services) just boot on the WHS recover disk and tell it which system and image. It rebuilds the new drive and you can boot right into it.

Pretty slick system overall.

--Bill

[albee1952]

There is a difference between backing up files(using Server), backing up with a drive image(saves everything including your OS and configuration, but takes an hour to restore from the image) and cloning the drive, which gives you everything and every file back in the time it takes to swap a hard drive. All are valid so pick the one that works best for you(using Server to backup sessions makes a ton of sense though).

[The Weed]

albee

Acronis True Image Home 2009 here. Had it since v9.0. I too had a few issues with restoring images, but only from Windows, never using the Rescue CD and booting from that. v2009 seems to be solid restoring either way.

thefridge

As an alternative, I prefer making an image nightly of my OS drive and my Audio drive, deleting the oldest of each, so that I always have a couple of recent images to go back to should there be any problems. Also, I make an image of my OS drive before any update or upgrade, just in case. You can also mount an image as a (virtual) drive and copy off any file you need.

It's also a good idea to make an image of your OS drive with a fresh, working install of Windows so that it's easy to get back to "ground zero" rather than having to install the OS and find drivers, etc.

Many ways to get to the same place.

Cheers,

[bblue]

Originally Posted by albee1952

There is a difference between backing up files(using Server), backing up with a drive image(saves everything including your OS and configuration, but takes an hour to restore from the image) and cloning the drive, which gives you everything and every file back in the time it takes to swap a hard drive. All are valid so pick the one that works best for you(using Server to backup sessions makes a ton of sense though).

With WHS it's all the same. You can restore the whole drive ready to boot, or pick files to recover. The difference is just how you restore, not how it is backed up. I would think cloning (exact) would only be an advantage if you wanted to maintain the exact filesystem structure, layout and fragmentation.

--Bill