Creating an image to backup my HD. some guidance please

[happyhero]

Hi, I have a Medion PC, running Windows XP home edition, which has the HD partitioned into 3. This gives it the ability to simply restore C: drive back to day one, if it all went wrong by the way this is set up, however as I have had this PC for a few years I am now tempted to get a External HD to back things up in case the whole drive failed etc. I have tons of photos and stuff on the HD and although I am backing some up to CD's it would be nice to have this external one to fall back on. I am thinking of external as I have a laptop that I would like to back up too. I think I fancy a 500GB USB2 or firewire if possible (PC has USB2 and firewire but laptop has only USB2).

I have read loads about creating disk images but still have some questions, please can someone help with some answers for me.

I like the idea of just creating an image of my whole C: drive so that if it went wrong I could restore it in a few minutes but how can you access the image if you cannot boot up on your PC in the first place ie if C: drive had major boot problem corruption or something similar?

Could I create several separate images onto my backup drive, ie images of C: D: and E: drives and my laptop and maybe even an extra one of just my Documents all on the same backup drive and then pick which to use/retrieve?

If I wanted to keep backing up my Documents once a week would I have to do a new image each time or could I update the existing image?

Am I right you cannot do anything with the image itself you need software to use the image?

If I wanted to access a file in the image, is that possible or what would I do to get to this file in a say My Documents image?

Would I be better doing an image of C: drive but just copying the whole My documents to the backup drive for easy access?

If I copied the whole C: drive to the backup drive presumably I could access all the files but I could not restore my C: drive if it were corrupted with just a copy?

So is an image the preferred backup method?

Anything else you think I should be aware of?

What software would you recommend for working with images?

Any help appreciated.

 

[Igorian]

I like the idea of just creating an image of my whole C: drive so that if it went wrong I could restore it in a few minutes but how can you access the image if you cannot boot up on your PC in the first place ie if C: drive had major boot problem corruption or something similar?

You would boot from some kind of startup media, that contains a program to initiate the restore. Ghost is a popular imaging application and you use the CD to start the restore. It will prompt for the image file location.

Could I create several separate images onto my backup drive, ie images of C: D: and E: drives and my laptop and maybe even an extra one of just my Documents all on the same backup drive and then pick which to use/retrieve?

Imaging works at Drive/Partition level. Data is best backed up using a separate application (NTBackup for example). You can schedule a backup to happen whenever you like, usually out of hours.

If I wanted to keep backing up my Documents once a week would I have to do a new image each time or could I update the existing image?

See above.

Am I right you cannot do anything with the image itself you need software to use the image?

It would depend on the imaging software. Some have viewers etc.

If I wanted to access a file in the image, is that possible or what would I do to get to this file in a say My Documents image?

As mentioned above, use a Backup application. The best ones allow you to restore at file level.

Would I be better doing an image of C: drive but just copying the whole My documents to the backup drive for easy access?

You should image enough to get the system back to a working state. Again, Image the system, Backup the data.

If I copied the whole C: drive to the backup drive presumably I could access all the files but I could not restore my C: drive if it were corrupted with just a copy?

Correct.

So is an image the preferred backup method?

Anything else you think I should be aware of?

What software would you recommend for working with images?

Any help appreciated.

An image is usually static. Not much point imaging dynamic data. You could do one off image to give you a starting point and then image again, if you change your system significantly or have programs you cannot replace for example. Use Ghost or similar.

Data should be backed up daily. Use NTBackup, Backup Exec or similar.

 

[happyhero]

Cheers Igorian, thank you very much for all the info, all very helpful as usual.

Just have to try and decide which is the best/most reliable external HD now.

 

[Barsteward]

Have a look at Acronis True Image. Latest release is V11.
Does everything you need. Disc Imaging and Backups, including incremental and differential.
Better still. You can even recover a single file from an image.

Great product and good price.

 

[netreg]

So is an image the preferred backup method?

Anything else you think I should be aware of?

What software would you recommend for working with images?

Any help appreciated.

I use Acronis True Image. I found much easier to use than Ghost. Depending how your hard drive is configured, you can install a bootable recovery section into its own partition which is fine if your current Operating system becomes corrupt..

Otherwise you create a bootable cd which you boot from and then restore your image.

I have a USB drive which holds my image backup which i connect to the system, boot from the cd which has usb support, select the image to restore and 30 mins later up and running.

You can also do incremental image backups and you can also view a saved image and select individual folders or files (which i know you can do with Ghost too).

hope that helps