Ghosting your entire drive on a flash or CD- For a T40!

[jeffpas]

Hi All,

I know this topic has been covered before, and I have looked through lots of postings here.

But just wanted to be absolutely clear.

I have a T40 Thinkpad laptop with a hidden partition, lots of software products loaded, configurations, etc.
The laptop is old and unreliable. In fact, my co-workers similar T40 just blew today and he is left having to reconfigure a year's worth of information on his workstation - a disaster.

Isn't there some quick or simple way using IBM's utilities or some freeware software to just get a complete snapshot of your current drive, maybe compress it and offload it, so that if the laptop fails and you get a replacement drive, you can dump it back and come back to this current state? Either to a group of CDs, or maybe a huge flash drive (I have seen affordable 8GB flashes recently)

AKA, "ghosting".

I've heard of Acronis True Image and even have downloaded a trial version of this, but am completely new and don't want to experiment too much or risk the setup I have. The laptop has XP Professional on it but lots of configured packages used for work, shortcuts, bookmarks, saved passwords, etc.

Thanks for any advice!!!

jeffpas

[Johan]

Welcome to the forum!

With respect to backup, I will say: Go with Acronis True Image; you will be amazed how easy and well it works - believe me! Super easy to use, fast! A very useful feature is its ability to make an image (an exact copy of your entire installation, incl. the OS, hidden partitions, all programs, all settings, all user data). Either use the trial-version that you have already downloaded (as far as I recall it has full functionality for a 15-day period), or buy it! The newest version of Acronis True Image Home (ver 11.) was around for only $10 recently, but this offer seems to have expired (see the thread Acronis True Image 11 for $9.00). Watch out; Acronis is "on sale" from time to time, and even if you will have to pay $20 it is surely worth every cent! Now ATI ver. 11 cost around $30 ("regular price"); see eBay of Google around. I have been using Acronis True Image (ver. 9) for several years, and it is very easy, very flexible, very fast and very reliable. I also bought ATI ver. 11 some time ago, but have only used a single time to clone a T60 Vista HDD - worked without a hitch; fast, easy, perfect! Beware that the first release of ATI ver. 11 had some bugs that have been fixed in the most recent release (that can be downloaded from ATI's site once you have bought the program and has a valid serial-number).

A free backup-tool in ThinkPad's is the "Rescue & Recovery" program, which I have however never used myself (I am having a sense of that it is a bit less user friendly than Acronis), but if you serach this forum, you will find plenty of information, incl. the thread Rescue&Recovery VS Acronis True Image. See IBM's page Rescue and Recovery - if you search for "Rescue & Recvery" on IBM's site, a wealth of hits comes up....

Alternatively, in Windows XP Pro these is a built-in backup utility that is better than nothing (I have used if years ago, but don't remember how easy it worked - and I never needed to restore the backup). See for yourself; go to Start --> All Programs --> Accessories --> System Tools --> Backup or see Windows XP Backup Made Easy or How to use the Backup utility that is included in Windows XP to back up files and folders.

PS: Also see the thread Free! Macrium Reflect imaging software.

Johan

[Ralf Hutter]

Another big "thumbs up" for Acronis True Image from me. I use it on each of my T42's and have been using it on all of my desktop systems for years now. It's super-easy to use (compared to Norton Ghost or the old PQ Drive Image) and has bee 100% reliable and bug-free for me.

[sjthinkpader]

I use Apricorn EZ-GIG at home and in the office we use Norton Ghost. Both of these are good too.

[james2008]

Do any of these programs make it easy to restore an image to a system with different hardware?

I just replaced my broken T42 with another T42 so I would be able to simply insert my old hard drive and continue work where I left off. No software configuration - except for a few driver reinstallations - necessary.

Any backup solution that allows you to do something like this when you're restoring to slightly different hardware? Say a T42 disk image being restored to a Dell laptop, or a newer T series. Any safe, reliable methods for doing this?

[sjthinkpader]

All of these programs include a utility to recreate a restore disk, to put the backup image back on to the HDD.

Alternative is just do a clone. Then that backup HDD is actually bootable.

To move your data to a different machine, the Lenovo migration software may be a better solution.

[carbon_unit]

Any backup solution that allows you to do something like this when you're restoring to slightly different hardware? Say a T42 disk image being restored to a Dell laptop, or a newer T series. Any safe, reliable methods for doing this?

Acronis Universal Restore is supposed to do this. It creates an image and strips the hardware information out of it so you can apply the image to different hardware and then install drivers for the new hardware. I have tried it and I never got it to work correctly but others have reported it works great. I must be doing something wrong.

[james2008]

Very interesting. For the original poster, here is a link at the Acronis website describing the feature. Might be a consideration for you in choosing a solution.

I'd like to try it out. It seems that you need an enterprise level version of the software, though?

[jeffpas]

Thanks everyone for your replies.
Someone mentioned a 15 day trial.

I have the Acronis TrueImage 11 (15 day trial).
If I make a system backup with this, and later in the year after the trial expires my hard drive fails, will I be forced to find and buy Acronis at whatever the current going price is at that time to get my information off the disk?

Does it need fully functioning Acronis in order to restore?

I would like to offload/compress everything to a DVD if possible.

[sjthinkpader]

Data recovery service cost $1,000-2,000 from a failed HDD. $50 for a real copy is a good investment. Frequently backup drive kits include a free copy. Many of Apricron's products including USB drive cases give you a free copy of the SW.

[jeffpas]

A valid argument, but then again why shop around for a good priced healthcare plan when all of them beat a $200,000 surgery bill?

$50.00 is a pretty steep price for distributing any software that they can replicate themselves for free, infinitely. I sort of figured what they would do is allow you to do the backup then of course you have to buy the product after the trial period to get your information in a crisis. Or pay for support at the time.

As the oil companies of America proudly say, "You Can Depend On Us to Stiff You in Every National Disaster"

All of that aside, I used the Acronis trial and it was very easy and straightforward. At least I have some backup now. I'll check around and see if there is anything a bit more cost effective for my less than wealthy self. Not to take back from Acronis; if you can afford the limo, then your ride will be that much smoother.

I strongly recommend to anyone though to fully pay for their backup software and support in advance of a crisis!

[sjthinkpader]

My copy of backup/cloning SW is several years old and still work fine. They are one of those necessary investments.

[carbon_unit]

Does the trial version allow you to create the bootable media disc? That is the proper way to use Acronis anyway.

[agarza]

Recently I cloned an old 15G drive on a Thinkpad A22e, destination drive was a E7K100 60GB drive. I used Acronis True Image Home 11.

I was not able to tell Acronis to make the destination C drive partition to use all the 93Gigs on the drive, instead Acronis made a partition on the destination drive with the same disk space (14Gig) and left the other space unasigned. I tried resizing partitions but to no avail.

Any one knows how to make Acronis use all the destination drive space?