Creating Hard Drive restore DVD's

[vtonymarino]

Hi,
I am looking to create my own custom "Restore" DVD's (similar to what is the "Restore Factory Contents")
However, I want to create my own, with the latest updates already on it, Office, Adobe etc all on that DVD. I am hoping I can save significant time when I do my machine restore annually.

What the best way to go about doing this?
I have heard Norton Ghost is not very user friendly.
Since my T42 does not have a DVD-R, can I plug in an external DVD to create the HD image?

Thanks
T

[Harryc]

Acronis True Image seems to be the utility of choice arond here. I buy an upgrade to it every year and would highly recommend it as well. I don't see any reason that you can't use an external DVD-R to write the image to.
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/pr ... index.html

[lukee]

EZ-Gig HDD Backup software originally shipped with ThinkPad can do this job too, if you have an HDD in UltraBay.