Best way to make a drive image?

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Msmax · #1 Post by **Msmax** » Mon Jun 04, 2007 2:22 pm

Hello,

I have installed a T22 machine exactly the way I like it.
Now I would like to make a HD image on an external USB harddisk.

I would like to boot from a CD or floppy and then be able to restore the image from the USB harddisk to my internal harddisk whenever necessary.

Please give me some advise:
- Which program to use?
- how fast is an image created for a 30Gb HD?
- is it possible to boot from CD/Floppy to restore the image?

My choice will be the fastest image create/restore program available.

Thanks for your help, Msmax

#2 Post by **rkawakami** » Mon Jun 04, 2007 2:48 pm

No real "advice" here, but this is what I do:

- backup drive loaded into an Ultrabay hard drive adapter (USB 1.1 is too slow for my tastes)
- start my system using a Ghost 2003 boot floppy. For the T series I use a port replicator (02K8668) and a 600-series external floppy drive.
- perform a disk-to-disk clone
- exit the Ghost program (not "reset" the computer)
- shut off the system and remove the backup drive

A completely full 30GB drive takes about 20-25 minutes, I'd guess. Been awhile since I accurately timed a backup/clone. Restoring from the backup is just as easy; the only thing that changes is the source and destination drives in Ghost.

Most people seem to be using Acronis. My understanding is that it's free to use for some trial period (don't know what happens after that). It supports external USB drives. I think Ghost does as well, but as I don't use one, I don't know how easy/hard it is to setup using a boot floopy (you'd have to load some DOS USB drivers I would say).

The reason for using a Ghost boot floppy is that Windows is not loaded/running and thus getting in the way of the backup. This is just my preference.

edit: Was just reminded about this from another post...

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=27721

GnatGoSplat · #3 Post by **GnatGoSplat** » Mon Jun 04, 2007 2:50 pm

It's not fast, but Ghost does everything you want.
Ghost can boot from CD, floppy, even USB flash drive if your laptop supports it.
I don't think it's very fast though. Through USB, it could take an hour. For one thing, USB is not very fast. Also, Ghost uses some kind of custom built-in driver for USB compatibility on top of DOS. I think it's not going to be as fast as say, a Windows-based backup utility.

There may be something faster that uses Linux, but I'm not familiar with Linux.

Msmax · #4 Post by **Msmax** » Tue Jun 05, 2007 3:35 am

Thanks for your answers. Very helpfull.

I will try to find an Ultrabay hard drive adapter on Ebay.
I will first try the USB 2.0 solution. I already have an USB2.0 PCMCIA card and an external USB drive.

Thanks, Msmax

dsigma6 · #5 Post by **dsigma6** » Tue Jun 05, 2007 8:07 am

Acronis has a 15 day trial. I've used both Acronis and Ghost, and I find Ghost unusable. At least with the Acronis trial you can clone, unlike the other one.

#6 Post by **rkawakami** » Tue Jun 05, 2007 12:56 pm

Not sure if you are referring to Ghost, Dan, but I've been able to clone drives amongst the T23s. By that I mean to copy the entire system from a smaller drive to a larger one and have it boot. Windows XP will say that new hardware was found (a different disk drive) and request a re-boot. As I've been playing with a couple of old images, I've only copied a drive that had the hidden service partition a few times. Including the '-ib' switch and using the IBM service partition restore diskette seemed to do the trick in getting the partition recognized again.

As I speak (okay, type), I'm swapping my daugther's two T23 systems with ones that have built-in wireless. At the same time I'm replacing an almost full 15GB drive with a 40GB drive. Ghost has finished 50% of the drive and it has taken exactly 11 minutes (1.13Ghz system with 4200rpm 15GB main drive and 5400rpm 40GB in the Ultrabay). So I was pretty far off with my earlier estimation

. It will take 22 minutes for 15GB and 40 minutes for 30GB.

I did have an interesting (and unexpected) problem with Ghost before doing this copy. I booted the system with the 40GB drive in the Ultrabay after removing the 15GB drive to make sure that there was nothing on the drive. When Ghost loaded, it thought my 40GB drive was #1 (in the Ultrabay) and the 15GB drive #2 (in the HD bay). I shut down, removed the 40GB Ultrabay drive, re-installed the original 15GB drive, booted, then shut down again. This seems to have gotten Ghost to recognize the drive in the laptop as #1 and the Ultrabay as #2. It was obvious to me since the drive sizes are quite different. Not sure if this is a known bug or not

.

dsigma6 · #7 Post by **dsigma6** » Tue Jun 05, 2007 1:05 pm

Ray, I don't know what I said, but your response was very hurtful.

Ray, I don't know why I just said that.

With an HD in the ultrabay, cloning with Acronis (40GB drive) takes about 10 minutes in my experience. The same thing over USB on the T23 takes well over an hour!

#8 Post by **rkawakami** » Tue Jun 05, 2007 3:07 pm

dsigma6 wrote:At least with the Acronis trial you can clone, unlike the other one.

I assumed that you were talking about Ghost here. Didn't mean to hurt you Dan, but that's been my experience with Ghost. I do have to admit that I've never tried Acronis; it's more of "I know this works, so don't mess with it" philosophy that I have.

I never did recommend that anyone use the T2x USB connection to backup/clone a system, but if that's all you have, then you gotta bite the bullet and wait. The other options are to use an Ultrabay HD adapter or get a PCMCIA-USB 2.0 adapter.

wrybread · #9 Post by **wrybread** » Wed Jun 06, 2007 8:19 am

Ghost is great for cloning a drive or making images, and as previous posters have said, you can boot from dos with a ghost boot floppy or CD. Ghost isn't a free program though. If you were curious though, you can download a ghost boot CD on emule...

Note that even if your machine has USB 2.0, GHost will only clone at USB 1.1 speeds, at least in my experience. And I *highly* doubt it'll recognize your PCMCIA USB slots.

If you want free, you might investigate the "utlimate boot cd". It's a collection of free tools on one bootable CD, available here:

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

It has the free version of HDClone on it, which works great.

Personally I woudn't worry about speed if I were you. It's not like you'll be doing this really often, and the longest it'll take is an hour.

nikki605 · #10 Post by **nikki605** » Wed Jun 06, 2007 9:21 am

I have no experience with Ghost, but the first time I had a need to image a HDD, I used Acronis Migrate Easy ver 7.0 (free 15 day trial). I connected the new drive to a USB 2.0 PCMCIA card for the improved speed. It took about an hour.

The user interface was simple and straight forward. The cloned drive worked without a problem.

Kaervak · #11 Post by **Kaervak** » Wed Jun 06, 2007 2:54 pm

Another program to look into is Drivesnapshot at drivesnapshot.de. The nice thing is it works in Windows and will completely image the drive while the OS is running. It's free for 30 days but, you can restore the image at any time after those 30 days without having to buy the program. You can specify the image size as whatever you like and then burn it and drivesnapshot to a bootable CD/DVD, setup an autoexec.bat and it will automatically restore the system for you. I've used it a couple times before and it's worked quite well.

Best way to make a drive image?

Best way to make a drive image?

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