What is the difference bt backing up & imaging your hard drive? Can you do both? How?

Question

My friend bought a new external hard drive that has greater space than does her computer's C:\ drive to mirror image ALL the contents (including programs) her entire C:\ drive to so that if it crashes, she can do a simple reinstall from the mirror image.

She knows that backup is only for data. She thinks that Norton Ghost 12.0 will IMAGE her C:\ drive, but Norton won't help her & she just paid for both the ext. HD and Ghost 12.0.

The ext. HD had FAT32 file system, but her C:\ drive is NTFS. She uses Windows XP Pro. She has so many programs & data files, but does not know how to do the first image because Norton Ghost 12.0 began to copy everything onto the FAT32 external HD, so, it was all messed up.

Should she format the external HD? How to get it to have a NTFS file system? Then what should she do to properly image her hard drive, then rewrite it on a monthly basis? Should she also do backups? How should she handle this?

What is a partition? What is "copy" vs. "image" vs. "bkup?

Answer 1

ok i will try to break this down for you a bit



yes norton ghost will image the entire hard drive THIS IS A GOOD THING !! , the ext hard drive should be formatted to ntfs



when creating the image you have to point the image to the ext drive and name it , also u need to use the wizard and create a boot disk so you can image the drive back in case of failure



if you do not understand any of this feel free to contact me

on messenger dr.bucksnort and i will be happy to help

Answer 2

Ghosting creates an exact replica of the source disk, something like a xerox copy. You have to use the same capacity for the external hard disk as the C drive.

So if the original hard disk crashes, it can be replaced with the new disk and start off immediately.

Backup is a utility that saves the system files, data files and program files. If the computer crashes, the OS has to be installed first, then use the backup restoration so that the data is restored.

I hope you got the difference.



Added: Partition is a part of the hard disk that is recognised as C or D etc. ff you divide the hard disk to partitions. If you don't, all the hard disk is C.

Each partition can be formatted differently.

Note: You don't need to format the external disk if you are ghosting. It creates the exact replica.....

Answer 3

Well, a paritition is a logical drive. It allows for a user to slice up the HD into different sizes...



ex 130 HD

you can have upto 4 primary partitions (that what is bootable) and numerous logical paritions (as many as you want until you have used up the full 130 HD.)



So, once you have installed the external HD in the system.



start, run, compmgmt.msc

click on disk management.



From there you can format the disk.



or you can just right-click on th e drive icon in my computer and choose format from the menu.



Norton Ghost is a bootable CD. Boot from it and do the image.



An image is a snap shot f the current config. When you restore, it will be exactly as you have it on the system today.



You can use ghost viewer to extract single files if you wish, but it is mainl used for cloneing machines....





IF all you care about is your data. Just schedule a backup. This is ony for data as you say and that if good for versioning...



Copy is pretty much the same as a backup, only a backup is compressed to save disk space.

Answer 4

Right click on the My Computer and go to manage, under storage click disk management. From here you can format the external drive using NTFS.



Most users use backup just for specific folders on the drive. An image is basically that, it's an ISO 9660 file system image of the entire HD.



I would do the format of the external using NTFS, then setup an automatic backup using Nortons Ghost software.

You would have to read the norton manual to see how to schedule the image backup. I have never used the schedule before, just a basic ghost image.

Answer 5

She should not do a image since all she needs to do is backup. She can use Windows backup utility to set this up. If it is not listed in her All Programs>Accessories>System, then she will have to install it off a Windows CD.

Before running the backup she will need to plug the ext hdd in and format it to ntfs. This can be done by right clicking My Computer and choosing Manage and then going to Dis Management and selecting the ext hdd and choosing format. Then there is the option of what file system and she can choose ntfs. This will take a long time to format.

A mirror image would be something like a snapshot of her hdd contents and would be the full size, a backup condenses the files so they do not take as much space. Normally we only do images for copying cds and/or adding service packs to windows install cds for ease of repair installations.