All of Karen's tools are very good.

I use Karen' Replicator as well on a daily bases, along with doing image backups once a week.
Doing those image backups have save my computer a couple of times.
Once when I got a nasty virus that pretty much trashed Windows, and one time when I installed new software that made Windows extremely unstable even after uninstalling the software.

Tim

Thank you Kemmrich and others for the link and affirmations of Karen's Replicator.
I have started building all the Settings/Jobs I need to do a reasonable automated back-up... This is exactly that "something" I was looking for... LOL

Tim, what program do you use for doing the image thing... and do you image all the hard drives or just the one with the OS?

Dick

I use a program called Image For Windows.
It costs around $50 and worth every penny.
Another really good one for doing an image backup is ghost.
I still use Windows XP, so have never tried the backup utility that comes with Windows 7.
I only backup my main drive c. It has the OS, application programs and related data.
I had decided to start backing it up because if anything happened to the drive there's know way I could ever get things back to the way they were before a crash.
I never really expected to ever have to restore a backup image just thought of it as insurance.
Well as I said in another message I got that nasty virus and had no choice but to restore the last backup I had made.
I gotta admit I was pretty nervous when I put the recovery CD in and rebooted the computer and hit f8 to boot from the CD.
When the restore software came up I told it where the image backup was, chose defaults for all the options, hit enter and prayed. LOL.
When the restore was done I rebooted the computer and dam if it didn't boot up just fine, but in a state before I got that virus.
I lost about 3 days of e-mails and that was it.

I start an image backup every Sunday night just before going to bed.
I have a batch file set up to automate the process so just click on that and in the morning the image backup is on one of my external drives.
I hope this helps.

Tim

Thanks Tim, that's sounds like a great idea...

I love this Karen's Replicator.... love it, Love it! Really! Works like a charm... LOL
A Real life-saver!

Thank you all.

Dick

Hi Tim,

Now that I have automated the back up of my data files, I am ready to tackle the process of imaging my C Drive.

Reading your last post, I am a bit confused... you wrote "...when I put the recovery CD in and rebooted the computer and hit f8 to boot from the CD..."

Later you said: "...and in the morning the image backup is on one of my external drives."

So which is it? Are you making a CD? or using an external Hard Drive?

Also, when creating that image every Sunday night, is the program just updating changes from the last image created or is it rewriting the entire image all over again? And how long does it take if you have a C: Drive that's 500Gb (Although only currently 250Gb is full)? Is the image going to be the same size as the original on the C Drive?

Thanks in advance.

Dick

Sorry 'bout the confusion.

I first have Image For Windows create the image backup of my main drive on an external drive.
That usually takes a few hours because I have the program go back and verify that the image backup is valid by comparing it to the main drive backed up.
I keep that file till the next time I do an image backup or have to restore it because of a problem like a virus or something.

Now to restore that backup on to the computer you need a way of running the restore software with out booting up windows.
I have a bootable CD with the restore program on it that I put in to the CD drive and turn on the computer.
I press f8 so I can tell the computer to boot from the CD drive instead of drive C.
At that point I just follow all the prompts to restore the backup on to the C drive.
Caution, when the software starts the restore process everything on that drive will be overwritten by the backup image.

Note: this procedure is for a drive with only 1 partition since that's what I have.

I have no idea how this would work using the backup software that comes with Windows 7.

Tim

Thanks Tim.

btw, I only have 1 partition too... and I hear you about the Windows 7 application...

So if I understand it correctly,

1) you make an image of your C drive onto an external hard Drive every week.
2) You also make a Bootable CD (only once) from Drive C, and keep it in case you need to do a restore someday (after an unlucky incident!)
3) You didn't answer my question about the size of the image: "is it the same size as the info on the C drive?" I am assuming it would be.

Is it really necessary to burn a CD? I just hate relying on CDs or a DVD, as some PCs these days don't even have a CD Drive (I do for now). Can you not put that information on the same external drive and ask the BIOS to boot from another Drive when you click F8 (or whatever button your Motherboard/system needs -- I think mine now asks for the DEL button)?

OOPS, didn't see that question.

One of he options in creating a image backup is weather or not to compress the data.
I choose to compress. That does also make the backup process a bit slower as well, but like I said I start it just before I go to bed so as long as it's done in the morning that's fine.
Used space on my computer: 111 GB
Size of backup image file: 90.8 GB
Really not a big difference there, but every little bit helps.

I can't see any reason why you couldn't just boot up from a external drive and run the restore software from that drive instead of from a DVD or CD.
Maybe even from an SD card as well.
gotta admit never tried that though. Always used the CD.

Wow, I didn't realize that some of the newer PC's don't come with a DVD drive.
I got my last computer in late 2008. It's a Dell desktop.

Tim

Thanks Tim for the quick reply.

Dick

I use Acronis True Image Home to image my C: drive (I just do a straight backup of the files on my D: and E: drive, so I don't need to image that to get back up and running.

I don't know what Tim uses, but with ATI Home, you boot with a CD and then using the interface, you create the image file onto another hard drive. It can be an external USB,external eSATA, external Firewire, or even an internal (different) hard drive. ATI compresses the data (I generally get about 25% compression, since most of the files are binary data, versus easier to compress text). Takes about an hour to do the image (my C: drive has about 150GB on it). You also have an option to break the image file into smaller chunks. I generally choose the DVD size, so I can back them up to individual DVD's, should I choose.

There are other solutions, but ATI is what I've been using successfully for many many years and am very happy with it.

EDIT: Oh, and just a few weeks ago, the diagnostics on my hard drive indicated the drive was going bad. So, before it died, I was able to create an image, pop a new hard drive in, restore the image, and in a matter of a couple of hours was back up and running as if nothing had happened.

Ain't image backups great.

Sounds like we sort of do the same procedure except I run the backup software from my main harddrive and create an image file on external harddrive.
When restoring the image is when I have to put the CD into the CD drive and do the restore.
I use Image For Windows mainly because it's the best one I found that works with my speech software.
That is for backing up. When restoring there is no speech so I have my wife tell me what's on the computer screen.

Tim

Tim,

If I hear you correctly, you are saying your hearing is much better than your eyesight?
God Bless you my friend... I feel for you.

Dick

Yep, blind is a bat.
Thank god for modern technology and speech synthesizers.
Tim

Hi, Tim -

I could do it from within Windows, but I have found it every so often to glitch. It's much cleaner to take an image if Windows isn't running.