Backup Image

Hi guys, I wanted to ask about a good, preferably free program to make a backup image and store it on a disc which I can boot from and the recover the image.

I know back in the day norton ghost used to do this, but I dont know the alternatives now.

 

Does Acronis give the option of taking the image, compressing it to fit on one cd, and also make that cd bootable, though?

I recently tried out Acronis True Image 11, and could not find a way to do that. In fact, it told me that it would need an absolutely ungodly amount of cds. It was, like, 70.

If there is a way, I'd sure like to know how.

 

Roxio does that, but it's not free. You can use a trial version though. Roxio homepage.

 

Ok, so the reason that it was able to be done before is simply due to the fact that hard drives were much smaller and much less disk space was used, not because programs are no longer capable of the same features. So if I got a copy of an older program that did this, say an older version of Ghost, then it would probably require around the same number of disks, or maybe even more if compression technology has grown.

 

Well, I want to backup my OS partition, which is like 15G. Im not talking about backing up the data, I just want to be able to restore the OS.

Acronis seems to be the only program suggested that does that, but are any free or cheaper programs? I am not planning on using it a lot, so I dont really wanna buy that program.

 

I believe free Acronis TI v8 is no longer available. This is the site I downloaded it from and now see what the message says: http://www.acronis.co.uk/mag/pcpro/ati8pe

"We are sorry, the offer is not available at the moment

This offer has already expired. If you have any questions, please contact us."

 

Hmm that's weird, I used it just a week or two ago. Unfortunately, because I have Vista, the program would not work so I uninstalled it. I'd give it(install file and key) to you but I'm pretty sure that it would not be legal, especially considering that it is registered to me.

However... You can download and install the latest version(version 11) and use it for a week or two as a trial. According to Acronis it is the fully functional version 11, it's just limited to 14? days of use. This is what I did to try it out, and I mirrored my drive to a backup drive using it. It's worth trying out at least...

 

Acronis TI v8 was free for a while but now the offer seems to have expired. I found a link http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B0007QCNQQ/ref=dp_olp_2/002-9693670-3500033 where you can purchase v8 for $14.95 + shipping & handling. I guess it's only good for XP and prior versions of windows.