Making a bootable image of the C drive

what I want to learn about is how to make a kind of image of a Windows XP installation (which would ideally fit on a CD) which I could use later to restore the whole C drive back to exactly the way it was when I made the image (including all the installed apps, etc.) Because living in China you seem to end up reinstalling your OS much more frequently for various reasons (it's virus heaven, however careful you try and be,) and I'm really bored with going through the whole tedious process of reinstalling apps etc etc.

Now I've seen some of the computer techs here (the Chinese ones, with whom I cannot communicate fluently) just stick a CD in a computer, press a button, and like 15 to 20 minutes later they've got a perfect (Chinese!) installation of Windows, with Office and various other bits and pieces all just there without having to be reinstalled. How? I want to make a CD like that for myself.

I just splashed out on something called Acronis True Image. Can I do it with that? I just backed up the C drive with it (to another partition), but the file is like 6GB or something and obviously that's not going to go on a CD, and I'd have no idea to boot from it even if it did!

 

Included in Windows XP there is a utility that will allow you to create a backup of your system and data.
It is called ASR (Automated System Recovery)
It is a multi-step process to create CDs with your data and it requires a floppy drive to create a bootable system disk.
You can get a complete discription of the process by:
start>help and support
type "ASR" in the search box.

 

Thanks for the responses, but I don't think the nlite idea is right. What I've seen them use is some kind of Ghost (?) image of an XP installation which they've somehow compressed onto a CD. They just set the PC to boot from the CD drive, put the CD in the drive, when it boots up they have a kind of menu with various options (don't know what they all are of course), they pick one, (usually the first one) and then a complete XP installation is there when it's finished, nothing missing at all as far as I can tell, in fact there's a bunch of apps (Office, WinRAR, Media Players, etc) all ready to use without needing to install them.

I assumed how to make a CD like this must be common knowledge amongst those more savvy than me. Is this not the case?

 

Are you sure it is an image?
It could be an illegal copy of XP that has been packaged with other software!
Do they have all the previous files etc?
If it is an image, often do they create the image?

 

I just bought Acronis so I can't help there much yet, but that is what you want to use to make a ghost copy of your XP partition and restore it when XP buggers up.

 

Many thanks for the replies.

re. what smurph said: No I'm not sure what I've seen them using is an image, but I'm assuming it is (maybe wrongly?) because they use 1 CD and select 1 option from some kind of menu. I think I saw the Symantec logo on the menu at least once!

re. augie and kestrel: I just bought Acronis True Image 11, and like I said I have backed up my c drive to another partition, (and I do feel good about that, 'cos if/when I need to I can use that backup. )

I guess I should stop being lazy and just give the manual a good read, right? Get to know the new software well.

 

I believe what they are using is Norton (Symantec) Ghost
You can read a review of the program here:
http://diddledog.com/newsletter/?p=71

 

I use an older version of acronis true image (v6) and when you install it, it asks if you want to make a boot cd, just say yes, you can also create one by running the app at any time once installed. Then if you create a backup on another partition or drive you just use the boot cd to start acronis from outside of windows (from a boot to the acronis program) and you can point it to the hard drive image you want, or to dvd's you made by specifying the drive, and install the backup.

What I usually do is start from a new reformatted drive, yes you would have to reformat again but this would be the last time. I only install acronis, and a firewall so I can go online and get all my critical updates to that point (you can use "apup" or a slipstreamed cd to save some time). I also usually install a zip program and winrar but no graphics drivers or mobo drivers so I can use this image for any PC and I save it to DVD (you can disconnect from the net and remove the firewall if you want to save the room before creating the image) using the acronis backup program.

With version 6 its a little tricky, it doesn't always give you the choice of rom drives to create an image on, but if you type the drive letter in the little window and add an image name followed by .tib it will go to the rom drive to make the image. so (D:\First Backup_4-10-08.tib). It will also span the image across several disks if it will not fit one.

After the original driverless backup to dvd, I start adding stuff to my OS, drivers, programs I use all the time, and a permanent firewall and anti-virus. Spyware apps, you get the picture all your stuff. Video editing photoshop, whatever. Now, once everything is in, I make a new backup to another drive or partition, this one will be big so I don't waste dvd's on it because they're too slow when recovering anyway, a hard drive image is much faster.

On ocassion with my drive full of downloaded music or other saved data I might redo the backup image and I may or may not erase the original to save room. When something bad happens and I need my system back first I try system restore and if that fails I install the hard drive backup by booting to the acronis boot disk.

If I build a new system, as long as its hard drive is the same or larger than the one I made the dvd image from I can use the acronis boot disk to load the dvd image I made to the new drive (after formating it of course) and its faster than loading windows with the XP cd. Since I didn't put any drivers on it the motherboard and graphics can change with no lasting error (windows loads its own drivers at first, and they will be on the backup dvd, but the errors that come from that are readily fixed once the real drivers are installed to replace windows generic).

My fingers are out of breath, I better stop for awhile.

 

A good summing up by Appzalian. I use HyperOs, for my backups.
No cd/dvd needed. SETUP XP, OR VISTA , OR, BOTH ON SEPERATE PARTITIONS.Then drivers, antivirus/firewall,and any program I want on that partition. Then use autoupdater from majorgeeks downloads (saved on cd/dvd)- then activate, if new install.
Then Install HyperOs, partition the hard drive, save a seperate partition for data, and other items that I dion't want to lose.
Then having left a large C: partition, with HyperOs, copy the C;installation to D:, (about 10 minutes to do, depending on how much is on there), Then reboot into th D: partition , wait a minute or two for HyperOs to configure XP/Vista on the D; partition. Then drag and drop a copy of the C: drive to the backup window ,save it to the C: drivebackup, again 10 to 15 minutes at the most.
If I use the D: partion, for extra/different programs, I , then switch to the C;partion, and copy that partition , again to the backup window, and I have copies on the hard drive, if one becomes corrupted, that can be reinstalled from the other partition,any time.
Personally I run Vista, and XP, on the same hard drive, with backups of both, and I added another dhard drive to give me more options- all the time taking about 10 minutes to install the virgin setups that I had in the backup.
The system has worked well for me for years, and I never need another backup utility .
It is down to the individual - you have acronis - look into the help window on it.

 

Sounds like your looking for norton ghost 2003. Its the one I use anyway. It will put a image on dvd for ya. Has never ever failed me. Worked everytime. Sadly can not say thats about acronis or whatever its called. Computer failes, then you can put in the dvd and restore it. Ghost 2003 can be a bit geeky and trickey. I have just switched to ghost 12. Don't like the looks of ghost 14. There was no ghost 13.

So in short try norton ghost 2003 but be warned its a bit geekey. Or give norton ghost 12 a shot. Now either way. Make sure your computer is ok fine. Put a text file or folder in the middle of your screen. Ghost drive your disk. Try to restore your disk. If you see that text file or folder you put in the middle of the screen just before you made your ghost image, Guess what. It worked and you did it right. Make sense. Just change something on your screen right before you make the ghost image to verify it all worked.

If you run dual hard drives, a master and slave, you can restore the image from your slave drive. Hope that helped.

I always sugest to everyone. If you can. Run dual hard drives, hard drives are cheep and a easy install. i just paid 160 for 2 new 250 gig sygates at walmart. Make backing up lots easier. Gives you another drive incase your dive c fails. One last thing. You can run dual xp pros, dual xp homes. Its a super simple edit on xp boot file that anyone can do. Vista Im not sure. Don't run it.

 

Wow, guys! Now that's a whole heap of helpin' !

Many thanks, I feel like I've had a monster meal and I have to digest it before I can do anything else!

 

I like how he says acronis is no good and then keeps calling ghost geeky. Acronis is the cats meow and gets all the accolades when it come to several PC Magazine recommendations.

 

I use Acronis True Image v10 which seems pretty simple to use (even I can use it). I try to keep my my windows partition as small as possible so that backups don't take too long as I try to backup frequently.
I install all other programs to the other partition. Works for me.
I keep my backups on an external harddrive.
Since the Acronis CD is bootable is there a need to create a bootable CD?
Also, is there a benefit of having a copy of just the windows backup on a dvd? Could the usb drivers not be working to allow recovery from an external hard drive?

 

PooLips, if you buy acronis from the store the cd maybe bootable, I don't know. If you downloaded it from their site you have to create the boot cd on your own. It takes about 45 min for me to load XP onto a hard drive from scratch and that doesn't include any apps or drivers or critical updates. It takes about 20min to load an image of that same installation and that does include some basic drivers, apps and all the criticals up to that point in time.

I use Acronis v6 that I purchased online years ago and its still great so I don't have the desire to buy the one at the store now (it wasn't in any stores when I got version6). When I decide to put my OS on a sata drive I will buy the new version until then 6 is fine with me and I have no idea if the disk you buy is bootable.

 

I'm reading all this with great interest,as I have just purchased a new motherboard and will be installing it in the next few days sometime and I can't decide if I should do I repair install of XP Pro, a clean install after backing up what I need, or what. I'm leaning toward doing the clean install, then installing all my apps, then creating an image and burning it to a DVDRW (or two). I do have a question: if I create an image on an external hard drive, and get a massive virus infection (which is highly unlikely) or my OS gets corrupted beyond repair, how do I restore from the external USB drive? If the mobo doesn't have a boot-from-USB option, ho do I get the image from the external to my main C: drive?

Thanks!

( @ baklogic - I just looked at the HyperOS web site... W O W ! ! ! Amazing stuff they've got going over there! I can't believe I've never heard of HyperOS until today... and the HyperDrive!! Double W O W ! ! ! From power on to loaded XP desktop in 2-3 seconds!!! AMAZING!!! (expensive, but amazing )).

 

You don't have to boot from the usb drive, acronis allows you to create a boot cd, thats what you boot from, then once loaded you would point it to the proper image on the usb drive. I like to create my first image to dvd before any drivers have been loaded, all I load is maybe winrar and acronis. then the backup I create will be good for a system even if I change motherboards or graphics cards. Later after all my normal programs are loaded, I cleanup, defrag and run a program from the root of the C drive called nullfile-1.02.exe, what it does, is writes zeros to all the free space on the drive whos' root its in (so you could do it in D too) although it takes along time to write zeros to a 300 or 500 gig drive, it allows you to create the smallest possible image with acronis or any other backup for that matter. When a backup is run on a partition, all old deleted data that was removed to the recycle bin and uninstalled programs are still there in the partition in the free space, stuff that could be recovered, and will be copied during the imaging. If you change it all to zeros it can compress that data to a miniscule amount and save you tons of image space. This backup I keep on another partition or preferably a different hard drive all together because it would require too many dvd disks and recoverinmg from a bunch of dvd disks is time consuming and tedious.