[Tempa]

Hi,

This is what im planning on doing and i was wondering if someone could tell me if it can be done and what programs are the best to use price is no issue.

I plan on formating my hard drive and reinstalling XP and installing the programs/themes i like and then i would like to make an exact copy of the drive and burn it to a DVD so if i want to start off fresh all i have to do is toss in the DVD and have it bring my drive back to the state it was when i started. I tried Acronis True Image but it doesnt create automatic DVDs.

Thank you!

[Elvandil]

DVD's are a poor choice. They take forever to burn and it makes it a lot more difficult to make periodic images so you can keep recent changes as well. Use the money for an external drive.

There is no program that creates "automatic" DVD's--it is always a time- and labor-intensive process. With an external drive, images can be made incrementally on a schedule.

Free Drive Cloners/Imagers:

SystemRescueCD
EaseUs Disk Copy (Copies disks or partitions)
XXClone
CloneZilla GParted LiveCD (Complete partitioning and drive imaging/restoration tools)
CloneZilla
Partition Saving
PCI CloneMaxx
Drive Image XML
HDClone
DriveClonerXP
Self-Image
copyr.dma (Copies disk with bad sectors for recovery)

Commercial Apps:

Active@ Disk Image
O&O DiskImage
Acronis True Image Home
Farstone Drive Clone (Drive image, snapshots, file/folder backups.)
EAZ-FIX Professional and Easy Image
Drive Snapshot
ShadowProtect (Also online backups.)
Keriver Image
Avanquest Copy Commander
Paragon Drive Backup
NovaBackup
R-Drive Image
Norton Ghost
HDClone Pro or Enterprise
Terabyte Image for Windows
Terabyte Image for DOS (can directly access FAT, FAT32, and NTFS partitions)
Spotmau Disk Clone & Backup

[Tempa]

Thanks for your post but i don't want to backup anything else only the fresh Windows XP install i already backup all of my important documents i just want to make a disk image of a fresh xp install so i can revert back to that fresh install if something goes wrong.

[Squashman]

When you image a hard drive it takes everything on it and puts it into the Image. So as long as you are backing up your normal data on a regular basis, you will be ok if you need to reimage the drive back to the original state. I highly recommend you use Acronis TI for this. It is one of the better commercials apps out there. But feel free to try any of the free ones. I would suggest you image the computer to something other than a DVD though.

[Elvandil]

Originally Posted by Tempa

Thanks for your post but i don't want to backup anything else only the fresh Windows XP install i already backup all of my important documents i just want to make a disk image of a fresh xp install so i can revert back to that fresh install if something goes wrong.

You would then need to reinstall all your programs, so there is hardly any advantage to having a backup at all. A new installation needs little attention and takes less than an hour.

Even if your programs are on another partition, they would still need to be reinstalled in the new system. So why not back up everything, programs, operating system, and documents, in one, neat package by just imaging the drive?