Make a re-spawn disc? is it possible?

As the title suggests, Is there a way to make a DL dvd or 2+ SL dvd's to save us 50$ for a re-spawn disc?

 

acronis true image

 

+1 for acronis, best money ever spent in a software.

 

How does that work? If you have like 50 gigs of installed programs and data on your laptop and choose to create a re-spawn disc, will the software just keep asking you to insert disc after disc until it it copies the whole drive?

 

It will.
Im using Norton Ghost. I have been using it since I was a child

 

Side comment: I throw my backups on another HDD. You should do the same and forget about disks.

 

Agreed. If you don't require a RAID setup, just use your second HDD. My second HDD contains a nice backup folder which, at the moment, currently contains 3 full backups spanning the last 2 months (I've been lazy about running backups on time) taking up about 170GB of space.

Acronis, Ghost or any one of the other commercial choices are fine. Its all personal choice in the end. I happen to prefer Acronis. Been using for about 2 years now and love it. Very fast + you can mount a given image and explore it as if it were its own HDD - right from the OS.

 

I have a few questions on Acronis, one, so you can make an image of your HDD on another HDD, such as an external, and if you need to reinstall you can do so from your external HDD? Also if you have two HDDs and your OS gets a virus, is it possible to infect the 2nd HDD? I'm using my 2nd HDD as a file storage for files such as music, videos ect. It doesn't have any of my programs except the ones I've downloaded. It has the setup files. Thanks guys

 

Yes, you can backup to an external drive and reinstall from that source. When I run a backup, I have Acronis do a 'full disk image' so it images the entire C: drive, this way it grabs the diag partition.

As to the virus question, depends on the virus. Some are quite malicious as you know. I wouldn't be too concerned with it as long as you are running some form of AV.

If your system came with a Western Digital drive, see WD's site here:

http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119&wdc_lang=en

 

Is the software free from the WD site? I was reading on the acronis website and it looked like it was $40-$50, can't remember, but if you can reimage from an external then that sounds like the best way to go. I'm sold

 

If your system shipped with a WD drive, then yes - that version is free. Will it (that version on WD's site) backup to an external? Not sure - haven't tried it.

 

i use hd clone is free and do the same thing acronis do

 

Ahh, I bought a WD, but the system didn't ship with it, shipped with Seagate. Thanks guys, if not then I'll purchase. It's well worth the money, as it provides some peace of mind and security

One last thing, if I create an image of a 500GB HDD, and use a 500GB external, does it take up the whole external or just as big as it needs to be.

 

Should still apply since they offer it for all WD drives (as far as I can tell).

 

Normally your image/clone/backup file size (whateva) will be smaller than the file size in the original partition you want to back up. It will always be compressed. My OS, which takes about 10GB, comes down to about 3.5GB in clone image.

However it doesnt make sense when you back up a 500GB hard disk. The purpose of back up normally is for your OS since it can be easily defected by numerous of reasons. And I dont think a OS partition could and should be that large. For media files you copy and paste, no need to make a clone image for them.

About the virus concern, your clone image will very not likely be defected by virus (but it depends on kinda virus tho). Just remember to make a backup when your OS is stable and virus free. After a while, if your OS is virused, you can restore the image which mean reformat at the same time so in most case you are good to go after that. Your OS will be back to the day it was cloned, stable and virus free.

 

Ok thanks, I would just be cloning my OS disc. But if I could make an image of it with all the installed programs, then it would keep me from having to reinstall them all one by one. I have my 2nd HDD in the laptop for the media and such, as well as that stuff backed up on a seperate exteral. Thanks for the help

 

^^ If your programs are installed in the OS partition then they will be included. And yes, cloning OS partition is to keep us from reinstall boring basic programs But 500GB... Its damn huge I never had that much programs install but it maybe just me

 

I am paranoid. A little. I have the two hard drives set up like this:

HDD 1: OS, Programs, Documents.
HDD 2: Backups, Media, Games (steam), Setup Files.

Now, I only keep 2 backups on my PC. 1 for the first HDD, and another for the second HDD. This is what I do when I do backups.

1. Delete previous backups in Backup folder.
2. Do a backup of my second drive and place it on the desktop (of the first drive obviously)
3. Then move the backup to the Backup folder on the Second drive.
4. Do a backup of the first drive and place it on the Backup folder on the second drive directly.

Sounds confusing but having a FULL backup of my entire PC (both drives) helps me sleep at night. lol

Oh, and for example if I am using 100GB of my 500GB HDD and I make a complete image of this drive, the backup is usually around 40GB (highest compression). So yes, it only backs up the used space, not the whole 500GB (fyi)

 

Thanks again guys, I'm going to work on a system for me. While I don't have anything close to the 500GB full, I like having everything at my fingertips, so I don't normally uninstall anything unless it's really useless. But I like having the space available.

 

WOW, I check back after asking the question and I see two pages of comments. Snap thanks guys, but kinda missed my question.

While it dose have potential doing a drive image, I was more curious about somehow ripping the respawn partition and making an image out of it. All the same I suppose in the end.

Again, thanks for the great comments and what such. Some programs I'll have to look into.

 

I doubt we can do it.

 

To be completely fair, all Alienwares respawn DVD is or at least for XP was. One CD containing Norton Ghost Bootable, and one DVD containing the image

 

Yes you can do it. I will write out how it works after work (I have some time off after today). I put the recovery partition on a USB stick, you can burn it to DVD if you know what your doing (need to redo the image using the /span). If you have ever worked with WAIK, it is a piece of cake. Especially since the WindowsPE image and answer filesa are already done for you.

The image itself is called BASE.WIM (4.3 gb for Win7) and is in the pre-load folder on the recovery partition. It can be applied with the imagex /apply (dism if using win7) command like any other WIM.

(WAIK and all the tools like diskpart and imagex/dism are all free from Microsoft)

 

::Bump:: Still waiting Mihos, lol I need to know how to do this as well...

 

Curious as to what Mihos said that it's possible. In the meantime I did do a factory restore then made a full drive image with 3 backs ups of that image ;p