Recommended ghosting software?

I recently purchased EZ Gig II (the most recent version), and, to my chagrin, it doesn't work with 64bit Vista. Fortunately, the company is giving me a refund.

Anyway, I'm getting an HP HDX18t with a 160gb SSD and a 500gb HDD. Also, to my chagrin, HP said that they install the OS on the HDD rather than on the SDD. My first task will be to image the OS and move it to the SSD, then format the HDD as my data drive. I need some recommendations on software that will reliably perform this task. I've seen a lot of complaints about Norton Ghost. I'm considering Casper, Paragon Drive Backup 9.0 Personal. Acronis True Image 2009, or Drive Copy.

I'm getting my new laptop on Thursday, and I'd appreciate and info/recommendations.

 

I really like Acronis True Image, except for the few background processes it installs. I removed them manually.

The free trial version will allow you to do everything you need.

 

I have Acronis True Image Home 2009 working with Vista Home Premium x64. I've copied one drive with it so far to an external toaster. During the copy process the screen went blank and the laptop powered off when it was done. The imaged drive worked fine. I thought it was pretty odd that the screen went blank during the copying process. I thought that maybe some processes needed to be shut down in order to be copied. This was just my experience with it. I tried Norton Ghost 14 first, but that wouldn't even install on my laptop.

 

I tried shutting down some of the Acronis services once. I shut down the Acronis True Image Archive Explorer and my laptop wouldn't boot again. That gave me the opportunity to run restore.

 

Thanks for the info!

I'm probably mistaken, but I thought that I read that the EZ Gig II software was actually Acronis True Image, but according to Acronis (and you guys), True Image works on 64 bit Vista.

I was reading through the True Image user guide, and it has instructions for moving from a smaller drive to a larger drive, but not vice versa (which is what I want to do). As long as I'm only moving the originally installed OS plus whatever else HP puts on the machine (which should be far less than 160gb), it should still do the job, correct? And make the SSD the bootable drive?

 

Yes correct. Use the cloning option. Large to smaller is not a problem, as long as you have enough space for the data.

 

Look into Clonezilla. It's an open source (free) cloning/ghosting solution. I backed up my primary partition from my HDX 16t laptop with over 40GBs worth of files in 30 mins. It also backed up the MBR. I haven't tried restoring but so far the experience has been good. Did I mention it's free?

 

I'm using DriveImage XML which is free for private use. The vista install I'm using now is from a previous DriveImage image. Works perfectly. My particular method uses a preinstall environment and DriveImage to image my laptop onto another hdd in my network.

 

Which processes did you removed? I have True Image 2009 it is great but when I removed some processes True Image will not backup properly.

 

Can't really remember because it's a while since I installed. I think I removed everything or disabled it with Ccleaner. (I'll check my desktop later)

Important to mention is that I run XP and don't use the backup function.

I also use Acronis Disk director. I was quite negatively surprised by the amount of background processes.

I'm willing to look for alternatives that do not install background processes.

Clonezilla sounds like worth a look.

 

Over the years, many have learned the hard way, that the only way to test backup software is to perform a backup, then try the restore.

Myself, I only trust a complete clone operation, then, if the drive was bootable, I boot from the clone just to make sure.

I have been burned too many times.

Personally, I still use ghost 2003. For a Vista system, I found you have to run a script (once) that I found on the net (Uses EDB edit?), else the cloned drive wont boot.

I put the "norton boot disk" on all my SD cards, and can do a restore from anywhere (we carry spare harddrives for each laptop we have).

Joe

 

I have been using Acronis True Image for years. Just 2 months ago a cloned two drives using Acronis 2009. One had Vista 32 and Vista 64 on it, the other had XP MCE and Linux on it. I had no problems. I am using the cloned (New) drives now.

I recommending making the bootable CD using Acronis, then booting from that CD. That way the operating system becomes not a factor.

 

I use Paragon these days . works well, no problems