New Z: Can I mirror just C partition for reinstall?

Still setting up my new Z. I had to do a full recovery to get out of a bad software.

Due to some esoteric software, installing all my software on my C drive takes about 30 hours. (Much of it unattended but still, a huge effort.)

I am going to partition off the C drive for programs after the install. The D drive will be for my data.

I have a 1 Tb portable external drive.

Once I set up the C drive to exactly how I need it to be, I would like to somehow mirror that C partition onto the portable hard drive. Then if my C drive corrupts after use, I can just remirror it from the image on the portable drive quickly for a 'fresh install' performance.

But since the portable drive is 1 Tb, i still want to use the excess space to write other data without ruining the C drive's image.

Pardon the basic question but how would I do this most efficiently?

Thanks in advance for any help.

UL

 

You can use Acronis True Image 2010 for mirror any partition to any media (Internal HDD, USB-HDD, flash, dvd disk, network)

 

And does Acronis then allow the recovery easily so that my current C drive condition is restored? I 'flies' currently I'd love to be able to restore it regularly to current state.

Thanks,
UL

ps: Welcome any other comments.

 

Yes it does

 

Have you done an actual bare metal restore, or just backups and peeking at the restore interface? Cause others here have reported that you can't do an actual bare-metal restore, because of lacking drivers.
(To incorporate the drivers into the Acronis disaster recovery apparently required an extra product, plus more knowledge about how to pick drivers from inf files than most people would have.)

 

I have used Acronis without any additional drivers about 3 yeas and no problems.

 

Ghost works just fine on our Z's too.

 

I was confused there for a minute when I saw mirror. The proper term for these types of backups is "image."

I have confirmed that both Ghost and Acronis work on the Z1's. My preference is Ghost.

Be sure you get the 100MB System Reserved partition in your backup as well.

 

Acronis requires that the drive on which the image resides be visible, when booting from Acronis recovery disks. This means that if the external drive is connected via eSata expresscard, without modifications the drive will not be seen. I use USB2 interface which Acronis can handle.

 

I prefer Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery, which is like Ghost and a very simple version of Backup Exec rolled into one. A nice feature is that it allows you to create a restore CD from a running system with the added drivers that system needs, whether they are storage drivers or network drivers.

As well as the hidden system partition if you have separate boot/system partitions.

 

Agreeing with you Arth, it's better to clone or image the entire disk instead of the individual partitions. Once I get an install just the way I like it (with essential apps,etc.) I run a compressed ghost image of the disk and dump it somewhere.

 

Ayep, Symantec purchased PowerQuest to get a hold of V2i Protector. That's why the file extensions are called what they are. V2i = Virtual Volume Imaging.