DIY Self Booting Recovery Discs: Still Impossible, Right?

From what I have read in older threads, this is technically impossible.

The only method that comes close is you have to have a bootable disc with some 3rd party SW on it that will read the recovery discs that that SW made (such as Ghost.exe or Acronis True Image.)

So is this still the current state of affairs?

Assuming it is, I see my options as:

1) Since I have Ghost 9 and 12, try to use them.

2) It is for a Toshiba notebook and I seem to recall that the OEM recovery disks had ghost.exe and .GHO files? (I could be massively miss-speaking here since I'm at work now.) So, maybe I could make new .GHO files and cut and splice them to first recovery CD which has the ghost.exe on it?

3) Buy True Image and use their process. (So many people recommend TI that I hesitate to use the Ghost stuff even though I own it.)

4) I haven't heard people talk about this product, but it sounds interesting: R-Drive Image: "A bootable module can be written to a CD/DVD disc together with the image data. Thus it is possible to create one CD/DVD disc to boot and to restore the system."

I would greatly appreciate any opinions/recommendations here. I am trying to do this the cleanest, most likely to succeed when needed, method.
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I found a comparison of backup SW for 2009 that had a comparison table that was usefull:

http://disk-imaging-software-review.toptenreviews.com/index.html




Thanks in advance,
Regards,
Tom

 

read up on 'bare metal restore' and then look for backup/restore software that offers that kind of recovery.

 

"Bare Metal Restore" is a new term for me and is very interesting.

I found some references to SW that provide this and one was Acronis True Image.

I found that confusing because all the speak I found on Acronis was that it still had to still copy a portion of itself onto the restore discs so that its backup file(s) could be read and restored.

I am not an assembler programmer, but one might think that the OS Copy utility might be what you want to use to do the restore. Perhaps even write your own in assembler since To Copy is (or Move) is one of the most common assembler tasks.

So I guess I'm not quite getting it with regard to BMR and how it is different from say, a Ghost backup. (I did get the idea that a BMR would allow restoration of a "backup" made on one PC to be made on a different PC (different mobo, etc.) however, I don't see how one could get the registry right for different plug-n-play hardware. Unless they are refering to a "file backup" strategy which would be obvious for data files. I don't see how that could work for installed software - different PC h/w gets different Registry entries - and we would be talking the entire Registry file being backed up and restored which would be different for 2 different PC's, right?

I talked with my local PC repair shop and they said they used Acronis and that it was OK but it didn't work all the time either. And this guy, the owner, is very sharp.

I do have a couple friends who swear by Ghost 9 too

What to do...
Thanks
Tom

 

I did check my OE Toshiba Recovery discs and they do use ghost.exe with data stored in a .GHO and a series of .GHS files. I think there is a tghost.exe too which is very small.

There are many files on the 3 discs. There are 2 sub-directories: BASE and BIN.

I wonder what would happen if I replaced the .GHO and .GHS files?

 

I'm trying to figure out what exactly your needs are.

Are you in need of a native OS backup/restore software?

Vista has it's Complete PC Backup in Business/Ultimate/Enterprise edition.

If you need a miniature copy of Windows, you can snag a copy of Bart's PE. Or make your own Windows PE. Microsoft has detailed documentation, but it is quite a read and a bit too much work IMO for just a simple backup and restore duty role.

 

Wow, just found CloneZilla which is freeware to boot (arf, arf!)

Program is downloaded as a CD ISO which you put in PC to clone (laptop to create restore discs).

I will report more on this as I get and use it (!)

Regards,
Tom

 

back again....

Bare Metal Restore is interesting topic...

There is a bit more to what I would like to do. Ghost and Acronis must be installed on the PC, images created, and then you can boot with their disc and restore the images.

Problem is that any PC must have these programs installed to backup.

What I want is a boot disc that does the backup and the restore.

CloneZilla appears to do that, however, its current version will only write an image to a HD or USB stick or network drive. Disc burning may be included on the next release which would be great.

Since CloneZilla is so close, I wonder if there is something else out there that will do the job without actually installing anything on the PC.

 

look around at the small linux recovery distros on www.distrowatch.com.