Ghost images

[bimbim]

What are the benefits of making a ghost image of a drive as opposed to just copying the folders to another drive for a back up?

[ACtheTROLL]

norton ghost
powerquest drive image
acronis disk director
paragon .... etc
all allow you to create a complete image of a partition or whole disk INCLUDING the boot sector.

I use them almost every day to rebuild machines.

It's a time saver

Install O/s ... all progs ... configure as required (2 days?)
create image .... (30 mins)
machine crashes or whatever
restore image (30 mins)
system back up and running

- and that's the point

just copying my documents is good ... but if your machine crashed for whatever reason ...
you'd still have the hassle of a 2 day complete re-build before restoring your files.

with an image ... 30 mins

the downside is ... the bigger your disks ... the bigger the image .... but with high compression ... reduses by about 40% ....
vista is about 4Gb +
Full install with basisc progs ... 2 full DVDs 9Gb
XP about 3 - 7 CDs