Bootable Restore Disk

[Spindulik]

Here's what I am looking for: A way to create a restore CD that will boot on startup and prompt the user to restore all original files, onto the hard drive.

This is for an NTFS partitioned hard drive. I am having a difficult time finding software to make this work. (FAT32 was easy on PCs with Win9x)

I tried Norton Ghost 2003, but there is a problem here. It wants to backup MY entire computer (including all of MY hardware peripherals), and all I want is to backup a seperate hard drive within my computer. Note, this seperate hard drive belongs to another computer that I just built. It is a "perfect install" of Windows, includes all drivers for that particular computer and ready to be "cloned".

I know you computer people are smart and can help me here, so any help is appreciated.

[harrycary]

maybe this could work for you...

SlipstreamXP.SP1 (http://www.theeldergeek.com/slipstreamed_xpsp1_cd.htm)

[Spindulik]

That slipStream seems a bit too much for me, but worth looking at.

In the meantime, I was able to download Norton Ghost 7.0 (10 day trial) and got it to work.

I backed up the second hard drive (the slave drive).

I actually got a boot disk onto CDROM in DOS mode, yet it restores the entire hard drive to its original condition on a NTFS partition. Exactly what I wanted.

Burns CDS and DVDs in DOS mode. Splits the ghost files correctly. Doesn't support NEC burners, but works with Plextor!

The compression is very high. I was able to put 1,572MB onto 2 CDROM (700mb each) disks with lots of room to spare on the last disk.

The entire process took less than 15 minutes.

This Norton Ghost may be worth buying, if it is less than $30.00.


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This Norton Ghost is a bit tricky at first, but in a nutshell you create a bootable floppy in Windows. Restart the computer in DOS mode with this floppy, and create the backup of the partition (or hard drive) with a CD burner. The contents of the floppy is also burned onto the first CD, thus creating a bootable CD. More CDs are burned, if needed. After that, you don't need the floppy anymore, unless your PC can't boot from a CDROM.

[Tormentor]

What are you an advertisment?

[Spindulik]

Originally posted by Tormentor@19 August 2004 - 01:08
What are you an advertisment?
No, I have been installing and uninstalling various versions of NortonGhost, and a few other home grown "backup programs", and finally got something to work.

[firefox]

norton ghost 7.5 will do the trick, and you can find a crack for it too.

[BawA]

There r option to select which hard drive to Backup in Norton Ghost, in Drive selecting option Only highlight the hard disk u want and choose bootable Cd/DvD media ;)

[Tormentor]

Originally posted by firefox@20 August 2004 - 14:31
norton ghost 7.5 will do the trick, and you can find a crack for it too.
Little late?

[Spindulik]

Thanks everyone! The help is good, so far.

Now, I simulated a few crashes and tried to restore the hard drive using the Norton Ghost images that I created.

The "bootable CDROM" worked one time, out of ten. I gave up and used a Win98 Startup disk and executed GHOST.EXE from the CDROM, and the 'restore job' was a 100% success.

One problem. What happens if the NTFS partition was accidentally unformatted? I can't figure out how to JUST format a NTFS partition using the version of NTFS that XP uses. I can format it with the original XP disk, but the disk wants to immediately install Windows XP files.

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My plan is to use a Win98 startup disk and create a BAT file with a few menu options. I can do this easily. Some of the optons will ask the user to REFORMAT, Overwrite the Hard Drive with Ghost or Exit everything.