Mac the Knife
8th Aug 2004, 16:54
This isn't a puff, O Mighty Mods, just a tip for good software.
Richard has several times mentioned disk imaging and partitioning software from Acronis. I didn't investigate further, assuming that Norton's "Ghost" was pretty much the standard and relying on free/shareware for imaging and juggling partitions. Bit of a pain but gets the job done.
I never managed to get my RAID working and got fed-up screwing around with it. Actually I was scared of messing up my quite complex and (I reluctantly admit it) very stable WinXP Pro installation. I didn't really need RAID for 24/24 365/365 redundancy anyway and was planning to use RAID 1 anyway for security. It's easy to store file backups offsite (I just copy the directories to one of the spare HDDs I have in drive caddies and store them in a safe in the garden shed) but what if the O/S goes tits-up? Just couldnt stand the idea of reinstalling everything and trying to restore a painfully tuned system. It seemed more sensible to periodically image the drive onto an identical drive and store it.
So I downloaded Acronis "TrueImage" and (since they offered a discount) "Disk Director" - gotta say, I'm very impressed. Not cheap, but obviously very carefully designed software. Good interface, multiple restore modes (including a boot floppy or CD system), support for Ext2/3 and Reiser partitions, simple partition resize/move/copy and lots of other goodies. Some overlap between the two utilities but worth getting both. I haven't used Norton that much but this looks cleaner, faster and with many many more useful corners. First thing I did was shift my son's system to a bigger drive - quick, easy no hiccoughs (through Norton did pop up and ask to be reactivated and was with no probs) booted first go. Then imaged my system - same story, even GRUB survived and Linux boots nicely too.
Definitely overkill for Joe Sixpack but very much worth it if you juggle a lot of drives and systems.
Richard, thanks for the tip.
Richard has several times mentioned disk imaging and partitioning software from Acronis. I didn't investigate further, assuming that Norton's "Ghost" was pretty much the standard and relying on free/shareware for imaging and juggling partitions. Bit of a pain but gets the job done.
I never managed to get my RAID working and got fed-up screwing around with it. Actually I was scared of messing up my quite complex and (I reluctantly admit it) very stable WinXP Pro installation. I didn't really need RAID for 24/24 365/365 redundancy anyway and was planning to use RAID 1 anyway for security. It's easy to store file backups offsite (I just copy the directories to one of the spare HDDs I have in drive caddies and store them in a safe in the garden shed) but what if the O/S goes tits-up? Just couldnt stand the idea of reinstalling everything and trying to restore a painfully tuned system. It seemed more sensible to periodically image the drive onto an identical drive and store it.
So I downloaded Acronis "TrueImage" and (since they offered a discount) "Disk Director" - gotta say, I'm very impressed. Not cheap, but obviously very carefully designed software. Good interface, multiple restore modes (including a boot floppy or CD system), support for Ext2/3 and Reiser partitions, simple partition resize/move/copy and lots of other goodies. Some overlap between the two utilities but worth getting both. I haven't used Norton that much but this looks cleaner, faster and with many many more useful corners. First thing I did was shift my son's system to a bigger drive - quick, easy no hiccoughs (through Norton did pop up and ask to be reactivated and was with no probs) booted first go. Then imaged my system - same story, even GRUB survived and Linux boots nicely too.
Definitely overkill for Joe Sixpack but very much worth it if you juggle a lot of drives and systems.
Richard, thanks for the tip.