IT Answers » Disk Imaging

Imaging a hard drive for backup purposes.

Chippy088 — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 16:31:30 +0000

I had a situation recently where a laptop harddrive died completely.

We installed a new drive and reimaged it, but the drivers were missing off the standard os image, and I had to re-install the drivers for the onboard devices. (Biometric security etc) I had problems getting the drivers for the laptop, (1 year old) off the manufacturers website. No maintenance contract.

I started to think about the problems a dead HDD can cause, if they bought more of this laptop model.

I want to back up the backup ( D: ) drive on new laptops to a DVD disc, so we can revert the laptop to factory defaults when we dispose of it.

I know you can do system backups to DVD disc, and I wondered if any one else works this way, and if so, how others have solved the problem.

Backing up user data in image VDI environments

NewnanIT — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 19:26:56 +0000

What’s the easiest way to identify and backup user data spread across user disk images? Any tips on VDI backup best practices would be greatly appreciated.

Free/OSS Hard Drive Image/Recovery Software

Galucio — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:34:26 +0000

I’m looking for free, preferably Open Source software that will allow one to create an image of a hard drive that can be restored later without the use of a pre-installed OS. I know of tools like CloneZilla, PartImage et cetera, however none of those provide me my key: Spanning of DVDs or CDs, instead of an external hard drive/NAS as a backup median.

For comparison, the software used before was PC Angel.

Just because I know the above is probably jumbled and confusing, here’s a list of what I need, if any of you know of this kind of software:

Hard Disk Imaging Software:
1. Free, OSS is a plus.
2. Create Recovery-type media.
3. No pre-installed OS required for recovery of drive.
4. Ability to burn to discs, span CDs/DVDs.