I have just bought a brand new, Acer Aspire Laptop which came preinstalled with a whole heap of lovely  c**p. I was talking to someone and they suggest that I wipe everything (Merge all three of the partitions and start again fresh)

So I did this and now I have a newly formatted Computer with two partitions. I have installed Windows XP Home and all of the necessary drivers.

What I would like to do is take an image of my hard-drive the way it is now (Drivers and OS Only) so that I do not need to install Windows XP or the Drivers again. I have tried to read the guides here but found them hard to use (Sorry, I don't mean any offence).

So my questions are: What's the best version of Norton Ghost I should get, keeping In mind that I do not have a Floppy Drive in this laptop and Do not wish to install anything on it. I would also like the Image I make to be burnt to a bootable DVD so that I can simply insert the DVD and boot from it to format the laptop. I do, however have a home wireless network at home if this helps at all.


Thanks In Advance,
Garion

wrote on Oct 30^th, 2006 at 9:37pm:

"... What I would like to do is take an image of my hard-drive the way it is now (Drivers and OS Only) so that I do not need to install Windows XP or the Drivers again..."

You could consider acquiring a retail boxed copy of Norton Ghost 10.0 (which comes with the legacy Norton Ghost 2003 CD as "lagniappe"!) and simply boot from the Ghost 10.0 installation CD itself into a Windows XP Preinstalled Environment.  Then, immediately engage the legacy Backup/Restore or Clone "cold-imaging" procedures by following the path 'Recover > Recover Data on My Computer > Recover using a legacy Ghost image' with the side benefit of bypassing both USB mass-storage device and SATA HDD glitches frequently encountered with DOS-dependent Ghost 2003.  In essence, this procedure uses restoreghost.exe (an alternate name for ghost32.exe) to allow both immediate creation of legacy Norton Ghost Backup images or the converse Recovery of such images that are in fact totally compatible and interchangeable with those *.gho/*.ghs files created with the ghost.exe of Norton Ghost 2003 - but not with those created with Ghost 9, Ghost 10.0, or Norton Save & Restore during "hot-imaging".

Once you have achieved this level of stability with a legacy Norton Ghost Backup image (in your case having chosen the entire "disk-to-image" approach), you can then go over to the "dark side" to dabble in "hot-imaging" technology if you so choose.  CLICK HERE to view my preferred - but admittedly convoluted - "path-less-traveled" which is a mature offshoot of the approach in the first paragraph.

EP :'(

Thank you so much for your quick reply and help.

In reply to your answer, I was able to create an image (a *.gho if im correct :P) and save this to my second partition.

However, when I rebooted in Windows (I was using Norton 10.0 with Recover using a legacy Ghost image) and checked the drive, Windows is able to subtract the amount of space from it, but I cannot view the file using a Windows environment. I plan to burn this, along with Norton 10.0 to a dvd (If I copy the Norton disk to a dvd, then add the image, I should be able to boot Norton from the DVD and have the image included there as well.)

What should I do now?

wrote on Oct 30^th, 2006 at 9:37pm:

"... What I would like to do is take an image of my hard-drive the way it is now (Drivers and OS Only) so that I do not need to install Windows XP or the Drivers again..."

wrote on Oct 30^th, 2006 at 11:46pm:

"... I was able to create an image (a *.gho if im correct :P) and save this to my second partition..."

Since I interpreted your original post to indicate that you desired to have an entire "disk-to-image" backup file, I am now confused as to how many physical (as opposed to logical aka partitions) HDDs that you have on hand because you state you saved such to a second partition.

EP :'(