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Backing up Vista for FREE (Read 23524 times)
TheShadow
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Backing up Vista for FREE
Jun 29th, 2008 at 11:35am
 
The subject of making a clone of a Vista hard drive has come up on many internet forums.  
I've been involved in several such discussions myself.
Attempts to use the older versions of Ghost, for instance, that will run from a boot floppy or CD have so far failed.

In my own quest for a workable,
FREE
, solution, I hit upon something that I had not previously considered.

With every Seagate or Maxtor hard drive I've bought in the last couple of years, there was a MaxBlast CD.  
I've always just tossed them in a drawer and forgot about them.

While reading about
FREE
HD backup solutions on a web site, I was reminded about Maxblast.  
So I dug out one of the newest CD's (Version 5) and loaded it (Installed) into my PC.

One of the options I found was to make a Maxblast Bootable CD, from which I could do disk to disk cloning of any OS or drive format.

I made that boot CD and took it to the computer that I'm using to test Vista Ultimate.  
It has two Maxtor 160gig SATA2 drives. (C: and D: )

I booted the Vista PC with the Maxblast Boot CD and selected to do a disk clone.
As with Ghost and many cloning programs, Maxblast asked me to designate which drive would be the source and which drive would be the Target of the Cloning (Disk Copy) operation.
That was easy and I was quickly in the process of doing a clone from C: to D:.

The most amazing part of this story is that the clone was able to boot my Vista PC with NO problems.  
And, did I mention that Maxblast is
FREE
?

Looking around the WWW, I found this site where you can download the Maxblast install program:
http://www.softwarepatch.com/utilities/maxblast-security-dl.html
Your download should start shortly after you get to this site.  Wink

The file to download is:  
MaxBlastSetup.en.exe


It's a 104 megabyte file, so a broadband connection is best for this download.  
Of course it would be easier to just borrow the Maxblast install CD from a friend or local computer shop.

Once installed on your PC, you can use it to make the Maxblast boot CD.

Good Luck and Happy Computing,

The Shadow  Cool



 
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K Singh
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Re: Backing up Vista for FREE
Reply #1 - Jul 1st, 2008 at 9:01am
 
Hi,
Few doubts and questions.

1. The MaxBlast is Acronis True Image software designed for Seagate/maxtor.

2. This software works only if you have either Seagate/Maxtor.

3. Will Ghost 8.3 be capable of restoring Vista partition?? Or i need to upgrade to v11..
 
 
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TheShadow
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Re: Backing up Vista for FREE
Reply #2 - Jul 1st, 2008 at 10:40am
 
Quote:
Hi,
Few doubts and questions.

1. The MaxBlast is Acronis True Image software designed for Seagate/maxtor.

2. This software works only if you have either Seagate/Maxtor.

3. Will Ghost 8.3 be capable of restoring Vista partition?? Or i need to upgrade to v11
..



That's been covered extensively in the Ghost forum. 
The answer is NO!.
Even 11.0 has not worked for me.  I've heard, however that ..11.5 will work, if you can find it.  (I don't have it.)

Cheers!
Cool
 
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K Singh
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Re: Backing up Vista for FREE
Reply #3 - Jul 1st, 2008 at 11:30am
 
For the doubts below i found out MaxBlast indeed requires either Maxtor or seagate disc. For my Hitachi it wont work..

But the good part is, Acronis true image works like a charm for vista.. I better throw my ghost and get Acronis now  Smiley


TheShadow wrote on Jul 1st, 2008 at 10:40am:
1. The MaxBlast is Acronis True Image software designed for Seagate/maxtor.

2. This software works only if you have either Seagate/Maxtor.

 
 
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John.
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Re: Backing up Vista for FREE
Reply #4 - Jul 1st, 2008 at 2:09pm
 
Quote:
But the good part is, Acronis true image works like a charm for vista.. I better throw my ghost and get Acronis now


I have Ghost 12 and Ghost 14 (both are certified for Vista) and am using Vista.  Ghost 12/14 works like a charm for me.

Are you having problems with Ghost xx.x and Vista or are you having problems with Ghost 12/14 and Vista?
 

Ghost4me  Ghost 9, 10, 12, 14, 15.  Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7
 
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K Singh
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Re: Backing up Vista for FREE
Reply #5 - Jul 2nd, 2008 at 8:19am
 
The Ghost i have is Ghost solution suite with Ghost 8.3. It has been working well with the XP system.

Now with vista before i try i wanted to know 8.3 would be working well or not. Ghost 8.3 is enterprise edition whereas the Ghost 12.14 are personal.

The aim is to create a backup of Vista partition and restore it whenever needed. If Ghost does anything other than just imaging the partition, it should be kind of OS independent. But if it happens to do post-tasks after restoring there might be some problems with XP and vista.

I am testing in virtual machine, will let you know the results.


John. wrote on Jul 1st, 2008 at 2:09pm:
I have Ghost 12 and Ghost 14 (both are certified for Vista) and am using Vista.Ghost 12/14 works like a charm for me.

Are you having problems with Ghost xx.x and Vista or are you having problems with Ghost 12/14 and Vista?


I am trying to use 11.0.1 version also. The 11.5 gave me some register errors while restoring the partition..
 
 
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John.
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Re: Backing up Vista for FREE
Reply #6 - Jul 2nd, 2008 at 8:50am
 
Quote:
The Ghost i have is Ghost solution suite with Ghost 8.3. It has been working well with the XP system.
Now with vista before i try i wanted to know 8.3 would be working well or not. Ghost 8.3 is enterprise edition 


Ghost 8.3 is a pre-vista version.

Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 is vista-certified.  I don't believe any earlier versions are.

I would be cautious about any earlier versions if you now have Vista.  Why gamble on something so important as a backup?  You want something that WILL work, not something that MIGHT work.
 

Ghost4me  Ghost 9, 10, 12, 14, 15.  Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7
 
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K Singh
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Re: Backing up Vista for FREE
Reply #7 - Jul 2nd, 2008 at 9:12am
 
True that earlier versions are not certified.

Well there are no free upgrades for ghost Sad

I have version 11.0.1 also but i wonder if it will work well with Vista as it is Ghost 2.0 suite.

For the Ghost 11.5 from Ghost 2.5 suite, i tried and it gave me some edp stack errors when i tried restoring the image. For creating there was no problem at all.
So i am not quite sure how good 11.5 will be..
 
 
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Nigel Bree
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Re: Backing up Vista for FREE
Reply #8 - Jul 2nd, 2008 at 5:54pm
 
John. wrote on Jul 2nd, 2008 at 8:50am:
I don't believe any earlier versions are.

The entire 2.x line is; the initial release of 2.0 was in fact timed to that of the initial release to businesses of Vista in December 2006. Full logo certification was not gained for initial 2.0 simply because of procedural complications in the logo rules - LiveUpdate failed on some trivial aspect of uninstall, and we couldn't get an exemption for that (whereas other Symantec product teams were able to).

And of course, earlier versions do work just fine with Vista, provided you use BCDEDIT to unbind the boot selection from the hard disk's ID.
 
 
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K Singh
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Re: Backing up Vista for FREE
Reply #9 - Jul 2nd, 2008 at 11:41pm
 
Can you please elaborate on this please.
I read it in some of the posts that you need to supply some special switch to ghost for keeping/changing disk signature especially if you happen to use older versions of ghost.


Quote:
And of course, earlier versions do work just fine with Vista, provided you use BCDEDIT to unbind the boot selection from the hard disk's ID. 

 
 
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TheShadow
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Re: Backing up Vista for FREE
Reply #10 - Aug 31st, 2008 at 8:10am
 
I've tried Ghost 11.5, both Ghost.exe from a boot disk and Ghost32.exe from a desktop icon and both work just fine for cloning a Vista HD to another HD.

Vista is just SO BIG that making a partition image just isn't all that practical.
Backing up to CD's or even DVD's is likewise NOT practical.
A full HD clone is the most practical method of backing up Vista.

I did the clone first to a HD that already contained an OS and then to a HD that was freshly formatted and in both cases the clone booted up normally.

Ghost 11.5 looks like and runs like Ghost 2003. 
So anyone who's ever used one of those early versions of Ghost will feel right at home with 11.5.


Ghost still ROCKS!

The Shadow  Cool
 
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Pleonasm
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Re: Backing up Vista for FREE
Reply #11 - Sep 1st, 2008 at 9:14am
 
Quote:
Vista is just SO BIG that making a partition image just isn't all that practical.

Perceptions of practicality may differ, but I have no issue with creating an image backup of my Windows Vista Business SP1 system.  A total of 27 GB on the system volume reduces to an image backup size of about 13GB, using the high compression option with ShadowProtect Desktop 3.2.
 

ple • o • nasm n. “The use of more words than are required to express an idea”
 
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TheShadow
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Re: Backing up Vista for FREE
Reply #12 - Sep 1st, 2008 at 12:55pm
 
Pleonasm wrote on Sep 1st, 2008 at 9:14am:
Quote:
Vista is just SO BIG that making a partition image just isn't all that practical.

Perceptions of practicality may differ, but I have no issue with creating an image backup of my Windows Vista Business SP1 system.  A total of 27 GB on the system volume reduces to an image backup size of about 13GB, using the high compression option with ShadowProtect Desktop 3.2.


Agreed!  Perceptions do differ, but, for me I back up so often that I don't want to use up a whole stack of DVD's with each backup.
I currently backup my entire C: drive (Windows XP) to a single DVD or a six gig flash drive.  To do otherwise, would be counter-productive for me.

With Vista, I can no longer use DVD's of Flash Drives, so a spare 160 gig SATA2 drive, an exact duplicate of my C: drive, is my best hope for a complete backup of my OS, data, etc.

It's just a matter of personal preference....you're OK, I'm OK, we're all OK.
There is no right way or wrong way as long as all data is protected.

I've found that the fastest way to do a full drive backup is by using "Ghost32.exe" from a desktop icon.
I just shut down all running programs with "EndItAll2" and then run Ghost32.  It's quick, easy and efficient.

We are Borg....you will be assimilated! Wink

 
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datarx
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Re: Backing up Vista for FREE
Reply #13 - Apr 18th, 2009 at 10:27am
 
OK. Here's one - imageIT 2009 from Synergix. Free but not free, yes there is a catch.  Free for first 100 computers, as it says on their website.  I guess the free license count should work for most home users and for small co.

It supports hot backup, differential backup, skips pagefile, hiberfil & runs fine under Windows XP, Vista, 2003, 2008, WinPE 2.x & BartPE.  I wish compression ratio was better.  Called support and was told next release will include driver to optimize differential backup performance and will tackle compression ratio and multicast next.
 
 
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