[Ham-Computers] RE: System Startup Question.

[Hsu, Aaron (NBC Universal)]

Sure you can...if you have the time!  The way people store *everything* these days, you could literally spend hours doing a GHOST backup and spend several more hours restoring the backup.  In my line of work, the decision to backup (GHOST) a system is often based on how much data there is to backup and what kind of timeframe there is to fix the problem.

I actually prefer to create a GHOST backup prior to doing any repairs - it's basic "CYA" (Cover Your A..).  But, even with the fastest drives, you're still looking at about 100GB an hour at best (less if you use compression).  If there's only 20GB or so to back up, then the CYA time is worth it.

Depending on exactly what you're trying to accomplish, the "System Restore" (SR) feature in WinXP might be an alternative.  However, depending on what changes are made, SR might not be able to restore the previous restore point.  Also, the longer time since the restore point was created, the less likely it is to be restored.  I generally don't recommend restoring RP's older than a day or two as too many changes may have been done - SR might complete the restore, but other changes that SR doesn't track might cause other problems.

There are other programs out there that have similiar functionality (such as "Go Back"), but I've never used them, so I can't comment.  An imaging program, such as GHOST, is the only way I know of to truly restore your system back to *exactly* the way it was when it was backed up - well, not quite exactly as the files are not in the same physical location on the drive, but operationally the same (BTW, GHOST also supports sector-by-sector backups, if you want to be *that* exact).

73,

  - Aaron Hsu, NN6O


-----Original Message-----
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2007 12:24 AM
Subject: Re: [Ham-Computers] RE: System Startup Question.

Aaron: Could you make a Norton Ghost image, delete this and that, and if you guessed incorrectly or had problems use a Ghost bootable floppy to restore to the previous configuration and try again?

Jim

At 10:02 AM 4/18/2007, you wrote:

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