Ghost without Ghost?

RWB

I want to ghost my system, partitions, etc... but FREE. I TRUELY honest to God cannot afford a single damned thing(even food). I need a free method to do this cause I am sick and tired of reformatting every month and having to go through Update after update, restart after restart.

There is a big reason I do this every month, and it has something to do with money. But I believe it is still legit

Anyways... how can I do a Ghost like thing freely?

a2jfreak

I think you can use dd (found in most (all?) Linux distros) and make an exacty copy of your HD. Though, I think you'll need another HD w/ as much free space as the HD you're trying to backup has total.

TheLostSwede

XP's built-in restore?

With at least 3 or 4 mainboards i have bought, Ghost have been included on either the cd or a disk. You might check yours as well as you might find out that you actually already have it.

RWB

Using Windows 2000

RWB

a2jfreak had this to say
I think you can use dd (found in most (all?) Linux distros) and make an exacty copy of your HD. Though, I think you'll need another HD w/ as much free space as the HD you're trying to backup has total.

I have no clue how to use Linux, I am willing to bet you have to know how to use a command line well to have a chance at that?

a2jfreak

Knoppix. Then just type dd --help or man dd. I'm sure that should be enough to teach you.

You said free, not "free w/ a beautiful GUI."

TheLostSwede

Check your mainboard cd's as i think you might have Ghost on one of them.

FormFactor

Or u could use the backup util built in to win2k, make a backup after you get all the updates installed, and restore from there when you want to start over.

Mt_Goat

Something I have done a few times and it worked great was to use a RAID controller and put the drive you want to clone on one channel and the empty drive on the other channel. The set up a RAID-1 and copy the one drive to the other and you end up with 2 Identical drives.

RWB

Mackanz had this to say
Check your mainboard cd's as i think you might have Ghost on one of them.

Yeah I used to have that, but not with this new Motherboard.

mtgoat had this to say
Something I have done a few times and it worked great was to use a RAID controller and put the drive you want to clone on one channel and the empty drive on the other channel. The set up a RAID-1 and copy the one drive to the other and you end up with 2 Identical drives.

Yeah that is actually how I used to do it, but I had to get rid of one of my HDD's, now I am stuck with one 40GB HDD. With my Digital Media program it is becoming hard to use this small drive becuase my textures and pictures stuff take up a couple GB alone, then my projects take up even more, my programs, uncompressed video, etc... can't afford a new drive.

I am going to give hints to my family of what would be "nice" to get for Christmas I will start Sacrificing Chickens and Sheep in hope that I get a Dual Opteron System with 2GB Memory and 0.5TB of storage.

Mt_Goat

Where in the state do you live?

Hotrodsun

Also check into a program called sys prep on the microsoft web site, You should be able to copy your hard drive to the new one and then run sys prep to get everything back in order.

The file name for sys prep is

Q257813_W2K_spl_X86_EN.exe

TheSmJ

RWB had this to say
I want to ghost my system, partitions, etc... but FREE. I TRUELY honest to God cannot afford a single damned thing(even food). I need a free method to do this cause I am sick and tired of reformatting every month and having to go through Update after update, restart after restart.

There is a big reason I do this every month, and it has something to do with money. But I believe it is still legit

Anyways... how can I do a Ghost like thing freely?

I think I know what your trying to do, and why your trying to do it , but I dont think that would work unless you keep track of the day/time you install Windows, and before you create the image, and always set your system clock back to this time before you restore the image. Otherwise Windows would time out on you.


P.S.

I guess it's legal... I mean they dont say you cant do that anywhere... right?

RWB

TheSmJ had this to say

RWB had this to say
I want to ghost my system, partitions, etc... but FREE. I TRUELY honest to God cannot afford a single damned thing(even food). I need a free method to do this cause I am sick and tired of reformatting every month and having to go through Update after update, restart after restart.

There is a big reason I do this every month, and it has something to do with money. But I believe it is still legit

Anyways... how can I do a Ghost like thing freely?

I think I know what your trying to do, and why your trying to do it , but I dont think that would work unless you keep track of the day/time you install Windows, and before you create the image, and always set your system clock back to this time before you restore the image. Otherwise Windows would time out on you.


P.S.

I guess it's legal... I mean they dont say you cant do that anywhere... right?

No... I just install those programs afterwards. It is the WIndows Setup, and updates. After a few hundred times(literally) it gets old, ya know? :P

BuT I would also include other programs I do have, like any games and PhotoShop 7 which I got legit as a gift. My school is starting this thing though, where when we graduate we can cheaply buy a package with ALL the goodies for like $500 or so... taking that each program alone costs over that amount and that there are more than 4 programs(dunno how many, but it is several) that is one hell of a deal.