How to back up your system drive on DVD-R ?

[ktnwin]

I have been using Ghost to back up my system disk on CD-R.
I am wondering if there is a software out there that can back up system disk on recordable DVD media.
Reason: in case the system disk is corrupted, I can restore it quickly (in less than 30 mins) instead of having to re-install OS and all the apps, and drivers from scratch.

I appreciate if anyone of you can give me info on this.

[next]

I'm testing a panasonic 521 drive for this very reason. It has dvd-ram capabilities which is very good for data backup. Dvd-ram has a ton of advantages for data backup over the other formats i.e. dvd-+rw etc (I'm testing it for vro video file editing capabilities too for all of those set top box panasonic dvd burner types).

Great concept and I'm sure dvd+- r will be incorporated into products such as Ghost. This wonderful cutting edge site gets a tremendous amount of attention. Ask enough and you shall receive.

[racer-x]

It's easy! I multy-boot Win98se and XP. I have a Ghost Image for both systems Along with some files on one DVD+R. All you have to do, is create the image, put it on another drive(use fat 32 on that drive) then just burn the image to the dvd. You can also make it a bootdisk with Nero and have it go right to Ghost like I do. That makes it really cool.

[Doggiedaddy]

I run 12 +/- machines at any given time and found nothing I liked for FULL RECOVERY. My needs were a product that if the unthinkable happens you could boot to a rescue disk of some type and restore a complete system as it was pre-failure in short order. What I ended up doing was purchase 120GB Hard drives then putting them in USB/Firewire enclosures and use M/S Backup Utility with Automated System Recovery [ASR] on floppies [utility comes with XP Pro]. I know this works because I simulated a catastrophic failure and did a complete rebuild. I tried most of the available software solutions but each had its draw backs and none I found would span multiple DVDs [correctly] with some kind of a boot system either from DVD or Floppy and again I’m talking about maybe 20+GB of info each. I have got to say this works like a charm for me. If there was an easier way I would take a look at it. I tried Ghost a while back but I did not like the outcome and Roxio’s Go Back is a joke far too intrusive.

justmy2cents
Dd

[rallynavvie]

Nero won't do back-ups of systems running the latest NTFS version (which is part of WinXP) for some stupid reason. You'd think with the almost weekly updates Nero releases they'd have come up with a way to image a drive with that file format

I too use the MS backup utility to image only the primary boot drive to a FireWire hard drive. Granted that means you have to format, reinstall the OS, and then recover from the backup this way but it's the only way I know how. Image file for my 50% full 80GB boot drive was about 18GB. Besides, with how cheap hard drives and FireWire enclosures are it isn't that terrible an idea, especially if you can store several computer's backups on that same drive.

[ktnwin]

racer-x is right, I should have thought about that. Ghost allows to back up system drive (or any drive) as image file on a different drive.
All I have to do is to burn data image file on a DVD-R.

and rallynavvie, when you are running Windows, it will not let you copy most of system files, and that's why back up software running under Windows cannot back system drives, only back up data.

[andydd]

I use PowerQuest Drive Image 2002..does NTFS ok and then burn image to a DVD-R. Easy as pie

[MOVIEGEEK]

Off-topic but I use an old HDD(20GB)as back-up and if my OS crashes then I do a disk-to-disk transfer and 15 minutes later all is well.

[dpcpro]

Create a Ghost system image and save it to your hard drive. Then create a dos bootable image (1.44 or 2.88) that contains system files, ghost.exe, cdrom drivers, and a script with the correct command line syntax to automate the restore.

Create a bootable DVD-R. Add the Ghost image to the root. Add the dos boot image from above as the bootable image and your set. I would use a DVD-RW first until your sure it works.

If you really want to get fancy, look at http://www.bootscriptor.org/
I currently make disks that contain multiple bootable images and allow me to install or run apps including: Windows XP, Windows 2000, NTFS Dos Pro, Norton Ghost 2003, Norton Antivirus 2003, ERD Commander 2002, PowerQuest Drive Image 2002, Partition Magic, Easy Recovery 6.0, etc.

...I have all this software on 1 disk.

Works like a charm.

Good Luck.

dpcpro