take image of PC before wiping

k123456

Need to reformat several PC's and install a new OS. ;

xp to win 7

Would like to be able to roll back to the old PC if problems arise, be able to browse an image of the old PC's and find config files, user data, windows settings etc

Someone mentioned Symantec backup exec may do this, is this so

and are there other packages (free ) that may do this

Ideally would like a situation where I take an image of PC, save to external hard drive, wipe PC and install win7 ,
if a prob arises, browse to the image of prob PC, would like to browse to the variuos images if needed on one dedicated PC for this, recover files etc, check windows settings

Thanks

Pinnacle

Interesting qusetion.

I too would love to know the answer to this!
I would like to upgrade my vista computer to 7, but I hate all the hassle that goes into finding sound drivers and graphics drivers, something like this would great, if you could back up important drivers and things.

bhickey

Depending on time & budget restraints, a simple way to to do this would be to just add a new disk drive to the PC and install the new OS onto the new drive. Keep the original as backup drive until you've copied everything over and you're happy that the new setup is working as it should. Then wipe the original drive and move on to the next PC.

k123456

Bump

Jonathan

Boot a linux live CD.


Then at the command line use dd.

Example command:

dd if=/dev/sda of=/mount/externalharddrive/diskimage.img

Read up on these commands first though as you could end up wiping your hard drive accidentally.

ricman

See here todu backup, clone the hardrive, make disk image
http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/
,I THINK theres also clonezilla ,free program,google it.
if something goes wrong, install xp, or current os,eg win7, restore image .
make drive image, also make a bootable cd too.