Creating a Recovery disk

[Rhenerie]

Is there any way to actually make your own system recovery disk ? like one that would come with an HP or Alienware ??
Its something i really liked about my old HP but i was just wondering if i can make one myself for my new PC , any advise would be appreciated.

 

[Wombät]

Symantec's Norton Ghost™ 9.0 provides advanced backup and recovery for your PC. Protect your data by making a backup of your entire hard drive's contents - without restarting Windows®. Incremental backups save you time and disk space. You can even schedule backups to run automatically. Quickly restore individual files, selected folders, or the entire hard drive.

You do not mention what sort of computer you have, so go here and have a look at Norton Ghost

http://www.symantecstore.com/dr/sat...N=5&PID=646353&DSP=&CUR=840&PGRP=0&CACHE_ID=0

 

[rdcmmnst]

in system recovery do you mean like the repair option in a windows installation disc.. sorry this term is new to me.

 

[Kage]

Well, yeah Ghost is an option like Wombat says. What this does is takes an image of your drive and saves it in a compressed file somewhere (or on a DVD, or many).

When you want to then boot back to that image, you run Ghost, and choose the image (its best to go from dvd or a seperate drive, just incase the drives dies), and the image is then restored, bringing the drive back to how it was when you made it.

This can include programs, files, etc, as it basically takes a snapshot of the whole drive, so its just like the Recovery Disc

BOOT DISCS:

There are bootdisks though that go into floppy drives (not like HP ones) and what these are used for is to boot up a few programs to format windows and carry out tasks, though these are more useful for older windows where you needed a bootdisk as it were to format, since the CD didn't boot up automatically and so you needed it to install the CD too.

I hope this helps

 

[rdcmmnst]

ok i got it.

 

[Kage]

good good

 

[Rhenerie]

What i want to do is

Be able to Format my Harddrive , say every 3 months without having to reinstall basic files ... Windows,Card drivers,and basic software ..

basicly just an easy way out .... if any one knows what i mean like HP has it basicly worked like this ..... you put in the CD and restart the Computer ... then it completly formats your Harddrive but restores windows and all origional factory programs .. without the hassle ... it was really nice .... but i dont have an HP any more i have an "IBuyPower" PC ..

 

[Rhenerie]

Also for any one that has "Norton Ghost" dose it actually format the harddrive or just restore lost programs and files ??????

 

[Kage]

What you do is back the image file it makes in another location (off the drive prefrably, or in another partition (but this evades the point))

If you were to then want to boot it up, you'd run Ghost, which would format the drive yes, and then go over it with what you have stored on the DVD's or drives, and just ask you to place another in when that ones finished, etc.

This is just like the HP recovery, as it'd have all the drivers, and simple programs stored, so you'd just have to run it and have everything back that you had when you first made the ghost image

This clear things up?

 

[Rhenerie]

YES!

thank you kage Looks like norton ghost is what im looking for ... it should make things alot easier and thanks alot again .