Maurice IRL wrote:
> Malke:
> What is the difference between backup and imaging?
Well, you can use an image for backup but you can't use backup as an
image. ;-)
When you image a drive or partition (with something like Acronis True
Image or Norton Ghost), it creates an identical "picture" of that
drive/partition which can then be restored. As illustration - I have 6
Optiplex workstations to set up for a client this morning. I get Windows
exactly the way I want it on one of the workstations - install the
antivirus, other programs, do my configurations, etc. When I'm all done,
I boot the machine with a CD previously created in True Image (from
another computer) which starts the True Image program outside of the
operating system. I attach an external hard drive to my target Optiplex
and tell True Image to create an image of the Optiplex's Windows
partition and store that image on the external hard drive. This takes
just a few minutes on a new install.
Now I can boot each of the other 5 Optiplexes with the True Image CD
with the external hard drive attached and tell True Image to restore the
image onto the Opti's hard drive. It only takes a few minutes for each
machine and now I have 5 machines whose Windows installs are identical
to my "master" machine. When we have to image 150 laptops for a school
laptop program, we put the image on a server and attach all the target
machines to the network and do multiple machines at one time.
Backup programs handle backing up files - onto media such as CD/DVD-R or
internal/external hard drives - in different ways. Some backup programs
use a proprietary file format, like the old NTBackup. This means that if
you don't have the backup program installed on a target machine or your
target machine's operating system doesn't understand that backup format,
you're SOL. This has happened to people who used the MS Backup in
Win98/ME and found out that Vista doesn't get this at all. So for data
backups, my own preference is to not have backups created in any
specific file format. I like the backup files to be copies of themselves
and nothing more.
I haven't used True Image for doing backups so I don't recall offhand if
it saves backups in a proprietary format. You can determine this by
going to
www.acronis.com and reading about it. Second Copy does exactly
what its name says: it makes a copy of whatever files you want, where
you want. Second Copy is not used for copying your operating system like
an Acronis image; it is used for copying only your data files.
So you see there is a use for both imaging and backing up incrementally
(backing up only files that have changed). For my own work, I use a
program that creates what effectively is an image of the hard drive that
can be restored (it's a bit different on a Mac than on Windows) and I
run this at least once a week. Once a month or so I burn my files to DVD
to have additional coverage.
I hope this has helped you.
Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User