partitioning and imaging a harddrive

[junkie]

I just spent 2 days restoring an old laptop to working condition again. I would like to image the hardrive as it is now with just the OS (WIn98 - its an old laptop) and some windows updates done and of course all devices working.

 

The laptop only has a cd-rom so I can't burn an image to a disk. Could I partition the hard-drive, place the image only on the new parition, and then be able to use that to restore if it crashed again? I have Hiren's boot cd which has image recovery programs that work in DOS - so I thought I could have an image to restore from the D drive (parition) onto the C drive. Or if Windows crashes, is the partition recognized by the bios (or is it only applicable within windows?). And if I do this should I create the partition through DOS or within windows or does it matter?

 

I'd appreciate any advice because it was a real pain in the ass restoring from scratch and getting updates for both windows and the laptop drivers.

[maelstrom]

Norton Ghost has a server / client solution, you basically install it, create a boot diskette you with specific network card support, put it in "server" mode. The client disk will dump the raw disk or partition over the network to the ghost server.

 

Head over to symantec.com and read up on network card compatibility.

[Ryan_]

I suggest acronis true image, it will packup your partition and even create a secure zone to store the image in.

partitioning your drive while data is on it is risky, you may spend 2 more days reinstalling if you use partitioning software, but it may work fine.

but acronis is good.

ps, if you mess up your partition and windows cant read it, try booting up knoppix or a os like that to read the RAW data if there is something you need to save.