Hard Drive Backup, Restore and Image Cloning, Free and Easy

For more than a year, I have been using a very good and free program DriveImageXML to backup my whole system. I normally just use one hard drive in my computer but it works for as many drive as you got. !;-) One of the things I love about the program is that it allows compression and I can save several copies of the whole drive over time on the backup drive. I use an external USB attached drive for storage but one can use other things such as network drives, maybe internet places or even DVDs and CDs if you want to do it the hard way.

Up until a few days ago I had only limited experience with actually restoring files and such using this software. I had restored one complete hard drive and done a few other individual files and directory restores over the last couple of years. I was out of practice. A few days ago I decided to entertain myself by restoring a complete clone of my primary drive just to see if all was well with this backup/restore scheme. I found that the restored drive would not boot correctly.

After much skull scratching and even trying to repair the installation from my Windows installation CD, I found the answer. You guessed it, all I had to do was follow the instructions. The instructions for DirveImageXML that is. But it turns out the instruction don't really cover using a "used" drive as the restore target.

The problem came from restoring to a drive that had previously been used in my computer as the second, non-system drive. I bought a new hard drive a few months ago just to have a spare. I installed it in my computer to verify that it was not DOA. I plugged it in, turned on the computer and there it was in the explorer window. All is well. I unplugged the drive and forgot about it. Just to have a spare.

When I decided to test my backups to make sure the restore part of the equation works, that is the drive I used as the target drive. I also used the Ultimate Boot CD 4 Windows to boot from and run the restore function of DriveImageXML. UBCD4Win comes with DriveImageXML included. I've tried the build-your-own BartPE version and several others and UBCD4Win is the best. It just works.

So, I shut down my computer, pried the case open, unplugged C: drive and connected the new drive in it's place. I fired up the computer and booted the UBCD. Then I started DIXML, selected the backup file (preciously deposited on an external USB drive) and clicked the next button to restore it to the blank drive. Then, I tooled over to WalMart and got some Coke and some chocolate coated peanut clusters. The restore process was done in about an hour. Your mileage will vary depending on the size of the backup files. In my case that is about 35% of a 120GB drive restored to a 160GB drive. But then the problem came out.

When I removed the boot CD and restarted the computer, the windows user login screen appeared, I typed in my trusty password and bluie, window is shutting down. Not a good thing. As it turns out, having the hard drive attached to this computer in the past meant that my windows installation took note of that particular drive and remembered that it ain't the boot drive. I did a zillion other things, but after DriveImageXML finished restoring the files to the drive and before closing out and restarting the computer on it's new C: disk, all I really needed to do was; click on tools in the DriveImageXML window, select "Set new Disk ID"and go.

I recommend that everyone who owns a Windoz computer immediately go and get both DriveImageXML, and UBCD4Win. NOW! Oh yeah, use them, floss regularly and practice safe sex. Practice, practice, practice....

More Computer Stuff

I visited my old work joint this morning and got off with some goodies. The owner let me have the computer I used there along with a handfull of accessories and a used LCD monitor. So now I not only have backups of all my bits, I also have hardware spares. I switched the LCD monitor with the one I've been using here. I think the picture is a little better in most ways but it is a 17" monitor in place of the 19" CRT I've been using. There is another problem, besides a slightly smaller screen, that I haven't figured out. Everything is distorted taller and skinnier than it should be. A perfect circle on the old CRT monitor comes out as a circle stretched vertically on the LCD. I have played around with all the resolution settings and the least distorted is 1280 x 1084. The monitor is a Dell 1702FP and I think it's supposed to go to 1600 by something but I haven't got it there yet. At least it will save some electricity. A pretty good morning.