How do I "image" a hard drive?

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I did go through your answer to this question but I didn’t see one single step telling this person how to do what he/she wanted to do.
People like me don’t care about keeping backup on their files simply is because I work in Internet café we use imaging for all our systems. Once we setup and complete setting and installing every thing we want for that computer we simply create an image of it so if some thing goes wrong simply restore the image and in 5 minutes the computer will be online and ready to be used.
If this person asks you this question simply tell them that they need imaging software once they find that software simply run the software and flow the instructions. Tell then that their hard dive must have partition.
Any way I love your website I always read all your answers.

hI
how to make image of my harddrive(stand alone)
and copy to a dvd or ccd.

nick

Yes Ilyas, Leo's response does not answer the question but he does state why he does not use imaging software and where he believes imaging software does apply. Of course in your application, you would want imaging software.

Most companies use Ghost as it is the leader in imaging software. Handy also that it bought its closest competitor. Next up might be Acronis. Maybe. Weak on DVDR backups - I could never get it to work via during the demo period even after contacting support and following any hints in the FAQs. I do not remember which company offered this particular product but it would reimage on restart.

Back to Ghost...
Not bad. The current verision of Ghost allows for backup directly in Windows XP as opposed to Ghost 2003 which would reboot to PCDOS to backup the drive. When I say not bad, I've run into headaches but so far Ghost has worked out better than others for imaging to CDR/DVDRs.

I have an image (Ghost Corp. 8.2) that syspreps when done. However, I am finding that on all computers I still have to run the Internet Connection Wizard AND the Outlook 2000 setup Wizard. These are consistent settings and it would be helpful to not have to set them up each time. Can you help?

Do you have to have the same size hard drive as the one that you want to image

It depends on the imaging software you're using and what you're attempting to do.

I have a WIN 2000 machine with a hard drive that is starting to make a lot of noise at start-up - probably on the way to failing. I like the way the computer is setup now. I would like to install a new, 2nd hard drive, in the slave position and create an image of the old hard drive onto the new drive, using a disk imaging program. Then just replace the old one with the new one. Would this work?

Thanks,
Buck

BTW - I once heard Steve Gibson, of Gibson Research, recommend Drive Snapshot (at www.drivesnapshot.de) over Ghost. Has anyone ever used it? It does have a 30 day trial period before you have to buy it. It then looks like it would cost EUR 39, which I think is about $48. It looks like it runs while Windows is running, too.

how do u know if your harddrive is failing??
mine makes a gringing noise sometimes, but i dont know if that is normal. Yes, i reformat, and reinstall windows alot. could that have something to do with it?

i have a usb pendrive 256 MB, and i use winrar, for maual backup. i only backup some, cause all wont fit and i dont need all anyway.

thanks in advance for the answers, or comments.

To leo, and/or commentors.

i had a "bad" hard drive. found out the ciruit board was bad. replaced it. i cant see files on my drive. imaged onto a new drive in dos. how can i "see" my dos images, and restore them to my computer?

thanks in advance

the answer on this page doesn't match with the title "how do i image a hard drive". Appreciate if you can provide step by step with pictures on how to do image a hard drive

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