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[4gaines]

Is a cold backup the same as a disk image?  I want to do a clean install on a new computer, then image the disk, byte by byte, as a backup.  In the previous version of Ghost that I used, you could do that, then later, after a virus or a hard drive failure, you could recover the entire drive, using the Ghost image.

[DStain]

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4gaines wrote:

Is a cold backup the same as a disk image?  I want to do a clean install on a new computer, then image the disk, byte by byte, as a backup.  In the previous version of Ghost that I used, you could do that, then later, after a virus or a hard drive failure, you could recover the entire drive, using the Ghost image.

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Hi 4gaines,

Terminology is is always difficult for some users to grasp with Ghost.

You could term a "Cold" backup similar to a "One Time" backup it will completely image the computer and create a recovery point (Image) that you can use to recover the whole computer in case of a major problem.

Normally we would create a folder on an external drive and run a backup creating the recovery point (Image) in the folder.

That same recovery point (Image) could then be used to "Image / restore" the faulty drive or recover the computer if the drive is ok.

Hope that helps,

Deric

[philipm785]

Just to add to Deric's comment, the "cold image" process in the new version of Ghost is roughly analogous to the way the old Ghost would work. You boot up outside the regular Windows environment and take a complete snapshot of drive (or drives) that can be restored at a later date. 

The other nice thing that you couldn't do with the old DOS Ghost but that you can do now with newer versions of Ghost is to take regular backups while Windows is running. You could still keep your initial "cold" backup as an emergency copy, but you could also have Ghost take daily snapshots of your drive even while Windows is running. Then when you need to restore from a virus or drive failure, you have a very recent image to work from. The daily snapshots are typically quite small since Ghost only saves the changes since the last snapshot. 

[4gaines]

Hi Deric,

Thanks for the info, it sounds like it get copies the boot sector and file allocation table as well?  When you use it to recover, I'm quessing it overwrites the boot sector and file allocation table on the target drive with the ghost image?

[4gaines]

Hi Philpm785, thanks for the help.

[4gaines]

When using the cold backup, does it have to be restored to the same drive (or size ect.)?

[DStain]

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4gaines wrote:

When using the cold backup, does it have to be restored to the same drive (or size ect.)?

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When you run a computer backup you take an image of that computer and if you have a major crash you can then restore that image to the computer.We call it a "recovery" or a "reimage" to the exact same hardware.

Now, if you want to restore that image taken of the computer to a different size drive then that is called an "image-restore" and is more involved to do.

What is it that you want to do?

Deric

[4gaines]

Hi Deric, thanks for taking the time to respond.

I probably want to do both.

1. My computer is used by the whole family and over time things get messy, slow down and third party programs are loaded which causes problems.  In the past I would do a clean load of windows and my other programs, then use Ghost to image the drive.  Then when things got messy I would use the ghost image and restore it to the clean load point (saving my data first), which was a whole lot faster and easier that loading everything from scratch again.

2. Also, I believe (I could be wrong) I have used that Ghost image to load on a new hard drive (same computer) after a hard drive failure, but that was a version that was probably 10 years old.  It seemed that old version of Ghost didn't care about hard drive size.

[DStain · Accepted solution]

With the present version of Ghost you can do both, all you need is the latest backup that you ran, Ghost creates a "Recovery Point" .v2i files that can then be used to transfer onto a new drive in the same computer.

You can achieve this in two ways, a "Drive to Drive" or the more popular "Image-Restore" the image-restore uses the .v2i files in the recovery point or backup.

So rest assured what ever you did years ago you can still do today, just remember if you attempt a image-restore to prepare the new drive first.

If you need more specific instructions let us know.

Edit - just to add that I keep a "cloned" primary drive incase I have a primary drive failure and this was created with the .v2i files.

Deric